'Golden Spike' event marks the 150th anniversary
of Transcontinental Railroad

PROMONTORY, Utah, May 10, 2014 (Reuters) - Thousands of visitors, many of them train enthusiasts, arrived to crowd onto a remote bluff in northern Utah for a day of speeches, music, and a historical re-enactment marking the 150th anniversary of the first U.S. Transcontinental Railroad.

 

The great rail project stands as a historic cornerstone for many Chinese Americans, whose ancestors accounted for the bulk of the Central Pacific labor force that carved railbeds over the rugged Sierra Nevada mountains.

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The Chinese worked for less pay for longer hours than their white counterparts and performed the bulk of the most dangerous tasks. Untold numbers - as many as 1,200 by some estimates - perished in blasting accidents, snowslides, falls, and other mishaps.

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“I grew up feeling like we did not belong in this country,” Andrea Yee, 80, a resident of Berkeley, California, whose great-grandfather, Lim Lip Hong, was a foreman on the railroad crews for four years.

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“This has really made me understand the whole picture of the building of America.”