Ethnic Chinese at Central Pacific Railroad Maintenance Camps

Summary

The Central Pacific Railroad was completed in May 1869 due, in large part, to the work of thousands of ethnic Chinese railroad workers. After the railroad was complete, it was necessary to upgrade the railroad and carry out maintenance on the far flung transportation network. Railroad documents, previous excavations of ethnic Chinese worker camps in Nevada and recently recorded camps near Promontory Summit, Utah, show that Chinese workers continued to be employed for decades after 1869. It is suggested that maintenance camp design, size, and function continued to generally resemble 1860s construction camps throughout the remainder of the 19th Century.  A number of small maintenance camps on parts of the Central Pacific Railroad are described and comparisons made with known ethnic Chinese construction camps from the 1860s. Use of archaeological site information, railroad documents and census data from 1870, 1880 and 1900 are used to support the idea.  

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2015   •
• New and Innovative Approaches to Overseas Chinese Archaeology

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 569