Greetings family, friends, neighbors and train buddies! 800 feet of mainline in California's Sierra Nevada foothills turned out to be one of the most difficult sections to complete on the entire Transcontinental Railroad. Today's Historic Snippet takes a deep look into Bloomer Cut.....Bill
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BLOOMER CUT
Shortly after the Central Pacific began construction eastward on the first transcontinental railroad in 1864, the railroad ran in to their first seemingly insurmountable barrier just thirty five miles out of Sacramento near Auburn, California. In order for steam locomotives to reach the crest of the Sierra
Nevada mountains with a manageable upward grade of no more than one hundred sixteen vertical feet per mile the railroad would need to find a way around, under, or through eight hundred feet of solid rock conglomerate. While roadbed preparation and track laying proceeded beyond the barrier at Bloomer’s ranch, a small band of workers with picks, shovels and wheel barrows, stayed behind to begin the tedious backbreaking task of cutting a rail passage through the nearly impenetrable ridge.
James Strobridge, Central Pacific’s newly appointed head of construction, quickly realized that breaking up and clearing the natural cement like conglomerate rock was going to be a far more difficult task than anticipated and made the decision to use black powder to loosen the rock for removal, one wheel barrow at a time. Tons of the dangerous explosive, as many as five hundred kegs a day, were carefully hauled from the railroads staging area in the following months to be used in blasting the cut. There were a few serious accidents, at least one fatality,
and countless sore, blistered, bleeding hands and crushed knees resulting from using the explosive. Strobridge himself lost an eye while investigating a seemingly failed charge. Dubbed “The Eighth Wonder of the World” in Central Pacific promotions, Bloomer Cut was completed in fifteen months connecting the Central Pacific Railroad with the Union Pacific Railroad with the eight hundred foot long, sixty three foot deep “V” shaped cut that, after more than 150 years, still continues to be a critical link in the nations railroad system and the legacy
of the Chinese workers, and to James Strobridge who retired to his Castro Valley ranch following the 1869 Golden Spike Ceremony at Promontory Summit in Utah.
-Bill 5/25
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