The Central Pacific Got TRIPLE Pay in the Mountains. Where It Said They Began Is Hard to Believe

The money story of the Central Pacific and the Big Four: who paid to cross the Sierra Nevada, who died doing it, and who collected the fortune. In 1862 the government agreed to pay the Central Pacific 3 times as much for a mile of railroad in the mountains as for a mile on the flat. So the most valuable question in the whole enterprise became where, on a map, the Sierra Nevada was allowed to begin. The answer got the base of the mountains pushed out onto level ground about 7 miles from Sacramento, and billed the valley at the mountain rate. This is the ledger on that answer. The 12,000 Chinese workers who drilled the Summit Tunnel by hand for roughly $20 a month after board, and were charged for their own food and tools. The 1867 strike that was starved back to work in 8 days. And the 4 Sacramento shopkeepers who risked almost none of their own money, paid themselves through a construction company they owned, could not produce its books when a federal commission asked in 1887, and walked away with the Southern Pacific monopoly. Who paid, who died, and who collected. Chapters: 0:00 7,000 Feet of Granite 1:22 Crazy Judah's Route 3:24 The Big Four and the Race 5:00 The Engineer Dies in Panama 5:58 The Summit Tunnel 6:45 The Winter of 1866 7:42 The Men Who Swung the Hammers 9:38 Nitroglycerin and the Shaft 10:41 Living Under the Snow 11:40 The Strike That Was Starved Out 12:41 The Golden Spike 13:33 Who the Mountain Killed 14:07 Where a Mountain Begins 15:43 The Books That Vanished 17:38 The Octopus 18:30 What the Granite Keeps Sources / further reading: The Pacific Railroad Act of 1862, U.S. Government Publishing Office Report of the United States Pacific Railway Commission, 1887, on the Contract and Finance Company Historic American Engineering Record, the Central Pacific and the Summit Tunnel Contemporary coverage of the 1867 Chinese railroad workers strike, Chronicling America, Library of Congress The golden spike photograph by Andrew J. Russell, 1869, Library of Congress Historical wage and board-cost tables, Bureau of Labor Statistics and U.S. Census This video is a work of history for general interest and is not financial or investment advice. #history #railroads #centralpacific #sierranevada #goldenspike