Nothing Like It in the World The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869 (28 page)

It was indeed. Dodge went to work, beginning by cleaning the stables. He put Jacob House in charge of the headquarters in Omaha. He moved the unhappy Hoxie off his job in Chicago to become the transfer agent, operating out of Omaha. “I would rather be at Omaha under you than to
be in the city with a much larger salary,” Hoxie told Dodge. He had been doing many tasks in the city, including freight, and added, “I am heartily sick of this living at hotels, without my wife, and both ends pushing me for freight. I can't make the river higher.”
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With these and many other changes, Dodge put the working end of the UP on a military basis. Nearly all his chief subordinates had been in the Union Army, and with but a few exceptions his graders and track layers had been participants in the war. There were thousands of them, with more coming. Military discipline came naturally to them, for they were accustomed to giving or receiving and carrying out orders. Without that military organization, it is doubtful that the UP could have been built at all. The UP had farther to go than the CP, and hostile Indians to contend with, plus shortages and the nonexistence of timber, water, and other necessities.

Dodge said later that the changes in the railroad world had been caused by what had been learned during the Civil War. “The great principles then evolved have taught the American people that there was no problem in finance or relating to the development of the country so great that its people did not feel able to grasp and master it.”
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Dodge and his subordinates had learned in the army how to deal with problems.

It wasn't easy, and it wasn't all done at once. Durant retained the title of “vice-president and general manager,” which meant that Reed, Hoxie, and others still reported to him. Meanwhile, Dodge had to deal with Silas Seymour, whose title was “consulting engineer.” Seymour had no authority, but he answered only to Durant and was able to—and did—create a great deal of mischief.

The Indians out on the Great Plains posed their own threat. With the Civil War over and the UP building, settlers were moving out into what they regarded as their land. The Homestead Act, giving a quarter-section of land to each settler, was a magnet. Nebraska gained population so fast that in 1867 it became a state, much earlier than expected.

The Pawnee, living in eastern Nebraska, were “Hang around the Forts,” as the hostile Indians called them. Surveyor Bissell wrote that “the Pawnees were normally friendly,” but also that they “were more degraded in their habits and ways of living than almost any tribe.”
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They had made their peace with the white men, and many of their warriors had become soldiers in the white man's army.

But west of Columbus, Nebraska, the Sioux and Cheyenne were predominant,
and decidedly hostile. They despised the iron rail, which along with providing great benefits to the whites had an additional disadvantage for the Indians in that it split the Great Plains buffalo herd into two parts, because buffalo would not cross the tracks. The Indians wanted the iron rail, and the men who surveyed for it and the men who were building it and the farmers who were following it and the travelers who were sure to come on it, out of their country. And they had plenty of men, young and even old, who were ready to follow a war chief on a raid, against either the settlements or the surveyors or the graders or the road builders. Thus the UP needed protection from the army, but the army had nowhere near enough men or posts beyond the frontier to provide it.

This meant the UP's workers would, in most cases, have to protect themselves. Dodge ordered it. He wanted every man armed. He wanted them all drilled too, if they needed it, but since they were veterans he decided they didn't. They had to keep their rifles always within easy reach, however—life on the frontier.

It meant doom for the Indians' way of life. No longer could they be free and independent, living off the buffalo herds. They could either follow the way of the Pawnee and live on reservations, cared for by the white man, or get killed. As General John Pope, who was replacing Dodge, observed, “The Indian, in truth, no longer has a country. He is reduced to starvation or to warring to the death. The Indian's first demand is that the white man shall not drive off his game and dispossess him of his lands. How can we promise this unless we prohibit emigration and settlement? … The end is sure and dreadful to contemplate.”
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Dodge, by contrast, was in agreement with General Phil Sheridan. He had no sympathy for the plight of the Indians, and believed, “There were really no friendly Indians.” That was wrong—the Pawnee surely were—but it set the tone for the UP and, in truth, could hardly have been helped, considering the scope and events of the Sioux and Cheyenne actions.

