Building the transcontinental RR

As the William Ogden family continued their journey from Benton to Utah, another interesting drama was unfolding.  The Union Pacific Railroad was working at a feverish pace to extend their portion of the transcontinental railroad as far as possible before meeting their western counterpart, the Central Pacific.  Huge financial rewards were being paid by the government for each mile of track completed and the competitors were anxious to garner as many dollars as possible.  

The UP, coming from the east,  had made great progress as they laid track over the relatively flat plains states, but when they started into Utah and hit the rugged Echo Canyon, work slowed considerably.  Forced to blast through quartzite and black limestone, and dig long tunnels and bridge canyons, they finally experienced what the CP, who started in California, had gone through crossing the Sierras. 

The typical railroad workforce was spread out over several miles. At the very front were the surveyors followed by the graders and the telegraph crew, just ahead of the actual rail laying. At the end of the laid track, workers unloaded wagons of rail. Gaugers set the tracks in place, followed by spikers and bolters who affixed the rails together. Camps for thousands of men -- workshops, offices, bunks, food supplies --advanced half a dozen miles each day.

Communication from Church leaders in Utah advised that any able bodied men in the emigrant companies should seek employment with the railroad and earn some hard currency for their labors.  They would probably need it for apparently during that summer of 1869 there had been an invasion of crickets in the valley (again) which had created a serious food shortage.  The record states that Thomas, James, and William Jr. along with W.C.B. Orrock followed that advice and when the company arrived at Salt Lake they then departed for Echo Canyon to build track for the Union Pacific Railroad.

However it was not long before James took very sick, and after a period of no improvement, the young men were advised to take him to join the family in Santaquin where they had settled.  A relative named Levi Openshaw volunteered to take them by way of Coalville, Heber City, and down Provo Canyon to eventually join the group south of Provo.  No description of the illness James suffered is ever provided, nor of his recovery, but in later years he suffered again from poor health and was released from his mission in England, having served 14 months.  Perhaps he had contracted mountain fever, a not uncommon ailment of the time.  James eventually died in Richfield in 1894 at the relatively young age of 49.
He was a good man and faithful throughout his life.

After all was said and done the Mormon men who had labored hard building track probably didn’t get paid a dime.  The UP plead poverty and claimed to have no cash to pay workers for the several months of labor prior to the completion. One of the most shameful facts in the construction of the railroad was that the Church had to go to New York and Boston seeking redress for back wages and then finally received only partial payment in the form of railroad equipment and other assets; but there was no cash to pay workers. The Union Pacific officers, crooks that they were, plead poverty while pocketing millions of dollars in profit through a enterprise known as the Credit Mobilier, the Enron of its day. 


Thus ends the railroad experience for the Ogden’s, but also heralds the beginning of life in Zion as the family reunites and looks for a permanent home.