Return to Gold Mountain Tour

It is no stretch of the imagination to say that the modern United States would not have existed without the contributions of Chinese railroad workers. Following their arrival in the U.S. in the mid-1800s, the workers quite literally laid the foundations for the Transcontinental Railroad, enabling the U.S’s continued Westward Expansion throughout the 19th- and early 20th centuries. In spite of their contributions, however, these workers were subjected to horrific mistreatment and violent discrimination as they attempted to carve out a space for themselves in an entirely foreign land. Shortly after the railroad’s completion, Congress passed the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which provided a 10 year moratorium on all Chinese immigration into the United States. Coupled with systematic efforts to erase the contributions of Chinese railroad workers from history, the Chinese workers which enabled the railroads’ completion were mostly forgotten until recent efforts in the 21st century sought to shed new light on their place in American history. This initiative of the 1882 Foundation hopes to commemorate the work that they did, while honoring the suffering they endured to find a place for themselves in America.