1769 |
Scottish mechanical engineer James Watt patents his design for the first practical steam engine, paving the way for the mechanized production of the Industrial Revolution. |
1825 |
In England, George Stephenson engineers the world's first railway locomotive. Based on Stephenson's years of experimentation with steam-driven vehicles (the first of which he built in 1814), the Locomotion pulls coal on a nine-mile track. |
1830 |
Peter Cooper finishes America's first steam locomotive. The Tom Thumb carries passengers and goods along 13 miles of track between Baltimore and Ellicott's Mills, Maryland. By year's end, similar locomotive routes exist in New York and South Carolina. |
1841 |
The first settlers move westward across the Northern Great Plains on what will come to be known as the Oregon Trail, soon a conduit for emigration. |
1845 |
Asa Whitney presents a resolution in Congress endorsing the funding of a railroad to the Pacific. Despite six years of campaigning, the issue dies as increased sectionalism and self-interest distract the legislature. The railroad remains a potent symbol in the public consciousness. |
1848 |
December: Outgoing president James K. Polk stirs a new fervor for westward expansion by announcing the discovery of gold in Oregon Territory.
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1850 |
September 9: Gold-rich California becomes the 30th state admitted into the Union. |
1859 |
June: Discovery of the massive Comstock Lode lures miners to Virginia City, Nevada, in search of gold and silver ore. The news revitalizes the California mining economy, and urges exploration of a road east across the Sierra Nevada. |
1860 |
July: Engineer and enthusiast Theodore Judah solves the great riddle of the Pacific Railroad when he reaches Donner Pass (named for the ill-fated emigrants of 1846). Judah immediately recognizes the location as ideal for constructing a line through the Sierra Nevada.
November: Judah meets Sacramento merchant Collis P. Huntington, who agrees to invest in his railroad project. Huntington brings in four other investors: Mark Hopkins, James Bailey, Charles Crocker, and Leland Stanford. The six men organize themselves as the first Board of Directors of the Central Pacific Railroad Company. |
1861 |
October: Having completed his survey of the Sierra Nevada, Judah returns to Washington armed with maps and profiles to lobby for appropriations for the Central Pacific Railroad Company. |
1862 |
July 1: Congress passes and Lincoln signs the Pacific Railroad Bill. The document endorses Central Pacific efforts to build the California line while simultaneously chartering a Union Pacific Railroad Company to build west from the Missouri River. The bill grants each enterprise 6,400 acres of land and $48,000 in government bonds per mile built. It does not designate a meeting point for the lines. |
1863 |
January 8: Newly-elected California governor Leland Stanford shovels the first load of dirt at the Central Pacific groundbreaking ceremony in Sacramento.
Summer: Tensions build among the Central Pacific board around financial and contractual issues. Judah sails East to look for new investors.
October 26: The Central Pacific spikes its first rails to ties.
October 30: Thomas C. Durant, who has illegally manipulated a controlling interest in the Union Pacific Railroad Company, gets himself appointed the railroad's vice president and general manager.
November 2: Taken ill on his journey, Theodore Judah dies in New York City.
December 2: In a gala ceremony, the Union Pacific breaks ground in Omaha, Nebraska, although it is some time before the railroad will go anywhere. |
1864 |
July 1: As lobbyists -- among them Durant, who hands out upwards of $400,000 -- distribute cash and bonds among legislators, Congress passes a revised Pacific Railroad Bill. It doubles the land grant, cedes all natural resources on the line to the railroads, and removes limitations on individual stock ownership.
October: Union Pacific crony Herbert M. Hoxie wins the Union Pacific construction bid, then signs the contract over to Durant's new company, Crédit Mobilier. The move allows Durant to pay himself for construction, generating giant profits without congressional oversight.
November 29: The Sand Creek Massacre. Cavalrymen led by Colonel John Chivington slaughter 150 unarmed Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians, most of whom are women and children. |
1865 |
January 7: Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Sioux raiders ravage the would-be railroad town of Julesburg, Colorado, in retaliation for Sand Creek. They destroy telegraph wire in Platte Valley, then return and raze Julesburg to the ground.
January 20: President Abraham Lincoln asks Massachusetts senator Oakes Ames to help manage the Union Pacific Railroad. Ames soon invests in Crédit Mobilier and promotes its interests in Washington, D.C.
Late January: Contractor Charles Crocker convinces Central Pacific foreman James Harvey Strobridge to try Chinese workers as a means of expanding their labor force, which at this time numbers just a few hundred Irishmen.
April 9: Robert E. Lee surrenders to Ulysses S. Grant. The Civil War ends. Masses of soldiers demobilize, many of whom will soon move west. The Union Pacific has yet to spike a rail.
April 14: President Lincoln is assassinated. His body will be carried back to Illinois by rail, on a special Pullman car.
July 10: With Durant's activities facing increased scrutiny in D.C., the first rails of the Union Pacific line are spiked in Omaha.
Late Summer: Central Pacific crews begin the slow job of hand-drilling 12 tunnels through the Sierra Nevada, averaging a few inches through the rock a day. By year's end approximately 6,000 Chinese men will work in and around the tunnels. They will constitute up to 80% of the workforce throughout the project. |
