-- criminality. it is just not there. >> on may 10, 18 69, 150 years -- on may 10,t 1869, railroad tycoon leland stanford hammered in a gold spike to link the central pacific railroad from the west and the union pacific railroad from the east. the transcontinental railroad was complete. we go to utah to learn more. david: so we are walking you over to where the transcontinental railroad was completed. this spot right here, marked by the tie, is within inches of where the original ceremony was 1869.on may 10, h

included on this tie is a plaque that lists many of the dignitaries from that company, including leland stanford's name. and the big four are all marked there. another thing you can see here at the site is connection to the resources that would have been available to the two companies building the railroad. we have mocked up everything to try to make it as authentic as possible. if you look on the west side, you are going to see precut ties. the central pacific had plenty of wood in the sierra nevadas, they had sawmills and they cut all of their ties and brought them down from the mountains. whereas the union pacific coming from the east had to hand cut their ties where they could find wood. not a lot available in many of the areas so they would split them and you can see mocked up right here how they would just cut them and bring them out when they could. the transcontinental railroad was happening at the end of the

victorian age as you were going into the industrial age. it was a perfect time for the united states, because when the transcontinental railroad was completed, it made a major impact in the industrial development of the nation. the complete construction took just over -- about six and a half years, so from 1862-1869. the time period just before they started building the transcontinental railroad would have been when a lot of people were coming out after the gold rush. the silver rush was taking off. we were also in the middle of the civil war when the act was signed to start this project. abraham lincoln wanted to have access to all of the materials that were available in the sierra nevadas, including the gold and the silver. and connect the new states to the united states, so he chose that time to complete the act and finish -- start building the transcontinental railroad.

obviously, in the middle of the war, the defense of the country was a big, kind of major factor making the decision. they wanted to be able to get troops across the country in a quicker period of time. they wanted to cut the time of shipping goods, the raw goods goods that would be made back east and the finished goods that would go to the new states out in the west. four to six months around the horn flipping around south america was hopefully going to be cut to two weeks and that was abraham lincoln's goal, to get troops across the country in two weeks. it ended up that it was seven to 10 days they could get things across the country once it was completed. the two companies that were building the transcontinental railroad were the pacific railroad company that started in sacramento, california and the union pacific railroad company that started in nebraska. one of the problems was the companies were building before they got paid.

they were almost always in debt. they were worrying about money. the other problem was resources. a huge problem with resources. if you ever travel across wyoming and nebraska, there was not a lot of wood. wooden ties had to be placed just for the railroad. you also have to build buildings for water towers or just for the infrastructure of operating the railroad across the country. another huge problem -- because they were in the civil war, it was finding manpower to build the railroad. and the end of the civil war, it was actually a huge help for the railroad companies because you had all these veterans from the war looking for a way to provide for their lives and their livelihood and there was a ready employer in the railroad companies. now, for the central pacific, this was even a bigger concern because it a lot of times, especially early on in building the railroad, a lot of their

workers would come on long enough to obtain money to go and mine in the gold or the silver fields or mines. so that is actually why the chinese were eventually brought on as an experiment. they brought on about 50 chinese workers initially to test them out. there was a lot of doubt because of the stature. they did not think they would be able to withstand the 10-12-hour days seven days a week. there was a lot of criticism, i guess you could say racism against the chinese, but eventually they overcame those doubts and they did a fantastic job. so well in fact that they -- that over 11,000 chinese were employed by the end by both companies. both companies as they procedure other were being paid land grants and government bonds to build and they did not want to give up ground to each other. so instead of coming together and giving up where they would meet, they continued to build past one another until the

federal government stepped in and said we're not going pay you anymore until you find out where you're going to meet. so that is when they collected the spot where we are standing, and it gave both the companies 30-miles of track they had to finish in the last month. so you are looking down over some of the wetlands of the great salt lake. two major factors across the route -- one was finding fresh water every 30-miles to refill the tank that would supply the water for the boilers on the steam locomotives. another thing, they needed to stay under the 2% grade, which is only 100 feet elevation change every mile. as they were trying to find their way through utah, there was the large salt water lake. wouldn't allow freshwater, but they had to find a path around it. they were thinking about going

through the wetland area, but one of the engineers brought up, what if the lake level rises? so they decided to come up on the foothills north of the lake. even though that presented more challenges with the grading but to stay away from the lake and prevent flooding and damaging of the actual railroad. another thing you can see from this site, if you look down just below us, you can see the other grade. so i mentioned earlier that the two companies building across the country passed each other through utah with grade work, because they do not want to give up the money the federal government was providing. down below us is the old union pacific grade, which would have been abandoned less than a year after the completion of the transcontinental railroad when they sold the rights to the central pacific railroad company. because the central pacific had worked through utah longer, they had a higher quality grade, so when they bought the rights they switched to their grade and that

