Pictures!

Quotes!

"Straighteners led the Chinese gangs shoving the rails in place and keeping them to gauge while spikers walked down the ties, each man driving one particular spike and not stopping for another, moving on to the next rail; levelers and fillers followed, raising ties where needed, shoveling dirt beneath, tamping and moving on...."

"One by one, platform cars dumped their iron, two miles of material in each trainload, and teams of Irishmen fairly ran the five-hundred-pound rails and hardware forward,"

"Mr. Crocker, I never saw such organization as that; it was like an army marching over the ground and leaving a track built behind them."

The End, and the Importance to the West

With the connection of the railroads, the now-enfranchised Irish either stayed in the West or returned home. For all of the work that they did, including setting down a 10-mile stretch of railroad with the Chinese workers, they were actually paid fairly well, returning home to a less slummy future for the Irish population.

Without the Irish Railroad Workers, the Transcontinental Railroad would have been much harder to construct. The Transcontinental Railroad connected the West and the East, partially ending the Western Era that we know today. In that way the Irish made the West a respectable place to live.

The Irish Begin Work

As the construction of the railroad began, the foreman noticed that the Irish were performing especially well. As the call went out for more workers, the Irish were hired en masse to do work on the roads. Despite being dirty, unhealthy, and being fed on a diet of boiled potatoes and meats, they did much of the heavy lifting (sometimes literally) on the UP section of the rails.

In the Beginning...

The Irish in Ireland during the 1850's experienced a potato famine, due to their total reliance on the white potato. A fungus infiltrated the crops of the isle, killing many potatoes, and hence, Irishmen. The Irish immigrated to America in droves, inhabiting so-called "Irish Towns" in the slums of the Eastern cities, New York and Boston, especially. In '62, the plans for the Transcontinental Railroad finally were accepted by Congress, and the money and land was granted.