Legend behind building of rails around Cape Horn

Just a few feet from the Cape View Blue Star plaque I wrote about in last week's column and attached to the same bench is another impressive piece of bronze.Unlike most plaques that recognize places or events, this one honors a group of people resolute in their work ethic, specifically, the Chinese workers of the Central Pacific Company. They were primarily responsible for building the western portion of the first transcontinental railroad.Like their ancestors, who built the Great Wall of China, the Chinese workers forged the road around the precipice over the American River's North Fork by hand. Use of black powder to break rock was familiar to these men since it had been invented in China. But, the work also required picks, bars, shovels, hammers, diamond drills, and wheelbarrows. All these implements coupled with muscle and endurance to cut a niche and then lay a roadbed and track for the iron horse.Two baskets suspended from a single bamboo pole across the shoulder became the common means of carting hand tools and other supplies. It was also how the crew cook delivered tea to the crews working on the roadway.Keeping the cost of labor down was a key to Central Pacific's ultimate success. Since the Chinese would work for less money and were efficient as well, they became the laborer of choice for Charles Crocker. Many white workers of the era were not happy with this situation. Derogatory comments and racial slurs were common. "Charlie's pets" or "celestials" are terms that appear in the bigoted white man's news stories. Herein lies one of my mysteries. I have often wondered if this is the origin of the nickname for Chinese soldiers during World War II and the Korean War. Remember "Five o'clock Charlie" in the TV show M*A*S*H?Central Pacific's Cape Horn construction project was the second of the two greatest obstacles to building the road over the Sierra. It is also one of only two locations where the track had to turn a full 180 degrees back on a curve. The ledge itself was cut nearly 1,400 feet above the river.The common plan for surmounting these obstacles was to approach them from at least three points. Start into the mountain from below and above, but also in the middle and work two directions, upgrade and downgrade. The latter meant accessing the cliff from the top of the promontory by lowering workers to set charges. After the fuses were lit they hauled them up and the whole crew retreated a safe distance before the explosion.The great "basket" debate is another intrigue associated with this period. In ensuing years stories of how workers were lowered in baskets and artist's renderings circulated in the east in travel publications. Passengers on the excursion trains that stopped on the Horn were also told the basket tale.In the 1980s, I saw a lifesize depiction of the feat at the State Railroad Museum in Sacramento,Since them, authors have challenged the display as untrue. Some said the slope just isn't steep enough and that ropes alone would have been adequate. Sufficient debate arose that the exhibit was taken down. And yet, the plaque at Cape View, installed in 1999, says wicker boson chairs were used. I've seen the engineer drawings, the topographical maps and have viewed the precipice from both Burnt Flat as well as the Highway 174 view.Since I've climbed trees and rocky hillsides (wearing a harness, mind you), I believe the boson chair makes the most sense.Mostly, I believe the workers would have had to use their feet for stability.Recently, I was given the story of Ah Goong, a Central Pacific crew worker. He said he was a basket man because he was thin and light and that some basket men were 15-year-old boys, who would ride the basket barefoot so their boots would not break through the bottom of the wicker basket.He described how several men were lowered simultaneously in a line by rigs using scaffolds, ropes and pulleys. Goong related the same method was used to do high work in Malaysia to collect bird nests.So, whether it was rope, chair or basket, the Chinese workers used the appropriate method to get the task completed. Obviously, they got the job done. Central Pacific Railroad did not begin using laborers from Asia until the train reached Auburn. By the time the golden spike was driven at Promontory, Utah three years after the Cape Horn road was completed, more than 10,000 Chinese had been brought across the Pacific to work on the railroad.