is where we are standing, we are standing on the original central pacific grade. we're coming up to the last cut made by the union pacific in their approach to promontory, the summit valley that is right here. in just a minute we will be able to look down and you can actually see, in order to get through the different elevation changes, they would cut through the rock and blast with black powder, making the channels they could actually build the railroad through. seeingk you are actually , these burns or hills up on the far set this cut, is from the 1860's. this is actually rock that was stacked up and you can see they even kind of put some bigger rocks to act as a wall, retaining wall, to keep that from collapsing down into the cut. it is pretty neat, you can see work that has lasted 150 years now. [dinging bell]

[sound of train] david: as they approached the actual ceremony and they figured out the spot here at promontory summit, a lot of people were interested in knowing when they would complete it, and they had a lot of reporters from all over the country that came out with the dignitaries from the two companies. and individuals came out from other companies that would connect to the main line and benefit with their businesses from that. the day that was set for the completion when the federal government made these companies set when they would finish and where was may 8. and we hold our anniversary and that isn may 10

because there was a delay in the union pacific getting out here. they were not able to hold the ceremony until that day. when they actually held the ceremony, one of the neat parts of the story, they did have the ceremonial spikes, which gives us our name golden spike. but they actually had four ceremonial spikes, including two solid gold, a solid silver, and then the arizona spike, which was iron, silver and gold. because they were precious metal, they could not drive the spikes. they had to predrill the holes and place those metals in. we often get asked where the golden spike was. we do not know which position the gold spike would have held. they placed them in and tapped them in as part of the ceremony. they tapped them as part of the ceremony, but then removed all of that and there was a last spike that was driven. so when you hear the driving of the last spike, it wasn't the gold spike, it was a regular

iron spike that was tied to the telegraph. they tied at the telegraph wires around the spike, so when they drove it in it sent a broadcast with live coverage around the country and that started the celebrations all throughout the nation. during the ceremony, one of the famous pictures you see is the champagne photo. for that photo, there were two locomotives here on the site and we actually have replicas of those that operate during the summer season. they are known as the central pacific jupiter and the union pacific number 119. those locomotives have become two of the most famous in american railroading. so being able to run those and let people see 1860's replica steam locomotives on a daily basis is a cool way to commemorate that. after the ceremony, a lot of pictures were taken, then operation of the railroad became huge throughout the country. because they were trying to increase time and efficiency within these companies themselves, eventually the line

passing through this area was bypassed and they built a trestle bridge and causeway straight across the great salt lake from the nevada/utah border straight across the point of the promontory mountains that are behind us straight into ogden. that cut about 80 miles extra travel time, money, all of that off of the operation of the transcontinental line. ogden became a huge hub for transporting troops and materials and supplies all across the country. and they would have trains every hour coming and unloading huge amounts of supplies or people and it became a major city for moving across the country. >> on american history tv, today at 6:00 p.m., on american artifacts, tour the rise of exhibit on the lgbtq rights

movement at the newseum at the 50th anniversary of new york's stonewall riots. on gay wall preyed street workers. there was a blackmailing ring going on. not the nicest place, but a place gay people could call their own. tapear about the water tapes. >> if you listen to all these tapes, the president said this, this, declared that, told pat gray to do this. find anything that says the president gave an order or acknowledged criminality. it is just not there. americaneekend on history tv on c-span3. 's night at 8:00 eastern, in his

first television interview about his new book, journalist and best-selling author david meredith explored his family because involvement in communism. >> that would've been the -- what would've been the years they were communists? my mother was a member of the young communist league as a young student. my father was not but he was a leftist. after he came back from the say from 1946 to 1952. >> did they like the idea of the soviet union? >> my father said he was stubborn in his ignorance. i think they liked the idea. i think my father particular and my mother to some extent was shaped by what he saw as the

weremic any qualities that more obvious during the great depression, when the whole notion of capitalism was being questioned more strongly because what had happened with the collapse of that system. stubbornness in was ignoring the paranoia and murderous history of the soviet union. niss tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span's q&a. announcer: c-span cities tour visited palo alto, california. we continue our look with the hoover institution to tour the hoover tower. linda: we are in the hoover tower on stanford's campus, which was dedicated by herbert hoover himself in 1941. hoover himself was in front of the tower there, giving his