(rshsdepot) On Track to Recognition After 125 Years

["Jim Dent" <james.dent_@_itochu.com>]

-From the LA Times...

On Track to Recognition After 125 Years
Ceremony: More than 100 people turn out to commemorate historic completion
of north- south rail line at hands of Chinese laborers.


By PATRICIA WARD BIEDERMAN, TIMES STAFF WRITER


Metrolink's Frank Mendoza drove a gold-colored spike into the track
Wednesday at a desolate spot in the Santa Clarita Valley.

The ceremony, commemorating the completion 125 years ago of the first
north-south railway line in California, drew more than 100 politicians,
schoolchildren, Chinese Americans and railroad buffs.

Also present were the ghosts of the thousands of Chinese immigrants who
built the railroad. As a historical marker erected at the site in 1976
explained: "We honor over 3,000 Chinese who helped build the Southern
Pacific Railroad and the San Fernando Tunnel. Their labor gave California
the first North-South railway, changing the state's history." Nobody knows
for certain how many Chinese died building the railway and the mile-long San
Fernando Tunnel, then the longest tunnel west of the Appalachians, said
speaker Irvin Lai, president of the Chinese Historical Society of Southern
California.

"In those days, they didn't report that stuff," Lai said.

The work was completed under terrible conditions, especially the tunnel,
which was built through rock weakened by water and oil and subject to
cave-ins, other speakers said.

The railroad was "representative of a host of achievements by Chinese
Americans at a time when the Chinese were one of the dominant labor forces
in the West, involved in most public works projects," said Eugene Moy, vice
president of the Chinese historical group.

Joe Bonino, vice chairman of the Southern California chapter of the Railway
and Locomotive Historical Society, said Los Angeles was a "sleepy little
mission town" until the railroad plugged it into the transcontinental
railway system and the national economy.

Metrolink carried dozens of VIPs from downtown Los Angeles for the ceremony,
held at the site of Lang Station, the depot where thousands celebrated the
completion of the line on Sept. 5, 1876. At the original ceremony, the crowd
cheered as railway baron Charles Crocker drove a genuine gold spike into the
track, using a silver hammer.

The depot was torn down in the 1960s, despite the efforts of local
conservationists to save it.

Metrolink's Mike McGinley said the original celebration was marked by a
contest to see who would be first to finish the last 500 feet of track--the
men working north from Los Angeles or those working south from the Tehachapi
Mountains.

The Los Angeles group won, McGinley said, "and the celebration they had here
then was a lot noisier than this one."

Speaker March Fong Eu, former California secretary of state, said the spot
was consecrated by the blood, sweat and tears of Chinese workers who
realized the vision of railroad magnates but received little or no credit
for their labor.

"This afternoon we pause to commemorate those who really linked Southern
California with steel 125 years ago," said Eu, who has announced she will
again seek the office of secretary of state.

Loren Martens, chairman of the railway historical society, said he was glad
to see children in the audience.

"You've got kids here who have never seen a steam engine," he said.

Cody Mortensen, 9, was one of 28 students from Santa Clarita's Pinecrest
School at the ceremony. Several of his classmates got to try their hand at
driving the spike into the track.

Asked what he learned at the event, the fourth-grader said the railroad had
been there a long time, "and a lot of people put a lot of hard work into
it."

One of Cody's teachers, Cynthia Neal Harris, had proposed the field trip.
Harris is a past president of the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society.

"I couldn't let this pass without having young people participate," she
said. "I knew how important it was, especially to our community. They'll
never forget this as long as they live."

'We pause to commemorate those who really linked Southern California with
steel 125 years ago.'

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