On Track to Recognition After 125 Years

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.’