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Helping build the railroad in no way seemed to help the chinese gain respect or equality
Some workers went back to China (Eng Mun Dom - went back rich 10,000)
Others went to work in agriculture, mining, went to Chinatowns in Sacramento San Francisco, and "the small towns in the Sierras to enter domestic service or work in manufacturing to produce cigars and other items."
Some continued to work for the Central Pacific Railroad company
"The Daily Alta California writes multiple articles on plans to import Chinese workers to the South in an attempt to fill the labor gap left by freed African-Americans, a plan that apparently brings much excitement."
A Chinese miner in Idaho challenges state legislation requiring a head tax of $4 on all Chinese living in mining areas in the case Ah Bow v. Britten Many Chinese refused to pay the head tax, as the Chinese, in the words of the Idaho Statesman, had been “a rich and defenceless bird to pluck at our convenience.”
1869 "In response to a speech given by Senator Hendricks, the Daily Alta chimes into the debate over Chinese immigration in California and denounces fears of a so-called invasion"
1870 The Houston and Texas Central Railroad fired most Chinese workers due to hostility from fellow Irish workers and financial constraints
1870's Many chinese are beinghiredfor railroad work
Journalist Nordhoff describes Chinese “have a greater variety … than their white neighbors” and “live … far better.” This means they still aren't too worried about assimilating their food and want to remember their culture
1879 A bill restricting Chinese immigration is passed by the senate
1882 The chinese exclusion act is passed
1884 "The El Paso Daily Times reports that an Irish railroad worker, Paddy O’Rourke, killed a Chinese man. Judge Roy Bean ruled that “he’d be d—d if he could find any law against killing a Chinaman” (because the law in Texas came down on killing human beings, which according to Bean included whites, African-Americans, and Mexicans only) and dismissed the case"

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Within a 31 mile stretch on the Union Pacific track "no less than nintey-three graves; ternty-seven of which contained the bodies of settlers killed within the last six weeks. Dead bodies have been seen floating down the Platte [River]." -Jounalist Henry Morton Stanly

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Of the five million immigrants that came to the United States from 1815 to 1860, about 40 percent were Irish

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"Tul-lux Hol-li-quill...says that he is a full blood Wasco Indian..on Warm Springs Indian Reservation, in Oregon. ...Huntington...had a paper which he wanted me to sign...He stated that the said paper would protect us when leaving the agency, when fishing, hunting, or gathering berries...A year later when we learned, through newspapers published in Portland, Oregon, that Huntington had deceived us and induced us to sign away our fishing rights."

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" [The] crews worked round the clock ... Then, at one in the morning on May 3, 1867...The Sierras [were] bested...the longest tunnel anyone had cut through natural granite...had been bored by a small army of Chinese thousands of miles from their ancestral home... the great race across the continent was on. ... " -Lewis Metzler Clement one of the head engineer

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"When the connection was finally made the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific engineers ran their engines up until their pilots touched. Then the engineers shook hands and had their pictures taken and each broke a bottle of champagne on the pilot of the other's engine and had their picture taken again."
- Alexander Topence on the scene in Promontory, Utah in 1869 after Western governors drove the "last spike" of the Transcontinental Railroad.

These are good times for clean energy in California. A decade of visionary policymaking, a motivated private sector, and copious sunshine have joined together to reduce the cost of solar in the Golden State by 90 percent.

We already produce more solar energy than any other state. And thanks to a new law Governor Jerry Brown signed last month, SB 350 (De León), California has committed itself to yet another ambitious clean energy goal: 50 percent of electricity in the nation's most populous state will come from renewables by 2030. Solar is a central part, among others, of California's strategy to meet this new target.

Amid all this optimism, fast solar growth poses challenges as well. A lot of it has to do with timing.
Timing is not always on solar's side
The California Independent System Operator (ISO), the agency in charge of operating the state's electric grid, keeps track of electricity production and demand.

This is what the renewable energy supply picture looked like on a recent October day. The golden bell curve represents solar generation. On that day, solar energy production peaked at 12:46 PM.

But energy demand didn't peak until four hours later, at 6:46 PM, when people started coming home from work and school, and turning on their devices as the sun was beginning to set. The solar supply curve is out of synch with the way Californians use energy.

Increasingly, the ISO is finding that solar generation in California is so high during the daytime hours that we are unable to use all of it. The agency calls this excess, unused renewable energy supply "curtailment." Its analysis suggests that if the state had adopted a target of 40 percent renewables by 2030 then some 15 percent of the incremental increased capacity would be curtailed, or essentially wasted.