The Indians were one problem; the weather was another. The Missouri River could not be navigated until late March or early April. Jack Casement had his crews ready by the first day of spring, more than three thousand of them, and the boarding cars nearly ready for them, but the river was too low for the cars to be sent to Omaha, and besides, the rails could not be shipped until the spring rise deepened the water. By mid-April, the supplies began pouring into Omaha, and the Casement brothers
went to work, with Dodge's full backing. Dodge had long argued, correctly, that nothing would give the UP more credibility than the laying of track with trains running on it. The Casement brothers built it. By June 4, the track layers had reached the hundred-mile post (although the bridge over the Loup River was only a temporary pile trestle), and by late July, the gangs had passed Grand Island (153 miles from Omaha) and were headed for Fort Kearney, two hundred miles from Omaha. The graders, meanwhile, were beginning to grade the third hundred miles. So far the Indians had left both groups alone.

In May, to anticipate their depredations, Sherman formed a new department, designating it the Department of the Platte. He put General Philip St. George Cooke in command, with headquarters in Omaha, and expressed the hope to Grant that President Johnson and the secretary of war would “befriend this railroad as far as the law allows.”
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T
HERE
is nothing connected with the Union Pacific Railroad that is not wonderful,” wrote the correspondent of the
Cincinnati Gazette.
“In one sense the road is as great an achievement as the war, and as grand a triumph.” Continuing the image, the reporter went on, “Go back twenty miles on the road, and look at the immense construction trains, loaded with ties and rails, and all things needed for the work. It is like the grand reserve of an army. Six miles back are other trains of like character. These are the second line.”

Going forward to the end of track, he wrote, “are the boarding cars and a construction train, which answer to the actual battle line.” The boarding cars were each eight feet long, some fitted with berths, others with dining halls, one a kitchen. The construction train carried forward all supplies—ties, rails, fishplates, sledgehammers, shovels, rope of various sizes and length, more than a thousand rifles, and much more.
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It was indeed comparable, in many ways, to an army moving across the landscape.

Samuel Reed, in Omaha, was responsible for keeping the army supplied. Before Dodge signed on, and even after, he cleared his decisions with Doc Durant in New York. His telegrams to Durant, sent once a day or more, are today in the UP Archives in Omaha, and they constitute a remarkable collection that speak directly to the question, How did the UP do it?

Here are some examples, all from 1866. Reed to Durant, February 5:
“Can change line second Hundred miles will reduce bridges one half [in] timber…. Have ordered the change if you do not approve countermand.” February 15: “Shall I contract for one hundred thousand cottonwood thirty five dollars and plans for car shop.” February 19: “Shall we deliver ties on new line west of Loup fork sixty to eighty teams ready to commence hauling as soon as decided.” February 26: “Notified Harry Creighton to build telegraph line to end of road [but he] will not do it without order from New York.” March 1: “The new line will be better than the old one less bridging less grading and four to six miles nearer fuel and ties.” March 12: “Must have three spans Loup Fork Truss[.] Can make temporary bridges for balance[.] Single pile bents will not stand in channel[.] Piles drove east abutment & three east piers[.] West abutment & west pier half drove.” March 13: “McManus & Hornby propose to build engine house ten stall for twenty thousand [dollars] and car shop for thirty five thousand [dollars] shall I close. Can I contract Loup Fork masonry.” March 20: “Navigation open first boat just arrived.”
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The last telegram in the preceding sample marked a big moment for Reed and all who worked for the UP. Supplies could now get to Omaha by steamship. This allowed Durant to embark on a bold experiment. He had been told that barges were unsuitable in the shifting water of the river, but he nevertheless had two built and purchased a steamboat, the
Elk Horn,
to haul them. The boat and the barges made it to Omaha from St. Louis in less than ten days. Durant had opened a new era for shipping on the Missouri River.
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Reed to Durant, April 7: “I have contracted for 500 cubic yards of stone for foundations and small bridges at $4 per yard delivered on the line of the road. Also for 50,000 ties. Mr. Davis is sawing the timber for Loup Fork Truss bridge [the bridge was to be seventeen hundred feet long]. There is a little more than one third of the piles drove for the temporary bridge over Loup Fork. Grading contractors are commencing their work, [although] the frost is not out of the ground yet. We have just received two rafts of logs the first of the season. There is a good stage of water and I think we shall receive ties and timber rapidly via river from this time. Twelve hundred tons of iron rails have been received. We have more than one hundred thousand ties on the line of the road, inspected and paid for. I can contract for 50000 hard wood ties to be delivered twenty to twenty five miles west of the west end of the second hundred miles.” And so on.

