- [Narrator] In the 1860s,
America is divided by civil war.
And 2000 miles of untamed land west of the Mississippi.
(dramatic music)
- At this time,
it was way easier to travel to Europe
from the east coast of the U.S. than to get to California.
- [Narrator] But one man has an audacious dream
to connect the country.
- America needs a transcontinental railroad.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] Building it becomes a high-stakes race
between rival companies.
- Competition was very bitter.
- Both are trying to seize as much land
as they possibly can.
- More miles of track we lay, the richer we get.
- [Narrator] They'll stop at nothing
to claim their fortunes.
- He is one of the most dishonest people
to ever grace this planet.
- [Narrator] It's a daunting engineering challenge.
- This was one of the biggest accomplishments
in world history.
- [Narrator] Literally moving mountains
to finally connect the coasts. (train toots)
This is the race to build the transcontinental railroad.
(dramatic music)
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] It's the middle of the 19th century,
and the United States is extending its territory westward
all the way to the Pacific Ocean,
(suspenseful music)
But for settlers attempting the journey,
what they encounter is nearly unfathomable.
- Traversing this is a major undertaking.
It's known as the Great American Desert.
From about midway through Nebraska,
out to the Rocky Mountains,
it's a no man's land (suspenseful music)
as far as white Americans are concerned.
(gunshot) (suspenseful music)
- The thing about the west, it's a harsh environment.
If you're riding in a wagon,
you can only go about 20 miles a day,
which means that you're going to be on the wagon trail
for months and months and months.
You might get caught in the winter in the mountains,
which, of course, is death for you and your family.
(tools clanking)
- [Narrator] Then, almost overnight,
the number of braving the journey explodes
to some 300,000
in what will become known as the Gold Rush.
(suspenseful music)
- In the late 1840s,
gold was discovered.
Huge amount of wealth was being generated in California.
People wanted to get out there and be part of that growth,
but it was almost impossible to get there.
(suspenseful music)
You have to remember, at this time,
it was way easier to travel to Europe
from the east coast of the U.S. than to get to California.
- [Narrator] There are alternative routes by sea,
but they're exponentially longer.
- It was tens of thousands of miles.
Or you had to take a steamship down
to Panama or Nicaragua, make an overland journey,
then get another boat up the coast to San Francisco.
- Well, if you were to go the long way
around the tip of South America,
it could take six months
because you're at the mercy of winds.
- [Narrator] There is a faster method on the horizon.
(whistle toots)
Railroads. (suspenseful music)
But of the little track that's been built by 1860,
96% is east of St. Louis. (suspenseful music)
There is only one established railroad west,
but it's contained to California.
(suspenseful music)
And now its innovative designer is working
on something bigger.
- Members of Congress.
Esteemed members of Congress.
America needs a transcontinental railroad
to connect the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans.
(suspenseful music)
- Theodore Judah was a real visionary.
He was also one of the first civilian engineers in the U.S.
He was a big believer in using those skills
to improve the world,
to make life better for people.
- [Narrator] At age 11,
Judah's admitted to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
At the time,
the country's only civilian engineering college.
(suspenseful music)
- His whole life seemed to be moving towards this moment.
(suspenseful music)
The notion of building a transcontinental railroad
in the 1860s is almost fantastic to think about
because nothing of that size
had ever been even attempted before.
And so it was like a moonshot.
- You have railroad companies struggling
to cross something like the Allegheny Mountains.
And he says, let's cross the entire continent.
You're talking about 2000 miles of rail.
This would be like someone today in our environment
saying, you know what we should do?
We should colonize Mars now.
Let's do that.
- [Narrator] The boldest part of Judah's plan,
building east from Sacramento, California,
through one of the steepest mountain ranges
in North America.
- A steam engine can only climb a grade of a certain degree,
a very gradual climb. (suspenseful music)
The Sierra Nevada
are notoriously steep, rocky granite peaks.
(suspenseful music)
- There is a limited amount of friction
that can be generated.
And having a metal wheel on a metal railroad,
they can only go so high, so far in terms of the grade.
Which means for every hundred feet you go laterally,
you can only go two feet up. (suspenseful music)
- That means you have to engineer the line
so that you make sure that that grade
is something that the train can manage.
