on may 10, 1869, 100 50 years ago, railroadars 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 held on may 10, 1869. 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 -- were thel central pacific railroad company that started in sacramento, california and the union pacific railroad company that started in nebraska. there were already extensive rail systesm back east. 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. underneath the rails, 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, six 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 over 11,000 chinese were employed by the end by both companies. both companies as they procedure -- approached each 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 influenced the path 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. the work you are actually seeing, 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. [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. 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 every year on may 10 and that is 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. the dignitaries placed them in and then 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. >> sunday at 6:00 p.m. eastern on american artifacts, we are at the library of congress to learn about a muslim scholar from west africa, where he was captured, shipped to south carolina, and sold into slavery. he wrote the only known american slave narrative in arabic.

the curator shows us his autobiography and several documents in the library's collection. >> it went from hand to hand. people thought it was important enough to carry it on. there were probably others written by people who were enslaved. but this is the only known existing manuscript in arabic written by a slave. >> watch american artifacts, sunday at 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span3. >> the complete guide to congress is available. it has details about the house and senate for the current session of congress. our bio for information about every represented. plus information about congressional committees, state governors and the cabinet. yhe 2019 congressional director

is a handy spiral-bound guide. order your copy from the c-span store for $18.95. weekend, american history tv joins our spectral caper -- spectral cable partners. tour.c-span.org/cities we continue with our look at the history of milwaukee. taking a harley-davidson motorcycle tour of milwaukee to the walkers point neighborhood where a music earlywas popular with european immigrants. ♪ >> polka was never intended to safe. it was never intended to be so bland.