I'm Paul.

I'm Jerry.

I'm Stuart.

We are Chinese Railroad workers. Even though we are in America and can do just as much as the others can do, we aren’t accepted.

When we lived in China, we had a good life, but we didn’t have any adventure. We came to America by boat because we knew there were lots of jobs available, since it was hard to get all the railroad workers they needed to get to the West without a good form of transportation.

That’s what we came to Sacramento for! To provide a way for other settlers seeking adventure to get to the West quickly, cheaply, and safely.

While we were in Sacramento, we took advantage of the many job offerings by Central Pacific, wanting to build the Transcontinental Railroad from West to East while Union Pacific would be building from the other side.

We were aware of all the dangers, but we took the job anyway. We needed some way to make money! We start out, building as fast as we can, but then we get to the challenge: the looming Sierra Nevada Mountains we see the outlines of to the East.

It’s been days since we started chipping the rock with our hands, and we have only gotten a couple feet. This labor is hard, for over 12 hours a day, and we are paid much less than the American workers.

Today, we switched to explosives. The rock got too hard to chip by hand, so it was our only choice. Even though it makes the work go faster, it is very dangerous since they only want to “risk the Chinese”. One man has already died, he didn’t run away fast enough.

The hard work and danger continues, and only gets harder the higher we get. We say goodbye to the mild nice climate of Sacramento. The weather turns cold, and our food rations suffer.

Luckily, we run into some natives. While the rumors said that the natives were wild and dangerous, they actually were very nice and showed us how to keep warm in this thick snow.