Canine forensics team search for remains of Chinese railroad workers, Terrace, UT

Arabella Hong Young’s grandfather Hung Lai Woh came to the U.S. as a teenager in the 1860s and helped blast the path for the railroad. A Juilliard-trained singer, Young performed in the original Broadway cast of the 1958 musical Flower Drum Song.

Michael Solorio is a sixth-generation descendant of railroad worker Lim Lip Hong, who fled famine in China and arrived in California in 1855. Learning about his ancestors has brought a sense of identity. “It made me realize I definitely belong here.”

Yale University student Naima Liang Blanco-Norberg, here in her San Francisco bedroom, is a sixth-generation descendant of Lum Ah Chew, who worked as a railroad cook and waiter at the summit tunnels near Lake Tahoe that bored through the Sierra Nevada.

Bruce Tong, is a fourth-generation descendant of Mock Chuck, a foreman for the Central Pacific Railroad.

Connie Young Yu, a historian and an advocate for recognition of the contributions of Chinese railroad workers, is the great-granddaughter of Lee Wong Sang, who worked on the Central Pacific Railroad.

Ryan Young, is a descendant of Mock Chuck, a headman for the Central Pacific Railroad.

Tai Lee, 6, is sixth-generation descendant of Lim Lip Hong, one of the first 40 Chinese hired to work on the Central Pacific Railroad.

10 Miles of Track, Laid In One Day, Promontory, Utah

The Central Pacific Railroad

The Central Pacific is a series exploring the history of Chinese migration to the United States. In particular, it tracks the stories of migrant laborers who came to the United States to work on the Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) between 1863-1869, a time when the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Railroads had joined to complete the First Transcontinental Railroad: one of the significant engineering achievements in America.

Historians estimate that at any one time, between 15,000 and 20,000 Chinese laborers were working on constructing the railroad starting from Sacramento, California and ending at Promontory, Utah, suffering hundreds of casualties, most undocumented.
The history of Chinese migration to the United States is as old as European migration, but the stories of Chinese migrants have been largely overlooked or ignored. The Chinese Exclusion Act, enacted soon after the railroad's completion, is a stark reminder of the complex challenges that class-based labor systems orchestrate in entire communities.

The work of the Chinese laborers helped America enter the global scene as a modern nation by connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. But despite the importance of their work, the Chinese laborers have little presence in much of the written history about the transcontinental railroad and the building of America.