Mountain Train

In the 1860s, the mountain corridors shook with explosions. The valleys echoed with the ring of hammers and the clamor of thousands of people. These men labored and toiled with little more than hand tools and black powder to build the transcontinental railroad. Hundreds lost their lives, killed in explosions, swept away in avalanches, or succumbing to injury and disease. These ribbons of steel rail that cross this nation, many routes still in use today, are monuments to their historic achievement.