It was a race such as America had never previously seen.
From Sacramento, the newly formed Central Pacific Railroad faced the incredible task of crossing the bleak Sierras, driving tunnels through granite as hard as steel, sometimes at the rate of eight inches a day.
From Omaha, Nebraska, the Union Pacific—crossing the plains and then the Rockies—had to fight Indians almost all the way. Men marched to work carrying a rifle in one hand and working tools in the other.
Could mere human flesh endure the heat and dust of the alkali deserts, the sub-zero cold and forty-foot snowdrifts in the mountains, the blood-chilling cry of the Sioux, and the Cheyennes as they swept in to annihilate a surveying party or to wreck, loot and burn a train?
From the West came Charles Crocker with his swarm of patient Chinese laborers in their basket hats and blue denim garb. From the East came General Grenville M. Dodge with his Irish immigrants and Civil War veterans—both teams driving to capacity to be the first to reach the spot chosen by Congress for the meeting of the two lines.
How many miles could be laid in a day? One? Two? Five? or an unbelievable ten? Excitement was intense throughout the country as the daily mileage and boasts and bets climbed.
The last tie laid was of polished laurel wood, and the last spike was of pure gold. Two beautiful locomotives, one from the East and one from the West, edged forward to touch their pilots. The telegraph clicked and all over America bells rang and cannon boomed. Among the inscriptions on the golden spike was one we should memorize in these years of peril: "May God continue the unity of our country as this railroad unites the two great oceans of the world."
—from the dust jacket
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