The Union Pacific Railroad

The Union Pacific Railroad was central to the creation and growth of Cheyenne, Fort D.A. Russell, and the Wyoming Territory. After Congress approved the Pacific Railroad Act in 1863 and President Abraham Lincoln signed it into law, the Union Pacific began building west from Omaha while the Central Pacific built east from Sacramento, competing to lay track across nearly 1800 miles. Delayed by shortages caused by the U.S. Civil War, the first rail was not laid in Omaha until late 1865. In the summer of 1867, Union Pacific chief engineer General Grenville M. Dodge chose the site of a Crow Creek crossing as a division point, named it Cheyenne, and planned it as a major railroad city. He surveyed the town himself, and its location took advantage of the gradual prairie slope, the gangplank, and a practical crossing of the Laramie Mountains at Sherman Pass. The first steam locomotive reached Cheyenne on November 14, 1867, and by 1868 the settlement had grown to 3,000 to 4,000 residents with businesses, schools, churches, and newspapers, earning the nickname Magic City of the Plains. The railroad’s arrival also brought the Army, which established Fort D.A. Russell to protect workers as Sioux and Cheyenne resistance threatened construction. West of Sherman, workers built the Dale Creek Trestle in 1867-1868 across a gorge about 150 feet deep and 650 feet wide, creating the highest and most dangerous crossing on the Union Pacific line and the highest railway bridge in the world at the time. On May 10, 1869, at Promontory Summit, Utah, Union Pacific’s Engine 119 and Central Pacific’s Jupiter met, ceremonially linking East and West, and regular passenger service began five days later, reducing coast-to-coast travel from 166 days by wagon train in 1849 to 10 days by rail. The completed transcontinental railroad opened a new era of western settlement, agriculture, mining, and industry, while Union Pacific land grants and cattle shipping helped shape Cheyenne and the surrounding region. After earlier depot buildings and a hotel burned, Union Pacific began a new grand depot in 1886 and completed it in 1888, designed in Richardsonian Romanesque style by Henry Van Brunt. In January 1889, Union Pacific president Charles Adams announced that the system’s central repair shops would be located in Cheyenne, supporting more than 3,000 railroad workers there, and Cheyenne remained important to the railroad through the steam era and beyond, as Wyoming moved toward statehood in 1890.

Cheyenne, Wyoming · United States