HELL ON WHEELS Ep. 4 | “Across the Desert”

Summary

Legends of the Old West: "Across the Desert" - Episode 4 Summary

Episode Title: HELL ON WHEELS Ep. 4 | “Across the Desert”
Release Date: June 11, 2025
Host/Author: Black Barrel Media
Series Description: Exploring the pivotal figures and events that shaped the American West, focusing on lawmen, outlaws, and the transformative transcontinental railroad.

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Introduction to the Transcontinental Railroad Race

By the summer of 1868, the construction of the transcontinental railroad was nearing its climax in the East. The Union Pacific had advanced across Wyoming under the leadership of Grenville Dodge and Jack Casement, bringing military discipline to accelerate progress. Despite this momentum, the crews faced significant challenges, including unregulated "hell on wheels" towns plagued by vice and violence.

"Along the rails, hell on wheels towns cropped up and brought nothing but whiskey and vice. Gamblers and con artists virtually ran the towns, and violence followed." (01:08)

Challenges Along the Tracks

In towns like Julesburg, Cheyenne, and Laramie, vigilance committees often had to intervene to restore order amidst rampant lawlessness. Concurrently, Native American warriors intensified their attacks on the railroad, aiming to disrupt construction efforts.

"Native American warriors grew bolder in their attacks on the railroad in the hopes of hampering or halting construction." (01:53)

Despite these obstacles, the Union Pacific continued its advance, tackling formidable terrains such as Sherman's Summit and constructing audacious bridges like the one across Dale Creek gorge.

Central Pacific's Milestone Achievement

On June 18, 1868, the Central Pacific achieved a significant milestone by running its first full passenger train across the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Engineer Hank Small piloted the Antelope locomotive from Sacramento, navigating through challenging elevations and overcoming a massive snowslide at the Summit Tunnel.

"The conductor gave the okay, and the Antelope rolled into the famous summit tunnel." (04:00)

The successful traversal and completion of the Tunnel marked a pivotal moment, as the train emerged into the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevadas, making its way towards what would become Reno, Nevada.

"They have broken down the Great Barrier at last and opened over it the greatest highway yet created for the march of civilization." (04:40)

Transition to the Nevada Desert

With the mountains behind them, the Central Pacific shifted focus to the Nevada desert's open landscapes—high desert valleys, wide basins, and shallow grades. This transition marked a significant change from the grueling mountain construction, allowing for increased efficiency and accelerated progress.

"Grading crews went first. They leveled the path ahead by cutting into hills, filling low spots and smoothing out the bed where the tracks would lie." (07:17)

Under the leadership of Charles Crocker and James Strowbridge, the Central Pacific adopted a structured, military-like approach, ensuring disciplined work environments that contrasted sharply with the Union Pacific's chaotic camps.

Overcoming the Humboldt Sink

One of the most formidable challenges the Central Pacific faced was the Humboldt Sink—a vast alkaline basin where the Humboldt River dissolved into the sand, leaving behind hostile salt flats and corrosive water. The extreme conditions tested the crews' resilience, from battling intense heat and dust to dealing with toxic water that hindered locomotive operations.

"The water was so mineral heavy that it foamed inside locomotive boilers, which damaged seals and gummed up pistons." (14:16)

Despite these hardships, the crew persevered, establishing supply lines from distant sources to sustain their operations. By late summer of 1868, they had successfully navigated the last dry flats of the Humboldt Sink, moving into Utah's Great Salt Lake desert.

Strategic Decisions and the Promontory Summit

As both the Union Pacific and Central Pacific approached Utah, the critical question arose: Where would the two railroads meet? The Pacific Railway Act of 1862 did not designate a specific junction point, leading both companies to extend their tracks independently.

In November 1868, Central Pacific President Leland Stanford, along with engineer Lewis Clement, surveyed potential routes and decided against constructing an expensive 800-foot tunnel. Instead, they selected Promontory Summit as the ceremonial endpoint, strategically positioning their final connection point.

"Promontory Summit would be the ceremonial endpoint of construction, and Ogden would be the official junction and commercial center of the finished railroad." (21:16)

This decision not only facilitated a more efficient meeting point but also allowed the Central Pacific to control the final stretch, leveraging their disciplined workforce to set ambitious track-laying records.

