Getty Museum

[Cape Horn, C.P.R.R.]

Date

about 1878–1885

Medium

Albumen silver print

Culture

American

Department

Photographs

Institution

Getty Museum

In 1862 an Indiana state representative observed that the transcontinental railway " . . . could never be constructed on terms applicable to ordinary roads . . . It is to be constructed through almost impassible mountains, deep ravines, canyons, gorges, and over arid and sandy plains . . . " This photograph of the American River's precipitous canyon illustrates the accuracy of those words. A team of nearly seven thousand men, mostly Chinese, was required to blast and cut the curving roadbed along this three-mile path. To place the blasting powder and light the fuses, men were lowered in chairs or baskets, after which they yelled to a man above to haul them up. Hugging the Cape Horn mountainside, this train paused momentarily with a number of brave men standing on top of its boxcars, overlooking the cavernous gorge some twelve to twenty-two hundred feet below. Trains passing through Cape Horn often stopped so tourists could get out of their cars and gaze at this awe-inspiring gorge and grade.

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