Bloomer's Cut: Pick and Shovel Through the Sierra

Just ahead lies Bloomer's Cut, a notable earthwork on the transcontinental railroad. In the eighteen sixties, the Central Pacific pushed east from Sacramento toward the Sierra Nevada, and this deep trench through solid rock and clay stood in the way. A crew of workers, many of them Chinese laborers, attacked the cut by hand with picks, shovels, and black powder, hauling debris out by horse cart.

What made it remarkable then still holds today: the cut remains much as it was first carved out in the eighteen sixties. You can still see the original cut walls rising steeply on both sides of the right-of-way, a direct look at the muscle and determination that stitched California to the rest of the nation.