Adoption of the Assembly Line System

To maximize efficiency, the Central Pacific implemented Jack Casement's assembly line track-laying technique. This system defined specific tasks for each worker, enabling continuous progress without the delays of coordinating multiple steps.

"Laying ties, hauling rails, spiking, bolting, gauging, tamping—rather than moving forward. Only after completing each pair of rails, as they had done for years, the new method advanced continuously." (25:47)

This innovation significantly increased their daily track output, with crews averaging three to four miles per day by early 1869, compared to their previous two-mile targets.

The Record-Breaking Push

By April 1869, as both railroads neared their convergence point in Utah, pressure mounted to determine the meeting location. Amidst strategic maneuvering and political pressures, a secret meeting between Central Pacific's Collis Huntington and Union Pacific's Grenville Dodge culminated in a compromise:

"Promontory Summit would be the ceremonial endpoint... Ogden would be the official junction and commercial center." (21:16)

With this agreement, the Central Pacific focused on securing their track-laying dominance. On April 28, 1869, a meticulously planned coordinated effort saw 1,200 workers lay an unprecedented 10 miles and 56 feet of track in a single day, shattering previous records.

"1200 men went to work in unison. Every team had one task, and every task was timed." (31:17)

This feat not only demonstrated the Central Pacific's superior organization but also solidified their place in history as they approached the final miles of the rail connection.

Conclusion and Looking Forward

As the Central Pacific celebrated their record-breaking achievement, the Union Pacific continued its push through Utah's canyons in a bid to be first at the junction point. The episode closes with anticipation for the final convergence, setting the stage for the historic completion of the transcontinental railroad.

"April 28, 1869 was a day for the men to be proud of. But the work wasn't over." (35:57)

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Notable Quotes:

• "They have broken down the Great Barrier at last and opened over it the greatest highway yet created for the march of civilization." - San Francisco Daily Alta California Reporter (04:40)

• "The organization of the Central Pacific is far superior to ours." - Union Pacific Engineer (33:22)

• "Promontory Summit would be the ceremonial endpoint... Ogden would be the official junction and commercial center." - Narrator (21:16)

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Key Takeaways:

1. Discipline vs. Chaos: The Central Pacific's military-like discipline starkly contrasted with the Union Pacific's hellish towns, leading to more efficient and less violent construction environments.

2. Innovative Strategies: Adoption of assembly line techniques revolutionized track-laying speed, showcasing the Central Pacific's commitment to efficiency and progress.

3. Overcoming Natural Obstacles: Navigating the Humboldt Sink and the Sierra Nevada Mountains highlighted the immense challenges and resilience of the railroad crews.

4. Strategic Compromises: The agreement on Promontory Summit and Ogden as key junction points exemplified the intricate balance of competition and cooperation required to complete the transcontinental vision.

5. Historical Significance: The successful completion underscored the transformative impact of the transcontinental railroad on the American nation, connecting vast regions and fostering economic growth.

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Looking Ahead:

In the next episode, "Legends of the Old West" will delve into the ongoing efforts of the Union Pacific as they navigate Utah's treacherous canyons and continue their race to the final junction point, amidst enduring challenges and relentless competition.

Transcript

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[Narrator]

By the summer of 1868, the race to build the transcontinental railroad had entered its final phase in the East. The Union Pacific marched across Wyoming. With Thomas Durant sidelined and the Ames brothers now in control of the operation. Construction had accelerated dramatically. Civil War veterans Grenville Dodge and Jack Casement were brought on to ensure the Union Pacific won the race, and they brought their military discipline to the crews. But that didn't mean the discipline was ironclad. Along the rails, hell on wheels towns cropped up and brought nothing but whiskey and vice. Gamblers and con artists virtually ran the towns, and violence followed.

In Julesburg, Cheyenne, and Laramie, the railroad, or vigilance committees, had to restore order with bloodshed. Meanwhile, Native American warriors grew bolder in.

Their attacks on the railroad in the hopes of hampering or halting construction. Dodging raids became a constant part of life on the prairie. Through it all, the Union Pacific kept moving. It scaled Sherman's Summit and erected one of the most audacious bridges across the Dale Creek gorge. Mile by mile, it headed toward the border of Utah. Dodge and Casement pushed their workers hard because they soon discovered that their rival, the Central Pacific, had crested the Sierra Nevada Mountains. On June 18, 1868, the Central Pacific ran its first full passenger train across the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Engineer Hank Small took the controls of.

