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(Manhattan, view from Mount Prospect in 1900. Photo Courtesy of the Riley County Historical Society & Museum)
The Pacific Railway Act, or Pacific Railroad Act, of 1862 was a landmark piece of legislation for railroads. According to the law, its purpose was “[t]o aid in the construction of a railroad and telegraph line from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean, and to secure to the Government the use of the same for postal, military, and other purposes.” In passing this act, federal support was provided for building a much-needed transcontinental Railroad.
The Railroad Act authorized two railroad companies to construct the lines: the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific. The plan was for them to begin on each coast, meeting in the middle. Construction began on the Transcontinental Railroad in 1863. Laborers worked for 6 long years to complete the railroad, laying over 1,700 miles of track, meeting at Promontory Point, Utah on May 10, 1869.
The railroad was instrumental in the growth of America. By connecting the coasts, it made travel and commerce much easier. Kansas, in the middle of the country, was especially dependent on the railroads and became famous for agricultural trade. Between 1867 and 1872, over three million Texas Longhorns were driven to Abilene, Kansas and shipped by rail to the slaughterhouses in Chicago. Furthermore, in 1931, a record wheat crop in Kansas of 240 million bushels was mainly shipped out by rail.
To see more about how Kansas specifically was affected by the railroads, check out the Chapman Center’s exhibit: “Exploring Kansas by Rail.”
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.
(Theodore Roosevelt at the Union Pacific Railroad Depot on May 2, 1903. Courtesy of Morse Department of Archives and Special Collections, Kansas State University)
In April 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt embarked on a 14,000-mile rail journey from Washington D.C. to the West Coast. The trip dubbed the whistle-stop tour, lasted from April to June 1903, a total of 9 weeks. During the tour, Roosevelt visited over 25 different states. On May 2, 1903, the train rolled into Manhattan, Kansas at the Union Pacific Railroad Depot. Roosevelt was greeted by a boisterous crowd of spectators including students and faculty from the Kansas State Agricultural College; along with residents. Roosevelt spoke for fifteen minutes to the crowd, about various topics including his appreciation for Kansas's rich agricultural history, his visit to Haskell Indian Nations University, and his appreciation for Kansas's military prowess.
Roosevelt's closing remarks addressed the student body:
"I want to say a word especially to the students. It is always a pleasure to be greeted by the student body. You go out into the great world with a peculiar weight of responsibility upon you, because it largely depends upon how you handle yourselves as to the esteem in which education will be held by the community at large. If you make the privilegs you have serve as an excuse for not working hard, not doing as good work, not getting down to the ground and working up, you will not merely discredit yourselves, but you will discredit those who have not had your advantages. If, however, instead you feel that they make it more incumbent upon you to show that you profit from the advantages you have had, then you will reflect credit not merely upon yourself, but upon those who founded and keep up institutions of learning, such as this."
Sources Cited:
PRIMARY SOURCES
SECONDARY SOURCES
Collins, Robert L., Ghost Railroads of Kansas, South Platte Press, David City, Nebraska, 1987
Crawford, Anthony R. "The Manhattan Train Depot, Teddy Roosevelt, and K-State," in K-State Keepsakes (New Prairie Press, 2015). https://newprairiepress.org/ebooks/3/
Holbrook, Stewart H., The Story of American Railroads: From the Iron Horse to the Diesel Locomotive, Dover Publications, 2016.
Sedgwick, John, From the River to the Sea: The Untold Story of the Railroad War that Made the West, Avid Reader Press, New York, 2021..
Sherow, James Earl, Railroad Empire Across the Heartland: Rephotographing Alexander Gardner’s Westward Journey, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 2014.
Wolmar, Christian, The Great Railroad Revolution, 2013.
"A History of Manhattan's Union Pacific Railroad." Manhattan / Riley Preservation Community. https://www.preservemanhattan.org/projects.html
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