(dramatic music)
- And finally, once we've made it through the Sierra Nevada.
- [Investor] Through mountains?
- I am sure there's a way.
- Well, who's funding this?
- Well, I'm looking for investors.
(suspenseful music)
It's a good plan.
I guarantee you it will be profitable.
- Crazy. (suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] As Judah runs into a dead end in Washington,
1500 miles away,
a former surgeon is making moves in the railroad industry,
hoping to strike it rich.
- Thomas Durant is an ambitious man.
He received a medical degree at the age of 20.
He practiced medicine for all of three years
before he decided to move on.
For him, everything was about self-interest.
How to make the most money.
He didn't let other people get in his way.
- [Narrator] Now the co-owner of a small regional railroad,
Durant is thinking bigger,
manipulating its finances for his own gain.
- It's gone.
The bond money, it's gone.
- Expenses were higher than we anticipated.
- You went behind my back.
- God helps those who help themselves.
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] Durant tanks the railroad stock, buys in big,
then spreads a false rumor
to inflate the stock back up again.
(suspenseful music)
Durant then sells his company's inflated stock
and buys in to the most powerful railroad company
in the U.S., the Union Pacific.
- Thomas Durant finagled the $2 million he needed
to buy into the Union Pacific.
And he manages to become the vice-president.
- [Narrator] Durant's move positions him
as one of the biggest players in the U.S. train industry.
- He sees an opportunity
to make fistfuls of money by building railroad.
He really is not worried about how well it functions.
He just wants to make his cash and get out.
(suspenseful music) (hooves clopping)
- [Narrator] Meanwhile, out West,
Judah convinces four Sacramento businessmen
to invest in his impossible dream.
Led by millionaire merchants,
Charles Crocker and Leland Stanford,
who will go on to found Stanford University,
they form the Central Pacific Railroad.
(suspenseful music)
They're known as the Big Four.
(suspenseful music)
To put Judah's ambitious plan into action,
they need to convince Congress to award them the largest
government contract in history.
Luckily for them,
Washington is about to realize the true power
of the railway.
(dramatic music) (men screaming)
(guns popping) (men screaming)
In July of 1861, three months after war is declared,
the first major battle of the Civil War is underway.
A quick win for the North could end it all.
(guns roaring) (men screaming)
But when 11,000 Confederate reinforcements arrive by train,
Lincoln is handed in embarrassing loss.
And a protracted war becomes inevitable.
(suspenseful music) (guns popping)
- The transcontinental railroad becomes critical
for reaching Western states during the expansion
and ensuring that those territories don't secede
to the Confederate side.
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] Three months later,
Lincoln signs the Pacific Railroad Act,
authorizing the building of a transcontinental railroad.
And Judah and the Central Pacific are hired
to make it happen.
(suspenseful music)
(men murmuring) (suspenseful music)
But there's a catch.
- He's here!
- Your persistence paid off.
We have half the job.
Lincoln chartered a second company.
(paper rustling)
(suspenseful music)
- The Union Pacific Railroad.
- They'll build from east to west
and we'll build from west east.
(suspenseful music)
- The Central Pacific is really driven by an
idealistic dreamer who
sees incredible opportunity
that's gonna open up the West.
Where the Union Pacific is driven by a man in Durant
who recognizes the opportunity for enormous profit.
He is a robber baron.
He sees this strictly in financial terms.
(suspenseful music)
- The act is intended to create competition,
laying out incentives for Judah's Central Pacific
and his counterpart, Thomas Durant,
to lay as much track as they can.
(suspenseful music)
- The way that Congress has legislated the creation
of the transcontinental railroad,
any mile that the Central Pacific lays
or the Union Pacific lays is going to mean a windfall
of mineral rights for future mining and so forth,
as well as just flat out cash.
U.S. bonds. (suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] The payout is $16,000 for every mile,
three times that over rough terrain.
Between 250 and 800,000 per mile today.
With no designated meeting point,
the faster each company works,
the more they take from their competitor.
(metal tapping) (suspenseful music)
The total windfall at stake, nearly $14 billion today.
(glasses clinking) (suspenseful music)
Lincoln has just sparked one of the greatest competitions
in the history of business.