The Antelope locomotive and left Sacramento at 6:30am behind him were three passenger cars, a baggage car and a box car.

On board were passengers who were eager.

To see the impossible become real.

The train chugged uphill into the mountains.

By 9:50am it had climbed nearly 2,500ft to Colfax, where the grade steepened. At Cape Horn, passengers leaned anxiously out of the windows to stare 1,000ft down into the American River Canyon. As they gained elevation they passed work camps and snowsheds that were still under construction. 104 miles from Sacramento, the train approached the western opening of the Summit Tunnel at 7,043ft above sea level. And then the train came to a screeching halt. Word reached the engineer that a massive.

Snowslide had covered the eastern approach and blocked the path.

Chinese crews raced to remove the snow blockade.

Using shovels and pickaxes, they worked tirelessly.

While passengers huddled in their seats and.

Tried to stay warm. After two long hours, the snow was cleared.

The conductor gave the okay, and the antelope rolled into the famous summit tunnel. Before long, the antelope emerged from the tunnel into the dazzling sunlight of the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevadas. Slowly but surely, the train descended the mountains. It passed Donner Lake and curved through the pine trees and granite ridges. By the end of the day, the train pulled into the town of Lakes Crossing, which would soon be renamed Reno, Nevada.

A San Francisco Daily Alta California reporter captured the moment.

He wrote, the mighty task is accomplished. Words cannot describe it. He had witnessed Chinese laborers waving their hats and shouting with joy. As the train passed, the reporter noted, they have broken down the Great Barrier at last and opened over it the greatest highway yet created for the march of civilization. Years ago, Theodore Judah had stood at the summit and imagined what could be. He told Congress it could be done and convinced the Big Four to financially support his vision. Less than a decade later, passengers rolled through the Sierra Nevada mountains for the the first time. Charles Crocker, the Big Four member who was most involved in the construction, watched as his crews poured through the tunnel, down the mountains and into the Nevada desert. With the mountains conquered, the Central Pacific could begin the great race in earnest. From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season is Hell on Wheels, the epic story of the transcontinental railroad. Despite countless hardships and obstacles, the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific did what many thought was impossible. They connected the American nation by rail. This is Episode four Across the Desert. When the Central Pacific dropped into Nevada, the nature of the railroad changed everything that had defined their struggle through the Sierra Nevadas. Snow, granite tunnels and trestles was in the rearview mirror. What lay ahead was open country of.

High desert valleys, wide basins and shallow grades. It wasn't easy, but it was exponentially.

Better than the mountains.

For the first time in the company's history, the work didn't grind forward. Inch by inch, it surged.

Charles Crocker had waited years for this moment, after battling doubters, terrain and weather, he was finally on ground where he could make up for lost time.

With superintendent James Strowbridge beside him, Crocker began reshaping the operation.

For years, Crocker and Strowbridge had fought a mountain campaign. Now it was time for a flatland strategy. And they transformed the Central Pacific into a machine on the move.

Crocker and Strobridge divided their labor into mobile units, with each performing a critical.

Piece of the puzzle. Grading crews went first. They leveled the path ahead by cutting into hills, filling low spots and smoothing out the bed where the tracks would lie. Behind them were the tie gangs. Tie gangs placed wooden cross ties with even spacing the things we usually call today railroad ties. After the tie gangs came the iron handlers. Iron handlers hoisted and positioned the heavy iron rails onto the wooden ties. Lastly, when the rails were in place, the spike drivers hammered each one into.

Place and locked the line together. Put them all together and.

And the result was a rhythmic roar of noise. In the Nevada desert.

The crews moved in sequence and became.

A well oiled machine.

Every team knew its job. Every man knew his role. When done right, they could safely lay.

A mile of track in a single day. On a good day, they could lay two miles.

Supporting them were the cookhouse crews, water.

Wagons and supply trains.

They too moved with precision.

With the line moving fast, desert towns.

Began to spring up.

Reno came first, followed by Wadsworth, Carlin, Elko and more.

Initially, they were nothing more than supply depots when the surveyors first arrived.

But when the track caught up, tents multiplied. Stores opened and saloons set set up.

