Titled "John Chinaman on the Railroad," this photo features Chinese rail workers in 1875. Courtesy of the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library.

Immigrant labor was the backbone of nineteenth century American industry, and the railroad was no exception.  

When it came to building the Transcontinental Railroad, the most well-known of these immigrant laborers were the Chinese, who built the railroad from California to the East. It is estimated that upwards of 20,000 Chinese worked on the railroad at various points in time. However, at the time, their contributions were deliberately downplayed. Historians have shown how Chinese were hidden – though many photos exist of building the Transcontinental Railroad, few pictures show Chinese workers. Though railroad building was dangerous business no matter what location, conditions from the West Coast were especially hazardous with the mountains to contend with, and historians estimate that anywhere from fifty to 2,000 Chinese workers were killed on the job.  

After the Transcontinental Railroad was completed, thousands and thousands of miles of track still needed to be built. While Irish and Chinese labor may be the most recognizable of ethnic labor in building the railroads, they were not the only ones. In the 1870s, immigrant labor from Mexico became more popular, especially in the American South and Southwest. Mexican workers even made their way to Kansas, setting the foundations for some of our earliest Hispanic communities! The Mexican rail workers were known as “traqueros.”  

To learn more about different ethnic groups in Kansas, check out the Chapman Center’s exhibit: Multicultural Kansas.