onvention sent him to Washington, D.C., to see the
President, and to try to get Congress to pass a Pacific Railroad
Bill. He had very little help in the East, but at last four men
of Sacramento, Leland Stanford, C.P. Huntington, Mark Hopkins, and
Charles Crocker, took an interest in Judah's plans, and in '61 the
Central Pacific Railroad Company was formed. Mr. Judah went back
to the mountains and studied the pines in summer and the winter
snowbanks, to make sure of the easiest grades and the shortest and
best way for the track-layers. He found that to follow the Truckee
River from near Lake Donner to the Humboldt Desert, would mean the
least work. The tunnels would be through rock, and he believed that
snow might easily be kept off the track with a snow-plough.

His report pleased the company, and they sent him again to present the
case at Washington. In '62 President Lincoln signed an act or bill to
allow the Union and Central Pacific companies to build a railroad and
a telegraph line from the Missouri River to the Pacific. In California
the land for fifteen miles on each side of the way laid out was given
to the railroad company, and two years was allowed them to build the
first hundred miles of track.

Ground was broken for the Central Pacific the next year in Sacramento,
and Governor Stanford dug up the first shovelful of earth. Then the
work went steadily on, but it was hard to raise money. Stanford
and his company carried the line forward as fast as possible. More
land-grants were given, which doubled the company's holdings, and in
'65 the road was fifty-five miles past Sacramento and had climbed over
much difficult work.

The steamship owners, the express and stage companies were all against
the railroad, and tried in every way to make people think that an
engine could never cross the Sierras. Yet the grading went on, while
an army of five thousand men and six hundred horses was at work
cutting down trees and hills and filling up the low places. A bridge
was built over the American River, and slowly but surely the track
climbed the steep mountain-sides. Most of the laborers were Chinese,
as white men found mining or farming paid them better.

In '67 the iron horse had not only climbed the mountains but had
reached the state line, and the Union Pacific, which had been laying
its tracks over the plains of the Platte River, began to hasten
westward. The two railroads were racing to meet each other, and the
Cent