Shop in canvas lean tubes. Most people moved on once the train did, but some stayed behind. They opened permanent shops and built homes in the shadow of the tracks. Unlike the Union Pacific's hell on wheels towns, the Central Pacific's towns ran quieter. There were no outlaw gangs running amok or vigilance committees stringing up men on telegraph poles. The key difference was was discipline. Crocker and Strowbridge managed their workforce like a military unit. Schedules were strict and supplies were rationed. While drunkenness, fighting and vice certainly existed, they rarely escalated into the violence that followed the Union Pacific. Still, the Nevada desert had its challenges.

The wide open terrain offered speed but little comfort.

In mid summer, temperatures soared.

Dust coated every surface, including food, shirts, tools and lungs. The soil was alkaline, meaning it was.

Rich in salts and minerals that leached into the groundwater.

As a result, the water was bitter, corrosive and sometimes toxic.

Livestock refused to drink it and entire camps were waited for a drink of.

Water until the water trains arrived. But the work never stopped.

Crews rose before the sun, ate quickly.

And went straight to it.

When the whistle blew at dusk, they staggered back to tents, bunk cars, or hillside dugouts. Some played cards, some swapped stories, some.

Fell asleep, still wearing their boots.

The next day, they did it all again. Throughout the summer of 1868, the Central Pacific made fast progress through the Nevada desert.

But it was about to face its next great obstacle, a blistering stretch of.

Alkaline desert where the Humboldt river vanished into the salt. The stretch became known as the Humboldt.

Sink, a place where the ground cracked, water boiled and survival wasn't guaranteed.

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[Narrator]

The Humboldt Sink is a vast alkaline.

Basin in north central Nevada where the Humboldt river just simply dissolves into the sand. It leaves behind salt flats and a parched lake bed that is crusted with pale white powder, the ground cracked underfoot and the air shimmered with heat. But the most dangerous part was the water.

Years earlier, Mark Twain passed through the.

Region and wrote, we camped two days in the neighborhood of the sink of the Humboldt. We tried to use the strong, alkaline water of the sink, but it would not answer. It was like drinking lye. It left a taste in the mouth, bitter and every way execrable, and a.

Burning in the stomach.

We put molasses in it, but that helped very little. The coffee we made of this water was the meanest compound man has yet invented. By the time the Central Pacific's grading crews reached the edge of the basin, temperatures were nearing 100 degrees, and fierce.

Winds battered the men.

Workers wrapped scarves around their faces, soaked handkerchiefs in precious water, and tied strips.

Of canvas over their hats for shade, but it barely helped. Every motion stirred the dust. Every breath tasted like salt and grit.

There were no steep grades to climb.

And no tunnels to blast, but the environment offered no more mercy than the mountains had. The Humboldt river itself was also no help.

The water was so mineral heavy that it foamed inside locomotive boilers, which damaged seals and gummed up pistons. One crew filled a locomotive with water from a desert well, and it foamed so violently the engine couldn't move. They had to tow it back with.

A second engine, then drain it and rinse it with clean, clean water before it could run again. After a while, the company hauled in water miles away from the truckee river.

And various desert springs. They used it for drinking, cooling boilers, soaking ties, mixing mortar, cleaning tools, and cooking meals. Water already proved to be an issue.

In the Nevada desert, but at the Humboldt sink, it nearly became a crisis. And yet the railroad pressed on.

Charles Crocker and James Strowbridge kept the line moving.

Strobridge pushed his crews hard from the.

Front, while Crocker drove from the rear.

Strobridge's men laid the track, and Crocker inspected, cajoled, and demanded more speed. But the biggest issue was the supply line. In august, Crocker wrote, We laid 4 miles and 180ft. We could have done it the day before, too, if we hadn't been idle.

For nine hours waiting on missing materials.

In many cases, the materials sat in freight yards in Sacramento or in supply depots along the line. The main issue was that there simply weren't enough locomotives and flat cars to keep pace with the Central Pacific's forward momentum. The crews were outrunning their own supply chain. But despite the slowdown in supply deliveries.

The crews powered through the hellish conditions. By the late summer of 1868, the.

Crew had crossed the last dry flats.

Of the Humboldt sink. It had taken weeks of brutal labor. Through dust, blistering sun and salt crusted soil.

The crew was finally leaving the Nevada desert behind.

Its reward was to move into the.

Great Salt Salt Lake desert of Utah.

There was, in a very literal way.

No rest for the weary. The only hope was that the work in general might be nearing an end.

Both railroads received progress reports about the.

