General Dodge and the Transcontinental Railroad

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[VOICE OF GENERAL DODGE]  “In 1836, the first public meeting to consider the project of a Pacific railway was called by John Plumbe, a civil engineer of Dubuque, Iowa. Interest in a Pacific railway increased from this time. 

[VOICE OF GENERAL DODGE]  The most feasible line in an engineering and commercial point of view, the line with the least obstacles to overcome, of lowest grades and least curvature, was along the 42nd parallel of latitude. This route was made by the buffalo, next used by the Indians, then by the fur traders, next by the Mormons, and then by the overland emigration to California and Oregon. 

[VOICE OF GENERAL DODGE]  It was known as the Great Platte Valley Route. On this trail, or close to it, was built the Union and Central Pacific railroads to California.” --Grenville Dodge 

[WILLIAM B. FEIS] The thought of having a connection to the West was something that George Washington dreamed about. And I think for Dodge, the future is out there in the West and the possibilities are endless.

[NARRATOR] He was described as a man of indomitable energy, with quick perceptions and resolute to the point of stubbornness. At five feet eight inches, some said he was more Napoleon than Hercules. The governor of Iowa called him a sickly looking fellow. His wife addressed him as Ocean because he was always away.

[PATRICIA LABOUNTY] Dodge always struck me as a really pragmatic person, very down to earth, very this is how it is, and I think it didn't win him a lot of friends in the Victorian era.

[NARRATOR] To those who knew Grenville Dodge, he was driven and ambitious, a rapid thinker, writer and talker who was rapid in arriving at conclusions. He displayed heroism and bravery in the Civil War, surveyed the Western plains through the Rocky Mountains and got himself elected to Congress.

[WILLIAM B. FEIS] Had the worst voting record of the 40th Congress. His day job as chief engineer of the UP was the job he cared most about.

[PATRICIA LABOUNTY] He distinguished himself in the Civil War. He demonstrated that he was a railroad builder under very difficult circumstances. He proves that again, getting to Promontory.

[NARRATOR] He consulted on more than 30 railroads and laid out towns across the West, forever changing the American frontier and the lives of those who lived there. 

[CHUCK SPINKS] The transcontinental railroad was the biggest construction project of its time. Over 1800 miles across some very difficult, unpopulated territory. It was the project of the 19th century worldwide. Dodge was very important to the success of the railroad. 

[NARRATOR] As a soldier, he fought to unite the nation in the Civil War. He would do it again with the Union Pacific Railroad.

[WILLIAM B. FEIS] He's thinking about something that people have been thinking about a long time by that time. What's the best way to get there?

[NARRATOR] At the crossroads of war, politics and industry, Grenville Dodge rose from humble beginnings to become an early force in the Republican Party and a defining figure of the Gilded Age. He transformed his fortune and in the process, his country. 

[NARRATOR] Grenville Mellen Dodge was born in Danvers, Massachusetts, on April 12th, 1831, the oldest of three children to Sylvanus and Julia Dodge.

[WILLIAM B. FEIS] I think it was pretty, pretty tough growing up. His father was someone who really took seriously the ethic of hard work. And he brought his young son, Grenville, his oldest son, along with him, and he used to follow him around in a meat cart and just one of those kids who just wanted to be a part of it. So I think his dad took him everywhere and taught him this value of hard work.

[NARRATOR] At 14, Dodge was hired at a nearby farm where he met Frederick Lander, a civil engineer and soldier. Lander taught him how to survey a railroad line across the property and captivated Dodge with stories of the great railroads pushing west. 

(train whistle)

[PATRICIA LABOUNTY] It wasn't until 1827 that you had the first railroad operating in the United States, and I think that Dodge, his imagination was captured by the idea of this new technology, and I think he was looking for some greater amount of control, some greater amount of achievement, potentially. And I think he saw railroads as a means to an end.

[NARRATOR] Dodge followed in Frederick Lander's footsteps to Vermont, where he earned a civil engineering degree from Norwich University, one of the nation's earliest private military and civil engineering colleges. From there he went west to Illinois, where at the age of 20, he joined his first survey crew as an axeman. 

[CHUCK SPINKS] Most civil engineers started their career on a survey crew, and they started at the bottom as the axeman, the guy that cleared the brush out of the way so that the transit man could see the target of the rod. They start at the bottom and work their way up in a survey crew. You did some of the most difficult jobs that required strength and durability. And frequently in wilderness environments where you didn't have the benefit of a civilization. And that's a great teacher. 