And the race is on.
By the end of 1862, (suspenseful music)
idealist engineer Theodore Judah's bold dream
of connecting the United States by rail is under way.
(metal clinking) (suspenseful music)
But his new partnership is already having problems.
Behind his back,
the Big Four investors remove railroad mastermind Judah
as construction chief,
inserting merchant and railroad newcomer, Charles Crocker.
- Why wasn't I consulted?
You can't oversee a project like this.
You know nothing about the railroads.
Why have you changed the original agreement?
- Listen, Judah.
We think the Sierra Nevada Range
begins 50 miles further west.
- [Theodore] But that's a lie.
- The Big Four have incentive
to try and stretch out the definition
of the Sierra Nevada Mountains as much as possible
because the legislation coming out of Congress
pays a higher rate per mile for more difficult terrain.
- If we add these 15 miles,
we get an extra 240,000 from the government.
- Oh, so you can line your pockets.
- So we can turn your dream into a reality.
- I won't be a part of this. (suspenseful music)
- It's four against one, Judah.
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] Forced out, Judah returns East,
desperate to find someone to buy out the Big Four.
He travels by sea,
he crosses through Panama
and catches yellow fever.
(suspenseful music)
Within weeks, he's dead.
(suspenseful music)
- Judah's death exemplifies the value
of the transcontinental railroad.
The actual need for this thing.
Not only is it the length of time and the cost,
but it's the danger.
About 5% of those who set out West are gonna end up dead.
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] Taking on Thomas Durant
and the Union Pacific now rests
in the inexperienced hands of Charles Crocker.
- [Investor] Maybe we should pause construction.
- That'll cost us a fortune.
Union Pacific's route is flat.
Durant will get ahead of us if we don't make headway.
We can't let that happen. (suspenseful music)
- Crocker views himself as a leader of men.
So the fact that he's not very good at engineering
doesn't really matter to him.
He wants to be the man at the front
who's pushing the project along.
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] But just 36 miles to the east
of his Sacramento starting point,
Crocker already faces his biggest challenge.
(dramatic music)
A 50-mile-wide barrier created
by the nation's tallest mountain range.
The Sierra Nevada. (suspenseful music)
- From a geological perspective,
granite is actually one
of the hardest, most dense forms of rock.
And in the Sierra Nevadas,
a huge chunk of it has been thrusted up
from the Earth's core.
And they've gotta take a railroad line
and go right through it. (suspenseful music)
- They've got multiple crews working on one piece of rock.
You've got two men holding a long iron bar,
and third who's slamming that with a sledgehammer
on a non-stop basis.
Eight hour shifts, 24 hours a day.
(suspenseful music)
- It would dislodge maybe a few inches of rock,
but it was not enough.
They were still only making progress
at the rate of about one foot a day.
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] As Crocker and the Central Pacific struggle,
halfway across the country in Omaha, Nebraska,
Thomas Durant has yet to lay down a single mile of track.
(suspenseful music)
He's taking his time
to purposely plot the longest route
through the most valuable land.
(suspenseful music)
- From now on, this is our route.
- The Union Pacific should've got going a lot sooner
than it did.
But Durant's looking to milk everything he can out
of the federal government.
- We're not talking about the most direct route.
- He adds massive oxbows, big horseshoe looking loops.
It's not something that anyone would do
if they were worried about being effective.
- More miles of track we lay,
(suspenseful music)
the richer we get.
- [Narrator] And Durant doesn't stop there.
He creates a shell company,
names it after French bank Credit Mobilier,
and uses it to skim profits.
- And he's going to funnel Union Pacific cash
into Credit Mobilier
and then pay himself out of Credit Mobilier.
(suspenseful music)
- He is now able to charge the Union Pacific
for construction of the railroad.
He's able to overcharge for the construction costs.
And, of course, because he is running the Union Pacific,
there's not gonna be any questions asked, right?
- He jacked up prices by about double
what they actually are
so that he can simply line his own pocket.
It's unethical.
It's dishonest.
It's brilliant.
- [Narrator] But by 1864, Lincoln's patience runs out.
He gives Durant a December, 1867 deadline
to complete 200 miles of track
and reach the continent's midway point.