Other through telegraph updates. They knew they were both approaching Utah. So the biggest question was where would they Meet?

By the second half of 1868, the.

Completion of the transcontinental railroad was no.

Longer a distant dream. It was a fast approaching fact. The Central Pacific and the Union Pacific had closed the gap between them to just a few hundred miles.

But one question remained unanswered. Where would the two lines meet?

The Pacific Railway act of 1862 did not designate a junction point for the two railroads, and both companies had laid.

Track toward each other without knowing where.

They were going to converge. But as both rails inched closer and closer to Utah, pressure to answer that.

Question mounted from all sides of the project. From Congress, from investors, and from the.

Men laying the rails. The path that led to the answer.

Was emblematic of the entire endeavor. It didn't come from a grand strategy session. It came from a decision to save money.

In November 1868, Central Pacific President Leland Stanford arrived in Utah with engineer Lewis.

Clement to survey the final approaches.

The initial route included an 800 foot tunnel through limestone near the Great Salt Lake. But as Stanford studied the situation, he realized the tunnel would be an expensive and time consuming obstacle.

He scrapped it and demanded a new route. Lewis Clement drew a new line across a dry level basin high on a ridge at the edge of the Great.

Salt Lake, a place called Promontory Summit. Though the Central Pacific avoided blasting more.

Tunnels, getting to Promontory Summit wasn't necessarily a cakewalk.

Crews approaching from the west faced a grueling 10 mile climb with steep grades.

Switchbacks and limestone cuts.

But the summit itself was stable and.

Flat, perfect for a final connection.

From a distance, it looked like a compromise. In reality, it was a carefully calculated advantage. The Central Pacific had arrived in Utah first. And once in Utah, Leland Stanford quietly ordered his crew to begin grading west of the summit, while also hiring Mormon.

Contractors to work south toward the town of Ogden.

Stanford and the other Big Four desperately wanted the Central Pacific to reach Ogden first. Ogden was halfway between Promontory and Salt.

Lake City, and it was a vital.

Access point to the Salt Lake Valley. If the Central Pacific could lay claim to it. It would hold the final gateway to the interior west. As far as Leland Stanford was concerned, no other site near the lake offered what Ogden could. Ogden could be a major hub. By December 1868, the Central Pacific had completed two thirds of its grading between.

Monument Point and Promontory Summit.

Monument Point, near the northern shore of the Great Salt Lake, marked the edge of the salt flats they had crossed for weeks.

From there, the line curved toward the.

Summit across level, stable ground. It was ideal for speed. But a major problem arose at the end of 1868 because there still wasn't an official meeting spot. Both companies, advance crews were working past each other. Both railroads still wanted to collect as much money as possible from Congress. So the grading crews way out in.

Front of the track layers just kept going.

In Washington, the dispute turned urgent. Central Pacific leaders threatened to push all the way into Ogden. Union Pacific leaders lobbied Congress to block the Central Pacific from receiving money if it went beyond Promontory Summit. As we. As winter turned to spring in 1869, the squabble continued until Congress threatened to impose a decision by law. Wanting to decide their own fate, the two companies agreed to something rare.

A compromise.

On April 8, 1869, Collis Huntington, one.

Of the big four investors of the.

Central Pacific, secretly met Grenville Dodge of the Union Pacific. And in Washington, late into the evening, Huntington and Dodge came to an agreement. The details were complicated, but there were two main resolutions.

Promontory Summit would be the ceremonial endpoint of construction, and Ogden would be the official junction and commercial center of the finished railroad. Charles Crocker and James Strowbridge, the construction bosses of the Central Pacific, now had their goal. The final leg of the great race would be the stretch of land that led to Promontory Summit. Along the way, Crocker was determined to earn headlines that the Union Pacific could never beat.

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[Narrator]

While men like Leland Stanford and Collis Huntington argued over meeting points and profits.

Charles Crocker and James Strowbridge were in the field overseeing the final stages of construction. With the end so close, there was a feeling in the camps that something big was going to happen. For years, the Central Pacific had trailed the Union Pacific, not just across the map, but in public perception. Once freed from Thomas Durant's deliberate delays, the Union Pacific raced across the plains and set daily track records. The records drew headlines in the newspapers. Jack and Dan Casement, the construction foreman ran, boasted of laying four, sometimes five miles in a day. It was an incredible feat that allowed them to traverse the plains of Nebraska and hills of Wyoming in record time. Meanwhile, the Central Pacific had spent five years grinding through the Sierra Nevada mountains.

