By Jeff DeMoss Editor/staff writer for HJ News
For more than 70 years, crowds have gathered at what is now Golden Spike National Historical Park to celebrate the joining of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads at Promontory Summit in northern Utah on May 10, 1869.
In its early days, the event consisted primarily of pageantry in deference to wealthy railroad magnates — a celebration of industry, capitalism and conquest of the West. Those celebrations largely ignored the fact that the rails were built on the backs of thousands of laborers, mostly from overseas, who worked under conditions that would be unimaginable today.
The first events marking that significant milestone also glossed over the impact the railroad had on the Native Americans who were displaced and increasingly subjugated under the development spurred by its presence.
The 155th anniversary celebration of the completion of the transcontinental railroad, held Friday and Saturday at the park, was a much more inclusive and multicultural affair — a nod to the Chinese, Irish and recently freed Black slaves who laid the tracks — as people gathered to celebrate the full diversity of the workforce that built the rails, as well as acknowledge those who were profoundly and adversely affected by it.
“Here at Golden Spike, we’re telling the story of the transcontinental railroad, and it’s an amazing story. But it’s also a story of great contradictions,” Park Superintendent Brandon Flint said in his introduction following a musical performance by the Bear River High School band.
“It’s the story of very visionary men who found fame, found fortune, were very wealthy, who lived a life of comfort,” Flint said, “but it’s also the story of men along the line who were struggling to build it, who were risking their lives every day, who lived in small shelters in the freezing cold. It’s a story of the rise of one nation, the United States of America, but the rise of that nation came at the cost of many other nations who already called this place home. It’s the story of thousands of immigrant workers who were invited to come to the United States because of their labor. But once they got here, it’s the story of, in many cases, a place where we didn’t want them because of the color of their skin, or because of their traditions, or perhaps their culture.”
Rios Pacheco, a tribal elder with the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation, opened the celebration by offering a blessing in his peoples’ native tongue.
Pacheco then said that while the land surrounding the park may appear barren, it is anything but to the Shoshone whose ancestors lived a humble, spiritual existence on the high-desert sagebrush steppe.
“Even though you may see there’s not much, there’s great value to this land,” he said. “Every plant has a reason. Every plant has a way to provide food for us. Every plant helps us to keep our bodies strong. It’s a medicine for our people.”
Pacheco spoke specifically about the sagebrush, “a plant that we hold sacred because when the smoke rises from that plant, it cleanses the air.” He then conducted a ceremony using sage with several descendants of Chinese railroad workers in attendance “so that way they’ll know that their people are taken care of on this land that our people hold sacred.”
Following a traditional Chinese lion dance performed by students from Bennion Junior High in Taylorsville, Utah State Sen. Karen Kwan, the first and so far only Chinese American to serve in the Utah Legislature, talked about the importance of continuing to unearth the history of the immigrant workers who built the rails.
“Like many descendants, I don’t know who my ancestor was. But we do know that we had a Chinese railroad ancestor through oral histories,” said Kwan, who also serves as president of the Chinese Railroad Workers Descendants Association and is herself a descendant of a railroad worker. “How important it is for us to continue to learn about these stories and continue to talk about these stories.”
Kwan also spoke of how the Chinese workers bonded with the local Shoshone after finding common ground in, of all things, their hairstyles.
“They called themselves ‘queue brothers’ because of the braid they had that both cultures had and both revered,” Kwan said, referring to a traditional Chinese braid known as a queue. “Because of that, (the Shoshone) helped my ancestor to survive here.”
Patrick Bennett, secretary of the Hibernian Society of Utah, provided some perspective on the plight of the many Irish immigrants who contributed to the railroad.
“They were cramped and ill-fed and subject to disease,” Bennett said. “At the same time, I have learned some of the stories of the Chinese, and I just want to say I don’t think the Irish had it quite as rough. They at least had a boxcar to sleep in instead of a cave they were digging out. They at least had food provided to them instead of having it shipped in from China.
While still facing discrimination, “(The Irish workers) were accepted, maybe because of their appearance, a little bit more,” he said.
Bennett echoed Kwan’s sentiment about how the building of the railroad helped to bring different cultures together under trying circumstances.
“Not only did the transcontinental railroad unite the rails and unite the nation, little did they know that 150 years ago they were uniting nations,” he said. “They were uniting the Irish Nation with the Chinese Nation, with the Shoshone Nation, with the American Nation. What a great legacy to have.”
Flint told the hundreds gathered at the park on Friday that the story of the railroad and its impact on the United States of America, as well as on the many cultures that converged to bring the vision to life, is one that “is still being written.
“The important thing is, it’s not a story that’s frozen in time,” he said. “It’s also being written by each one of you — the fact that you have come here today to experience this, to learn, to understand.”