The 100th meridian, or lose the contract.
Meanwhile, 1500 miles to the west,
Crocker's Central Pacific is moving at a glacial pace
through the Sierra Nevada granite.
(suspenseful music)
So he calls in reinforcement.
- James Harvey Strobridge is set up by Charles Crocker,
basically as the construction foreman
and as the cracker of the whip on the workforce.
And he's got a fearsome black patch over one eye
due to a construction accident.
He wants the work done and he'll mistreat his men
if that's what it takes to get it done.
- [Narrator] But with most men still fighting the Civil War,
manpower is hard to find. (ominous music)
Facing a treacherous stretch of cliffs known as Cape Horn,
Strobridge turns to Chinese immigrants.
(suspenseful music)
- The Chinese workers are recruited in China
to come to the United States
after the Taiping Rebellion broke out.
And at that point, the Manchu government ruling China
becomes very hard on the Chinese.
(suspenseful music)
One of the things that the Chinese workers aren't afraid of
is hard work. (suspenseful music)
(metal clinking) (suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] The Central Pacific goes
from employing 50 Chinese immigrants to over 10,000.
- The slope is such that there's nowhere
to actually build the rail.
There isn't enough of a flat edge for a person
to even stand, let alone build a track.
They're going to have to blast and create a platform.
(suspenseful music) (man panting)
- Go down!
Go down!
- They're going over the edge with ropes
that are not elastic.
That's all they can rely on to keep them alive.
There's no redundant safety measures.
And beneath them is about roughly a 1000-foot drop.
(suspenseful music)
(match scratching)
(fuse sizzling)
(explosion booms)
- There's an estimate that 200 Chinese workers died
while building that ledge.
(suspenseful music)
- No one can give exact numbers
on how many are lost,
which, unfortunately, reflects kind of the
lack of concern for life.
The fact that the workers are Chinese
probably ups the lack of concern even more.
- [Narrator] While the body count rises in the West,
Durant's meandering routes, designed to pad profits,
have put the entire multi-million dollar job
in jeopardy.
At their current pace,
the Union Pacific won't hit Lincoln's milestone
until two years after the deadline.
(suspenseful music)
- If Thomas Durant's Union Pacific doesn't reach
the 100th meridian in Nebraska by Lincoln's deadline,
he's going to basically get cut off.
(dramatic music)
Naturally, this lights a bit of a fire under the doctor.
(suspenseful music) (people shouting)
- [Narrator] Then on April 9th, 1865,
after four years of fighting,
the Confederates surrender at Appomattox.
But the victory is bittersweet.
The man who devoted his presidency to uniting the nation
and building a railway to connect it
is assassinated only six days later.
(suspenseful music)
As the country mourns Abraham Lincoln,
Thomas Durant sees opportunity.
- The end of the Civil War frees up
a lot of trained engineers,
Confederate and Union. (suspenseful music)
They found themselves working on the railroad,
solving logistical problems, frankly, often together.
People who had fought on both sides of that conflict.
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] With more men,
the Union Pacific attempts to pull itself out
of the hole Durant dug.
(hammer tapping) (suspenseful music)
- We are way behind schedule.
- What do you want me to do?
- You'll think of something.
And if you can't, I'll find someone who can.
- [Narrator] If he's going to save his job
and Durant's railroad,
new foreman and former Union general,
Jack Casement, needs a solution fast.
- Okay, let's keep it moving. (suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] Nine months after emerging
from a bloody civil war,
the United States turns to rebuilding.
(suspenseful music)
Completing the transcontinental railroad
is now a top priority.
Thanks to labor shortages and Thomas Durant's scheming,
the Union Pacific's only made it 47 miles in two years
from its starting point in Omaha.
(suspenseful music)
Now, former Union general, Jack Casement,
must lay 200 miles of rail in under a year
to meet Lincoln's deadline. (suspenseful music)
Or else they'll lose the massive government contract.
- While Durant might be playing games in the back room,
someone at the end of the day has to make
rubber meet the road.
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] Casement assigns his men
to mobile workstations along the line.
Like companies in an infantry brigade,
they advance in concert
while supplies are brought in from the rear.
His rolling workforce becomes known as the city on wheels.