Reed's telegrams to Durant are remarkable, partly because of the detail Durant insisted on holding in his own hands, even after Dodge signed on, also for all the details Reed had to handle, and most of all for the scope of the enterprise. And by mid-April, Reed was reporting on the speed of the construction. On April 17, he took government commissioners over the completed track: “We left Omaha at 9:20 am and arrived at the 40 miles post at 10:40 then run slow over the road to end of track, 63½ miles from initial point. The Commissioners appear to be well pleased with the work and expressed themselves accordingly. I intend to have the track laid to the 65 mile stake before six o'clock tonight. We are laying ¾ of a mile each day. The boarding cars will be completed Saturday and sent to end of the track after that we can lay one mile per day.”

May 28: “Track laid to west end of station at Columbus [across the Loup River, at 86.5 miles from Omaha]. No track laid Saturday on account of storm.” May 31: “Eight thousand feet track laid today. Ninety-seven and quarter miles laid [from Omaha, counting sidings]. Columbus hard place men had big drunk two days lost.” Despite Reed's disapproval, one should hope so for the sake of these young lions, Columbus being the first village they had come to since leaving Fremont, at the beginning of the season, that had beer or whiskey for sale.

I
N
August, a correspondent of the
New York Times
wrote that one of the new railroad towns, Kearney, was “small, but vigorous and promising.” He predicted that “she will be a rich and busy city someday” and commented on “these numerous towns which spring up so suddenly on the Plains. They remain in constant and fierce rivalry, each eagerly clutching at every straw of trade to keep itself afloat and to swim ahead of its neighbors.” He found that, with the track completed to Kearney less than a week ago, the first train came in from Omaha yesterday, “and tomorrow shall see the first eastward bound train! Yet already the road has been built two miles further on. This in one day!” He considered it “extraordinary” to see in how short a time “the smooth, grass-covered prairie, unworn by wagon-tracks and undented even by hoof-prints, has been converted into a grand iron highway.” Occasionally a dip in the surface had to be filled with a few shovels of dirt, “but beyond this, it needs only that the ties be laid, the rails spiked on them and the spaces filled in with earth.”

Summing up, the reporter said that what he was witnessing “is the genuine American genius—the genius of the West especially, which welcomes obstacles and looks on impossibilities as incentives to greater exertion.”
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There were thousands of the young lions, five hundred or more working on the grades, then a thousand, then three thousand by 1868, in order to keep well ahead of the track layers, who eventually numbered more than seven thousand. The men came to Omaha on their own, or in response to a UP advertisement that promised good pay, good food, lots of work, and a free ride. Many were Irish and so the whole gang was labeled, but in fact they came from all over Europe and the United States, including a few newly freed African Americans. Jack Casement had a former slave with him as a servant. His name was Jack Ellis and he had been with Casement during the last year of the Civil War. Some three hundred freed slaves worked on the UP all together.

What the workingmen had most in common was their age, most of them teenagers or just into their twenties, and their status as veterans. One diarist noted, “Nearly everybody wearing a long blue overcoat with brass buttons, the regular U.S. soldier uniform left over from the Civil War, with one or two revolvers strapped to their sides.”
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Others wore gray coats. This is perfectly clear in group photographs taken in 1867-69. “It was the best organized, best equipped, and best disciplined work force I have ever seen,” Dodge wrote of these men. “I used it several times as a fighting force and it took no longer to put it into fighting line than it did to form it for daily work.”
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