As crazy as it sounded, given the punishing workload and unparalleled danger between 1863 and 1868, the CP had laid just 132 miles of track. When it finally celebrated the completion of the mountain campaign, it started the desert Campaign. There was no happy medium for the Central Pacific. It faced one extreme or another, and the scorching conditions of the Nevada desert.

Held the crew to just two miles.

Of track per day.

Charles Crocker, for one, wanted more. In the fall of 1868, while debate.

Over the meeting spot started to heat.

Up, he received a gift, which he.

Held in reserve until the time was right, an unnamed Union Pacific worker defected and joined the Central Pacific. He brought with him Jack Casement's system.

A track laying technique that functioned like an assembly line.

Each man had a defined task.

Placing ties, hauling rails, spiking, bolting, gauging, tamping, rather than moving forward. Only after completing each pair of rails, as they had done for years, the new method advanced continuously. When a crew completed its specific task.

Instead of waiting for the others to.

Finish, it moved down the line and started again. The result was speed. Throughout the fall and winter of 1868, the Central Pacific adopted and refined the Casement assembly line system. By early 1869, the transformation was complete, and the crew averaged three to four.

Miles of track per day.

By mid March, the Central Pacific had crossed into Utah. The line threaded through the narrow corridor between the Goose Creek Mountains and the.

Pilot Range and then spilled out onto the central salt flats west of the Great Salt Lake.

The terrain was firm, dry and flat, the kind of ground that rewarded efficiency and promoted speed. The pace was steady and impressive. On April 11, three days after the secret meeting in Washington which decided the end point, the Central Pacific laid 4.6 miles of track, the most it had laid in a single day. But the men knew it wasn't enough. Reports said the Union Pacific was stringing lanterns along the line so men could work at night. Some said they had pushed past five miles in a single day. When Charles Crocker read the headline, he told James Strobridge, we'll beat them, but not yet. Crocker was waiting and scheming.

He had something in mind, but he.

Was wanted to make sure everything was in place to do it. In mid April, camp life suddenly shifted. Meals were served early and horses were drilled with military precision. The usual chaotic din of camp distilled into a focused hum. Irish and Chinese workers rehearsed together in choreographed units. Lifting, dropping, spiking, moving, lifting, dropping, spiking, moving. It was rhythmic, methodical and efficient. There was no wasted movement. The operation started to feel like a.

Rehearsal for a performance no one had named.

The line kept moving, but more changes happened. Some of the most experienced crews were quietly pulled from the front lines. Those were men Crocker and Strobridge trusted the most. Under the direction of seasoned foremen, they trained in parallel to the main line. But apart from the daily push, their job was not to build distance. It was to do something else. Meanwhile, preparations for Crocker's secret gambit intensified.

At the back of the line, workers loaded five supply trains full of materials.

Each train carried enough rail ties and spikes to cover two miles of track.

The trains sat there waiting, hiding in plain sight.

Crocker and his engineers calibrated every detail.

The distance between tie piles, the rhythm of the spikers, and the spacing of water wagons.

Strobridge and Crocker walked the line with clipboards and measuring rods and inspected every cart and bolt. Every piece of equipment was counted and stacked, staged. By then, the workers understood Crocker's plan. He wanted to break the record for.

Miles of track laid in a single day.

Now, it wasn't a question of if they were going to try it, but when. The answer slowly came into view.

Toward the end of April, as the.

Central Pacific crew approached Monument Point, a windswept rise at the northern tip of the Great Salt Lake, the men could see the final turn of the line up ahead.

After the turn, there was a stretch.

Of flat land to the summit and the junction point. It was exactly what Charles Crocker had been waiting for at a site just.

West of the summit.

Everything was in place. The ground had been cleared. The the supplies were staged, and the crews were ready. On the evening of April 26, foremen made their final checks of the men and the supplies. The next morning, they would try to outrun history. On April 27, 1869, the Central Pacific tried to set the record for the most miles of track laid in a single day and failed. Just two miles into the day's work, a locomotive jumped the track. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but the accident broke the rhythm of the crew, and the men couldn't find it again. Crocker and Strobridge decided to end the day early. Crocker wanted that record, and he knew there was no sense in exhausting the men on a lost cause. The crews returned to camp feeling frustrated, but not defeated. The men had worked and practiced for weeks, and they weren't going to let one false start ruin the whole opportunity. The next morning, April 28, the desert was quiet before dawn.

