Exhibit at California State Railroad Museum honors Chinese railroad workers
The California State Railroad Museum held a ceremony honoring Chinese immigrants who helped build the transcontinental railroad.
As the westernmost point of the original tracks, Sacramento was at the forefront of the cross-country engineering effort. Ten thousand Chinese men were hired to build the rail line, and more than 90% of the Central Pacific's workforce came from China.
"They toiled for years and years," said Ty Smith, the director of the museum.
The transcontinental railroad opened in 1869, helping connect the country and opening up new economic opportunities. The route carved out through the Sierra Nevada is still in use more than 150 years later.
"If you go on Amtrak today, you're going in and through places where Chinese railroad workers dug tunnels, places where they built huge trellises where there were gaps in the land," Smith said.
A museum exhibit is dedicated to showing just what these men faced. The labor was dangerous and tough, using rudimentary manual tools like "star drills."
"It's just a matter of holding up this big hunk of metal up to the side of a granite base and then having people hit it as hard as they can over and over again, and sometimes they were measuring progress within inches a day," Smith said.
The exhibit also highlights the low pay and discrimination that Chinese workers faced.
"We don't pull any punches," Smith said. "It's the tough stuff because if you don't tell it like it was, then it will never be as it ought to be."
The exhibit is tracking the tough tale of railroad history and highlights the hard-working hands who helped change the face of transportation.
The Chinese worker's exhibit was dedicated to the late civic leader Dr. Herbert Yee, who helped the railroad museum first open its doors in 1976.
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