For six years, from 1863 to 1869, thousands of Chinese workers blasted 15 tunnels through the solid granite of the Sierra Nevada Mountains to build the Central Pacific Railroad - the western part of the First Transcontinental Railroad.
In 1937, the
California State Railroad Museum was built at the location of the first rail that was laid for this railroad and over the years, a number of plaques recognized the significance of the construction. In 1963, a California Historical Marker was installed at the location, followed by the recognition as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1968.
On May 10, 1969, precisely 100 years after the completion of the railroad, the Chinese Historical Society and the San Francisco Chinese Community installed a plaque at this location. The inscription is in Mandarin, Cantonese and English. It reads: |
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California State Railroad Museum: Model of a Gov. Stanford locomotive passing through one of the tunnels
Plaques at the location of the first rail.
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