How many tunnels did the Chinese make while working on the transcontinental railroad?
How many tunnels did the Chinese make while working on the transcontinental railroad?
posted from CPRR Discussion Group at 5:09 PM
Monday, September 14, 2009
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2 Comments:
The Chinese constructed fifteen tunnels while building the Central Pacific Railroad (the western portion of the transcontinental railroad). The Irish built four more tunnels on the Union Pacific Railroad.
Here are few facts to add to your answers: J H Strobridge testified on Aug. 9, 1887: "....during the years 1866-67 we had about 11,000 Chinamen and 3,000 white men working..." and "In 1868-69 we had about 5,000 Chinamen working."
He goes on to testify that the work at Tunnel 6 had four headings; each heading was worked 8 hours a day by 20 Chinese workers, supervised by an Anglo. So at any one time, 80 Chinese and 4 Anglos were working in Tunnel 6. As each group was working an eight hour day, there were 4 crews of 84 men at work, with the balance of the workers resting between shifts. Muliply the number of workers on each shift (84) by the number of shifts (4)and you can see that 336 men completed the work at Tunnel 6.
Don't be confused by the number of workers dying on the job: If you seach each and every source of information available today, you will not find the names nor occupations of more than 40 Chinese that died in construction accidents. "Accident" is defined by this writer as an occurance that happened during a shift to an active worker; those instances of stabbings, shootings, avalanches taking out cabins with sleeping workers in them, etc. are NOT in that total. It is unknown how many fatalities occured from smallpox.
G J Chris Graves, NewCastle, AltaCal'a.
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