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.