So, we're facing a situation of potentially losing a substantial amount of our clean energy. What's the solution?
How California can avoid wasting its clean energy
Well, Californians could change the way we consume energy. In fact, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) helped utilities and the California Public Utilities Commission develop time-of-use pricing. This innovative pricing mechanism rewards people who shift some of their electricity use to times of day when clean resources are available and electricity is cheaper, bringing supply and demand into closer alignment. Better energy storage options coming to market soon will help too.

But there's another step we should take that will help on a massive scale and speed the transition to clean energy in other states. It's time to link the ISO with other grid systems in the West, like PacifiCorp, which delivers 70 million megawatt-hours of power per year to 1.8 million customers in six states (California, Idaho, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming).

Linking the ISO with PacifiCorp is a win-win for customers in both networks. For California, it provides a market for millions of megawatts of excess solar generation (in red), which would otherwise be wasted.

For PacifiCorp, where states are grappling with how to reduce carbon emissions under the federal Clean Power Plan, imports of low-cost, California solar could allow them to replace dirty energy supplies while still meeting customer demand.

What's more, there are financial benefits for customers in both networks. Over 20 years, Energy and Environmental Economics estimated that ISO and PacifiCorp customers would see savings of $3.4 to $9.1 billion. Meanwhile, workers will benefit from new jobs and opportunity in a solar industry that can continue to grow.
Avoiding concerns
So what are the concerns? There are a few, but we can take reasonable steps to avoid them. Let's look at some of the biggest ones:

Electric grid stability. Californians remember the Enron collapse and rolling blackouts of 2000-2001. We learned a lot from those times about the risks of unfettered deregulation. Our stable and reliable electric grid today is a product of our recovery from those dark days. While grids in other regions have joined together, Californians have, understandably, wanted to go slowly and get it right. As we link up with other states we need to make sure we follow the lessons learned from other regional balancing areas and don't replicate the mistakes of the past. Furthermore, joining markets with other states will actually enhance stability in California, ensuring we have access to resources we need for the times when heat waves, disasters, or other forces cause our demand to exceed supply.

Keep dirty coal out. Californians have made it abundantly clear: we want clean energy. Some other western states have more dirty energy in their mix. Our goal in uniting grids is to expand access to clean energy in those places. The expectation is that more clean energy will lower its cost and reduce demand for dirty energy everywhere. The evidence to date from eight months of operating an energy imbalance market with PacifiCorp shows coal sales represent less than 0.05 percent of dispatch. This data suggests coal imports would be minimal in this newly constructed market. But just in case, we need to structure the linked market to make sure no significant amounts of dirty energy inadvertently enter California.

We think these hurdles are surmountable. Done right, the customer, business, and environmental opportunities of joining forces are too good to pass up.
Photo source: Wiki Commons
Just like the engineers and politicians who met in Promontory 146 years ago, it's time for us to drive the "last spike" for energy security, and recognize again that when states and people work together, everyone benefits. All aboard!

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Driving the Last Spike: Linking California's Electric Grid to Extend Clean Energy's Reach

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"When the connection was finally made the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific engineers ran their engines up until their pilots touched.

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“As Asians come to the U.S., it does seem as though white capitalists are taking advantage of Chinese labor, exploiting the Chinese in ways that they would not exploit white people.”
During this time, it’s not uncommon for white mobs to attack and kill Chinese people on the street..." - Park, professor of Asian American Studies at University of California-Santa Barbara

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"Italians, Irish, other Central Europeans who were not considered “white” on the East Coast. In order to assert their own whiteness in this new land, they defined themselves in opposition to the Chinese, who had also come to mine for gold."

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pag-asaharibon: Stanford scholars search for documents from the Chinese workers who built the U.S. Transcontinental Railroad Between 1865 and 1869, thousands of Chinese migrants toiled at a grueling pace and in perilous working conditions to help construct America's First Transcontinental Railroad. At any given moment during construction, 10,000 to 15,000 Chinese workers were on the job.

