—Walt Whitman, Song of Myself Promontory Summit, Utah Territory, May 10, 1869 While the locomotives panted for the steamy consummation of the wedding of the rails, I was looking for the true bridegrooms: the Chinese who had laid the final tracks. I had no interest in capturing the official flummery. I’d leave that to Hart, Savage, and Russell to fix expertly on their glass-plate negatives for eastern newspapers, souvenir postcards, and stereopticons. I don’t know why I wanted to take the Chinamen’s picture, but I suspect it had to do with Chen. On that long-gone May afternoon in Utah, I had no idea that the coolies were being feted out of sight by Jim Strowbridge in his private car. For all I knew, they might have been pitched off Promontory Summit, buried alive in one of their own excavations, or crated up for shipment to the land of their ancestors. Strowbridge was foreman for the Central Pacific, which had dug and dynamited its way from Sacramento, through the Sierra Nevada, to meet the Union Pacific near Ogden.