(suspenseful music)
- He's got multiple train cars
that are filled with everything
that has men need to live on,
but also everything he needs to continue building.
- [Narrator] Thanks to Casement's
city on wheels innovation,
Durant's crew more than triples its output,
reaching the 100th meridian ahead of the deadline.
(metal clanging) (suspenseful music)
But the city on wheels comes with a downside.
(men shouting) (suspenseful music)
- Beyond what Casement is bringing along,
we also have followers.
Those that are happy to give the workers
of the UP a good time
and relieve them of some of that hard earned cash.
And that includes mobile saloons,
brothels, gambling houses.
You name it. (suspenseful music)
And this following town,
which can number up to the thousands,
is known as Hell on Wheels.
- [Narrator] While Hell on Wheels lets
the Union Pacific crew blow off steam,
its liquor and lawlessness are a recipe for disaster.
Meanwhile, Crocker and the Central Pacific are stuck
just 94 miles east of their California starting point
with six times that left to go.
(suspenseful music)
- How is it possible that Union Pacific
is laying five miles of track a day
and we haven't even made it out of the Sierras?
(suspenseful music)
We're gonna need more than black powder
to get through those mountains.
- Like what?
- Like nitroglycerin.
- Nitro?
It's too unstable.
- While they were working with black powder,
they knew there was a superior kind of explosive.
It had been invented by an Italian chemist,
improved by the German chemist, Alfred Nobel.
Unfortunately, this stuff is very unstable, very dangerous.
(explosion booms)
- [Narrator] The nitroglycerin Crocker wants to use
is five times more powerful than the black powder
that's already killed dozens. (explosion booms)
With a blast that burns at 9,000 degrees,
rivaling the surface of the sun.
- [James] It's illegal to transport.
- I know a chemist
who can make it right at Donner Pass.
- It's too dangerous.
- If we don't get through the mountains,
we'll never beat Union Pacific.
(suspenseful music)
- The insanity of using nitroglycerin is balanced
with its effectiveness.
It's a risk that has to be accepted
by those people crazy enough to use it
because it's so good at what it does.
- [Narrator] At his peak, English chemist, James Howden,
cranks out 100 pounds of nitroglycerin a day,
doubling progress through the mountain.
(explosion booms)
While the Central Pacific blasts its way
toward the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevadas,
on the Union Pacific line,
for every worker who dies on the job,
four are getting killed after hours.
(suspenseful music)
- Jack Casement is the right type of person
to handle the unruliness of Hell on Wheels.
- You have all got one hour to get out of town!
- When things do get sufficiently out of hand,
he has no problem letting them know
that if they don't mosey on,
they're gonna meet the end of his gun.
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] By August, 1867, foreman Jack Casement
has Thomas Durant's Union Pacific back on track.
(metal clinking) (suspenseful music)
But as the company advances further west
into the Great Plains,
(dramatic music)
its native people are becoming increasingly desperate
to protect their land.
- As the railroad is moving forward west
and the federal government
is offering the railroad companies right-of-way corridors
on each side of the railway path
and calling it public land.
This land was actually Native American land
that was either seized or accrued
through disreputable treaties.
- As the railroad pushes west,
the U.S. Army murders thousands of Native Americans
and forces many more onto reservations.
(suspenseful music)
To support their efforts,
the army turns to the Indigenous peoples'
most cherished resource, the American bison.
Killing over 5 million and driving them close
to extinction. (suspenseful music)
- The legacy of the transcontinental railroad
is absolutely sullied by the manner
in which that work was accomplished.
(suspenseful music)
The way that Indigenous people are treated
and discarded by the United States,
which used its might to destroy peoples
who are largely unable to defend themselves.
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] As Durant's Union Pacific moves west,
crossing the 400-mile mark,
only 94 miles from their starting point,
Crocker's Central Pacific faces
one final Sierra Nevada hurtle.
- The biggest challenge at getting the railroad line
through the Sierra Nevada came right at the top.
The Summit Ridge is very steep.
There's no way to build a railroad up it.
You have to go through it.
(suspenseful music)
So they planned what they called the Summit Tunnel.
Be about 1600 feet long.
And they had to bore that tunnel through solid granite,
an extremely dense rock that does not wanna fracture easily.