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The Native Americans had already signed away most of their lands to the federal government through treaties

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Many african americans ended up along the ends of the transcontinental railroad to get out of the slave holding south

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Slavery ended 1865
Newly freed slaves looking for paying jobs in the more progressive West joined the central pacific workforce

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This labor was "fit to break a man's back...Many of the men were Irish immigrants who had just arrived in America -Stephen E. Ambrose
Most Irish Civil War veterans worked for the Union Pacific railroad
Irish workers would quit after building up savings to attempt to find fortunes in the gold fields
The Chinese were brought in to work for railroad companies to show the Irish was expendible
The Chinese got payed $27 while the Irish got $35 a month (socially higher)
They were attacked by Native Americans

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1867 "I inquired from one to another and some said they were going to clean out the chinese laborers, and some said they did not know: twenty minutes after I went along and saw two Chinamen running from two small boys who had each of then a big club..."

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Many ended up dead or in reservations, away from their homeland
The lowest recorded value of 228,000 was in 1890
The assimilation of Indians led to a "decline of self-identifying Natives, who feared persecution if they identified as anything other than white."

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Forced relocation of Native Americans from their lands - widespread destruction of Native American cultures
Military was brought in to fight Native American tribes
The railroad went through natives hunting land, causing a huge disappearance of the American Bison, one of the things the natives counted on the most for food and clothing
Native Americans found their lands invaded by whites (homestead act) who settled in the now safe bison free lands
Native Americans fought against the people invading their homeland by both destroying the tracks and attacking workers
The tribes failed to protect their land, were forced onto reservations, and the transcontinental railroad, along with houses were build
November 1864 Sand Creek Massacre-Colorado in which U.S. Army forces raided and killed 150 Cheyenne Indian villagers
The U.S. gov. actually got help from a tribe named the Pawnees who protected workers against other tribes in exchange they got free travel on the train

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Helped in making up the sacramento to Utah (western) portion
Railroad company found reliable work from the Chinese after the Irish left for gold because the Chinese had already tried to find fortune in the goldrush and weren't socially accepted, whereas the Irish were more
There were already a high population of chinese in California before
Chinese workers got paid less than european workers
An estimated 15,000 chinese workers were hired over the years
Over 100 chinese died because of the dangerous
There weren't any documents until later railroads because most workers were illiterate
Chinese workers didn't eat american food and insisted on eating chinese food - They were not as worried about assimilating
About 1/5 of the Chinese population in CA was employed at one point by Central Pacific Union

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A lot of the immigrants came from counties impoverished and full of civil unrest
Hong Kong was a point of departure to California
A lot of the workers were desperate for work to support their families
All took boat that took around 6 months
The Chinese weren't really accepted into society

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- Best way to exploit the natural resources of the West and bring them back to the East sand protect the new settlements of the frontier

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The idea of manifest destiny prompted many to move west (Homestead act 1862) although the US had had the land for 2 years before the "rush" of people

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- A lot of easterners went west for the California gold rush
- A lot of slaves went north to escape slavery in the south
- The middle of the country was kindof a dead zone - people went from one side to the other, skipping over the middle

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- How was the middle of the country affected? Did many leave for the east or west?
- Did the Chinese and Irish who worked on the railroad settle along its trail?
- Who went west and why?
- Who went east and why?

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Manifest Destiny and hopes of economic prosperity from the gold and silver rush brought many to the west.

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California gold rush 1848 - by 1860 more than 300,000 men came (before the railrode

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Railroad building January 8, 1863 - May 10, 1869

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Railroad building January 8, 1863 - May 10, 1869

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"The story of the transcontinental railroad is a tale of pride, greed, discrimination, and violence. The surveyors, engineers, and businessmen who led the railroad took advantage of immigrant laborers...They nearly destroyed the Sioux and Cheyenne Indian tribes..."

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- Cost to cost transportation - used to take 6 months not 2 weeks
- Easy way to disperse ideas, magazines, cultural events, etc.
- The fastest way to share telegraph wires (made by the track as the rails were laid down)

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I REALLY need primary sources

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Sources used thus far: The Transcontinental Railroad by Gillian Houghton

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Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroad companies were in charge of building the railroad funded by congress

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How did the transcontinental railroad affect the ethnogeography of the U.S. and people's lives?

The Central and Pacific Railroad companies exploited minorities such as the Chinese, Irish, and Native Americans to do all their work, and in doing so pitted them against each other.

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Union Pacific vs. Central Pacific Workforce

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Union Pacific vs. Central Pacific Workforce

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Union Pacific was more diverse comprised of Irish Civil War veterans, newly freed slaves looking for paying jobs in the more progressive, West Mormons were a big portion because of a collective desire to see the railroad incorporate Utah into the rest of the nation
The Central Pacific workforce was 80% chinese, with some other workers including Irish