Part 2-Transcontinental Railroad-Mountains To Conquer: Legends of the Old West

Matthew Kerns
May 28
2 min read

Episode 2 of 6 in a series on The Transcontinental Railroad I wrote for Legends of the Old West.

In Episode 2, "Mountains to Conquer," the spotlight shifts westward to the Central Pacific Railroad and its epic, almost unthinkable task—blasting a path through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. From the sheer granite face of Cape Horn to the snowbound horror of the Summit Tunnel, this episode captures the backbreaking labor, deadly winters, and revolutionary engineering that defined the most brutal stretch of the transcontinental route. At the heart of the story are the thousands of Chinese laborers who took on the most dangerous jobs—drilling, blasting, and building through rock and snow with little recognition and no safety net.

You’ll meet dreamer-engineer Theodore Judah, whose vision gave the Central Pacific its path—and whose early death handed that dream to the hard-nosed businessmen known as the Big Four. You'll follow Charles Crocker, James Strobridge, and their Chinese crews as they climb ever higher, facing avalanches, starvation, and the unforgiving granite of the summit. When progress slows to inches per day, they risk everything by deploying raw nitroglycerin—an unstable explosive that can shatter rock but kills just as easily.

This episode is about more than iron and ambition. It’s a story of human grit against the immovable—how a workforce too often erased from the record carved a railroad up, across, and through mountains most believed couldn’t be crossed. Listen now to discover how the Central Pacific defied gravity, weather, and death itself to reach the top of the world—and punch their way through it.

🎧 Listen now to "Hell on Wheels: Mountains to Conquer" on your favorite podcast platform.

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All of the Legends of the Old West podcasts are available at:

https://blackbarrelmedia.com/legends-of-the-old-west/