- By working four separate tunnel crews,
one on each end and two blasting from within,
Crocker accelerates the process,
using nitroglycerin to connect a single tunnel
with incredible precision.
(suspenseful music)
- The fact that Crocker and the Central Pacific
get through Summit Tunnel is nothing short of a miracle.
Not only do they manage to get through
this massive piece of granite,
making a tunnel that's over 1600 feet long,
they do so being only two inches off.
It's an incredible engineering feat.
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] Four years into their race,
Crocker's laid just 1/4 the track Durant has,
but he's just cleared his biggest hurdle.
(suspenseful music)
- They may be ahead of us in miles,
but we've faced a greater challenge and come out stronger.
- [Workers] Yeah!
- We made it out of the Sierras.
And no one is gonna stop us from winning.
- [Workers] Yeah!
(people clapping)
- [Narrator] Now with just 800 miles between them
and no mandated meeting point,
both sides intend to push as far as they can.
At between 16 and $48,000 a mile,
there's still 33 million up for grabs.
Over half a billion today.
(suspenseful music) (train rattling)
And then there's the land.
(suspenseful music)
- There's a lot at stake.
Every mile of track that's laid
means claiming land, mineral rights.
There are coal mines out there.
And all those mineral rights are just waiting to be had
by whichever company can get there first.
(suspenseful music) (train whooshing)
- [Narrator] Both companies are now in high gear.
And in the summer of 1868,
Durant's Union Pacific reaches a milestone in Wyoming.
888 miles, the halfway point between Sacramento and Omaha.
Yet Durant has no intention of slowing down
until the government intervenes.
- The government want us to finalize a meeting point
with Central Pacific.
- There is no way they could beat our mileage at this point.
So it shouldn't matter where we end.
- That's not the point.
I'd prefer to keep making money.
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] The profits are so tempting
that, as both railroads reach Utah,
they each lay track beds
that extend past their rival's track by more than 100 miles.
- By January, 1869,
the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific have graded
well past each other.
Both are trying to seize as much land as they possibly can.
Both asserting that
they are the ones laying the real transcontinental rail.
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] The unnecessary cost is the last straw
for president Ulysses Grant.
He demands the sides come together and reach an agreement
on where they'll meet.
After six years of bitter competition,
the rulers of the railroads will finally clash face-to-face.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] By the spring of 1869,
six years after the first track was laid,
the federal government has had enough of Thomas Durant
and Charles Crocker's profiteering.
(suspenseful music)
To encourage competition,
Lincoln's original deal didn't specify a meeting point.
But now, with the two companies preparing rail beds
right next to each other,
that competition has spun out of control.
- The competition between the Central Pacific
and the Union Pacific towards the very end was very bitter.
- [Narrator] Fed up, President Grant
demands a meeting point for the two tracks,
forcing Crocker and Durant to the table.
- I think I speak for everyone when I say no one wants
to be here any longer than necessary.
We believe the point that makes the most sense
is Ogden.
- How about we move that finger about 50 miles west?
- How about 50 miles to the east?
- We'll get to that spot
and have to wait a year for your track to finally show up.
(suspenseful music)
We've already won this.
(suspenseful music)
- Promontory Summit.
That's our best offer.
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] With over 1000 total miles to Crocker's 700,
Thomas Durant has won the mileage war
and the modern equivalent of over $3 billion
that comes with it.
(suspenseful music) (train rattling)
But Charles Crocker,
who has 16 miles left to go,
is determined to land one last blow against Durant,
who is just nine miles away
from the agreed upon meeting point.
- What's the most amount of track we've laid in one day?
- Six miles.
- How about we go for 10?
- I have an idea on how we get a head start.
- We're not missing our chance to take what's ours
from this smug crook.
(suspenseful music)
(footsteps clacking)
- Central Pacific will lay 10 miles of track a day.
If we fail, we'll wire you $10,000?
If we do it, you'll wire us 10,000.
Bet?
(suspenseful music)
- Durant's a little bit on the stuck-up side.
And he felt that, you know, he could do no wrong.
His men could do no wrong.
And so Durant says, come on, give me a break.
Look at how slow you've been going
through the Sierra Nevada.