Along the line, five supply trains sat loaded and waiting.

Roughly 1200 Irish and Chinese workers, divided into specific crews, stood at their stations. Charles Crocker emerged from his rail car with a notebook in hand. After reading his notes, he turned to James Strobridge and nodded. Strobridge looked at the workers and waved his hand. Without fanfare or speech, 1200 men went to work in unison. Every team had one task, and every task was timed. At the center of the action were eight Irish rail handlers. They lifted the iron rails, which weighed 560 pounds each from the railcars and.

Dropped them into place on the railroad ties.

Two rails, side by side, four men per rail, two in the front, two in the back. Each man was responsible for handling an average weight of 140 pounds over and over and over again all day, as fast as they could, without breaking rhythm. When the rails were in place, other crewmen stepped in to spike, bolt and tamp the rails to secure them. And that was the routine. Lift, drop, spike, bolt, tamp.

One movement after the next without pause.

The Irish and Chinese laborers moved with mechanical precision. They moved like robots. Long before the word robot existed. During the preparations for the big push, Bush reporters had been kept away from the construction site. Now they were invited to watch. A correspondent from the San Francisco daily Alta California marveled at the spectacle. He wrote, I have become infected by the prevailing enthusiasm. I no longer look upon these gymnastic track layers with the cold eye of a mere outsider.

The music of the regulated blocks of.

The spike bike drivers falls deliciously on the ear. I have become a CP of the.

Most violent and uncompromising kind.

Charles Crocker and James Strowbridge wanted their rivals to witness their glory. So they invited Union Pacific executives to watch the show. Among those who attended was none other than Thomas Durant. Durant no longer ran Credit Mobilier, but he was still vice vice president of the Union Pacific. He scoffed at the idea that the Central Pacific could lay more track than the Union Pacific.

And he made a $10,000 bet with Charles Crocker.

As the Central Pacific pressed on, one Union Pacific engineer in attendance quietly admitted, the organization of the Central Pacific is far superior to ours.

By 1:30 in the afternoon, the Central.

Pacific crews had laid six miles of track. Strobridge offered to rotate in fresh hands, but the men refused. After lunch, they bent rails on site, 20 in total, to accommodate the tight curves ahead. Then they returned to their positions and.

Went back to laying track. For 12 hours that day, the men.

Worked like they had never worked before.

At 7pm when they finally called it quits, the men of the Central Pacific had laid 10 miles and 56ft of track. It was the most rail ever laid by hand. In a single day, 1200 workers laid 25,800 ties, placed 3520 rails, drove 55,000.

Spikes and fastened 14,080 bolts. And to prove that construction was solid, a locomotive ran the full distance at.

40 miles per hour.

Not a single rail shifted. Not a single joint failed. The Central Pacific made history again.

They had constructed the highest railroad tunnel in the world.

And now they hadn't just beaten the Union Pacific's single day track record, they.

Had shattered it in true Central Pacific fashion.

There was no wild celebration when the final spike dropped. There were no speeches or brass bands or bottles of champagne. Instead, 1200 men climbed onto flat cars and rode back to camp, now dubbed Camp Victory. Sure, they cheered and laughed and clapped each other on the back as they rode the rail home, but they knew that tomorrow they would be back at it. They might not be going for rain records, but they still had track to lay. April 28, 1869 was a day for the men to be proud of. But the work wasn't over.

The last few miles still lay ahead, and the Union Pacific was winding through the canyons of Utah toward Ogden before it headed north to Promontory Summit. Next time on Legends of the Old West.

As the Union Pacific pushes into Utah, the bloodshed and vice of hell on wheels camps continues to follow. The railroad brings in Mormon workers to help navigate tight and treacherous canyons. And despite the Central Pacific's new record, the Union Pacific still hopes to be the first to reach the junction. That's next week on Legends of the Old West. Members of our Black Barrel plus program.

Don'T have to wait week to week.

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Website black barrel media.com memberships are just $5 per month.

This series was researched and written by Matthew Kearns.

It was produced by Joe Garra.

Original music by Rob Valiere. I'm Chris Wimmer. Thanks for listening.

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