What role did the Chinese play in building the railroad?
From 1863 and 1869, roughly 15,000 Chinese workers helped build the transcontinental railroad. They were paid less than American workers and lived in tents, while white workers were given accommodation in train cars. “On the west, there were Chinese workers, out east were Irish and Mormon workers were in the center.
What type of workers helped build the Central Pacific Railroad?
Less than two years later, almost 90 percent of the Central Pacific workforce was Chinese; the rest were of European-American descent, mostly Irish. At its highest point, between 10,000 and 15,000 Chinese were working on the Central Pacific, with perhaps as many as 20,000 in total over time.
What was the role of Chinese and Irish workers in the railroads construction?
Irish immigrants were the primary early builders of the Central Pacific Railroad. (More than 1,000 Chinese workers died in rail-related accidents.) By contrast, Irish workers were paid $35 a month, and were provided with housing.
What was the most significant obstacle in building the transcontinental railroad?
While a shopkeeper by trade, Strong was known around the area as an expert on the terrain of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Judah needed someone who could function on land like a harbor pilot might on the water because the Sierra Nevada loomed as the greatest obstacle to building the transcontinental railroad.
What are three ways that railroads affected the economy?
Railroad expansion affected the US economy by creating jobs, establishing a national market, establishing a cattle industry on the Plains, and allowing certain people to acquire great wealth through investing in the railroad.
What was a negative impact of building railroads?
As seen on the map, by 1890 there was 163,597 miles of railroads stretching across the entire United States, which in turn had its negatives such as destroying of land, habitat loss, species depletion, and more; but it also had it benefits as well.
How did the Irish impact America?
The Irish immigrants who entered the United States from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries were changed by America, and also changed this nation. They and their descendants made incalculable contributions in politics, industry, organized labor, religion, literature, music, and art.
What were the dangers of building the transcontinental railroad?
Both railroads had to cross rugged terrain, desert and mountains and both had to deal with harsh weather. At times the greatest danger came from the Indian raids as the railroads intersected the Native Americans’ land. The Indians attacked the crews in order to protect their homeland.
What problems did the Central Pacific Railroad face?
Another challenge they faced was the need to create tunnels through the mountains. Using nitroglycerin, they had to blast through the mountains in a very dangerous manner. On average, they were only able to get through 1 foot of mountain at a time. In the end, 11 tunnels were completed.
Where did Chinese workers build the transcontinental railroad?
Chinese workers were an essential part of building the Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR), the western section of the first transcontinental railroad across the United States.
Are there Chinese workers on the Central Pacific Railroad?
At the start of construction the Central Pacific Railroad had no plans to hire Chinese workers.
Who was the director of the Central Pacific Railroad?
Hilton Obenzinger, associate director of the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project at Stanford University, says that Central Pacific Railroad director Charles Crocker recommended hiring Chinese workers after a job ad resulted in only a few hundred responses from white laborers.
When was the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroad built?
But this exhibition takes a different tack, tracing the forgotten Chinese workers who built the western leg of the railroad across the Sierra Nevada mountains, connecting the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroad in 1869.