You can't go very far.
- [Narrator] To win Charles Crocker needs
to lay a record, 10 miles of track in a single day.
And he's willing to take a page
from Durant's dirty playbook to do it.
(suspenseful music)
- Crocker takes extraordinary steps,
like putting the ties down before the rest of the track.
This is about accomplishing a feat
that many thought was entirely impossible.
- By waiting until Durant has just nine miles left
to the meeting point,
Crocker's cleverly made sure the Union Pacific
has no way of matching his 10 mile attempt.
(suspenseful music)
- [Charles] Durant, what are you doing
on this side of the summit?
- Those railroad ties have already been embedded.
That's cheating.
- By whose rule book?
- It's not everyday I get
to watch my competition bury themselves.
- You'll eat your words before the day's out.
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] The completion of the transcontinental railroad
has come down to a final showdown
between Crocker and Durant.
With the modern equivalent
of nearly $20 million on the line.
(suspenseful music) (metal clanking)
- [Narrator] April 28th, 1869.
And the final showdown between Charles Crocker
and Thomas Durant comes down to a one-day battle
worth almost 20 million in today's dollars.
If Crocker's Central Pacific can lay 10 miles of track
in a single day, he'll break Durant's seven-mile record
and take the modern equivalent
of $1.5 million from him personally.
(suspenseful music)
At dawn, over 4,000 men begin their Herculean effort.
- Crocker's got his man all set up.
They have cars coming up,
dumping material, moving to the back.
It's been very well orchestrated.
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] By noon, the Central Pacific's crew
has six miles of track laid.
And eight hours of light left to win the bet.
(suspenseful music)
3,500 rails, 55,000 spikes,
and 25,000 railroad ties later,
the sun sets and Crocker's men have won the wager.
(suspenseful music)
- The Union Pacific is livid.
Thomas Durant absolutely thinks
that Crocker and his company cheated.
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] Two weeks later,
after a six year struggle
and nearly 21 million sledgehammer swings
since President Lincoln began it,
his goal of unifying the country
has finally become a reality.
(suspenseful music) (horn toots)
As the transcontinental railroad connects the nation
with a final golden spike.
(dramatic music)
- This was one of the biggest accomplishments
in world history in terms of engineering.
- The country went wild.
More cannons were fired in celebration of that event
than during the battle of Gettysburg.
- Prior to completion,
it would take six months
and, today's money, tens of thousands of dollars
to travel from New York to San Francisco.
With the completion of the transcontinental railroad,
it takes a week.
It costs a couple of hundred bucks
and it's safe and efficient.
(horn toots) (triumphant music)
- The railroad opens up the Western frontier
to a whole greater swath of American citizens
at different price points,
different class opportunities.
Different kinds of people are able to get access
to the West in ways
in which it was much more cost prohibitive
just a few years earlier.
(dramatic music)
(train chugging)
- [Narrator] Over the next five years,
350,000 people cross the country
on the transcontinental railroad.
(suspenseful music) (horn toots)
Along with today's equivalent
of over $102 billion of freight.
- Materials from all over the country
could go from one place to another.
Industrialization could happen in different parts
of the United States.
And whatever they produced could be sent,
not only within the United States,
but also to Asia and to Europe.
(suspenseful music)
(steam hissing)
- [Narrator] Crocker and Durant are rewarded handsomely
for connecting to the coasts.
About 2.3 and $3.6 billion in today's money, respectively.
But the land grants they were awarded are worth even more.
At over 175,000,000 acres,
it's more land than the entire state of Texas.
(dramatic music)
But despite his success,
Thomas Durant can't escape his past.
In 1872, the "New York Sun" publishes an expose
on Credit Mobilier, his profit making scheme.
And the congressional insider trading that made it possible.
(suspenseful music)
Though his Central Pacific laid less track than Durant,
in the long run, Charles Crocker is the winner.
He goes on to acquire the Southern Pacific Railroad,
extending the line through the American Southwest.
A century later,
the Union Pacific buys up both competitors
and today operates 32,000 miles of track.
Solely for hauling freight,
rail now makes up the backbone
of America's shipping industry,
moving over 1.7 billion tons of goods a year
(dramatic music)
with over $219 billion.