[NARRATOR] In Illinois, Dodge surveyed for the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad under engineer Peter Day, who noted his wonderful energy. “If I told him to do anything, he did it under any and all circumstances.” Rock Island formed the Mississippi and Missouri Railroad Company, and sent Day and Dodge West. From Davenport through Iowa City to Grinnell on through Des Moines, reaching the Missouri River at Council Bluffs, they would conduct the first survey across the state of Iowa. The expedition was recorded by camp cook and sketch artist George Simons and by Dodge in his diary.

[VOICE OF GENERAL DODGE]  November 22nd, 1853. We reached Cainsville, its name just having been changed to Council Bluffs. We were very cordially received by the citizens. They were greatly pleased at the possibility of a railroad coming to them, and ours being the first survey made considerable excitement in the place. --Grenville Dodge

[NARRATOR] The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 created two new territories west of the Missouri River and repealed the Missouri Compromise, opening those territories to the possible expansion of slavery. Settlers poured through western Iowa into Nebraska territory to stake claims and shape the region. When a financial panic halted work on the M&M Railroad at Iowa City, Dodge again moved west, settling along the Elkhorn River in the newly organized territory.

[WILLIAM B. FEIS] He's very clever. He understood from his engineer standpoint where the best route for a railroad would be. And so he bought property. And he did that very deliberately. He became a farmer. But there was always this eye towards someday a railroad's going to be here and they're going to have to buy it from me or I will build it here.

[NARRATOR] His brother Nathan and their father, Sylvanus, joined him on the Elkhorn. Also in the cabin, Grenville's wife, Ruth Anne, whom he had met in Illinois.

[PATRICIA LABOUNTY] Looking at their correspondence, you know, she connects herself to this young person who takes her two states away and not even a state, and then they're homesteading somewhere off the Elkhorn in Nebraska territory. And, you know, she's pregnant and uncomfortable and not really loving it and would much rather live in a town. 

[NARRATOR] For thousands of years, indigenous peoples including the Pawnee, Omaha, Ponca and Cheyenne, used the Elkhorn River Valley for hunting and travel. By 1855, increasing migration strained resources and led to conflict. 

[VOICE OF GENERAL DODGE]  The Pawnees made up a war party of about 50 braves and came rushing down the road toward our cabin. Their appearance, with painted faces and weapons of war made us think that possibly our last day had come. The chief drew up and dismounted at our feet, and made past us to enter the cabin, shouting, Ponca! We standing in wonderment as to what it all meant. In a few moments the chief mounted his pony, and, followed by a few of the young bucks, dashed on down the valley. --Grenville Dodge

[NARRATOR] That June, Ruth Anne gave birth to their daughter, Lettie. Soon after, the Dodge's abandoned their homestead and returned to town. 

[PATRICIA LABOUNTY] When Dodge arrived in Council Bluffs, Council Bluffs was the intersection of travel to the west, so the Mormon migration came through here. People who were going west on the Oregon Trail would often intersect through Council Bluffs. If you were trying to outfit yourself, you would suit up here.

[WILLIAM B. FEIS] In those days, you could open a bank and you could have your own currency. That's kind of how it worked. And so he opened with a partner, Baldwin and Dodge, and this becomes a very prominent and very profitable bank and real estate. And it became a new life for them. And I think it was one that his wife preferred far more than living down on the Elkhorn River.

[NARRATOR] With his brother Nathan, managing operations, Dodge and partner John Baldwin opened a bank, a mill and a general store while running freight lines as far as Denver. They also speculated on land, purchasing and brokering lots along Dodge's proposed M&M line. 

[VOICE OF GENERAL DODGE]  Work was suspended on the M&M road in Iowa, and I continued explorations west by getting all the information I could from the Indians and the fur traders and Mormons until the general route to the Pacific Ocean was pretty fully settled in our own minds. I mapped and made an itinerary of the whole Platte Valley route to Utah, California and Oregon, giving the camping places for each night, showing where wood, grass and water could be found, pointing out where the Fords --

[NARRATOR] In repeated expeditions west for the Mississippi and Missouri Railroad, Dodge surveyed a route along the Platte River Valley, which he referred to as the true Pacific Road. 

[NARRATOR] “The Lord had so constructed the country,” he wrote, “600 miles of it up a single valley without a grade to exceed 15 feet.”

(horses neighing)

[NARRATOR] In August 1859, Illinois politician Abraham Lincoln arrived in Council Bluffs on legal business and gave a speech at the Council Bluffs Concert Hall. Lincoln had represented railroad interests as a lawyer in Illinois and favored national investment in a transcontinental line. Dodge attended the speech with Ruth Anne and afterward, according to Dodge, the two men met.

[VOICE OF GENERAL DODGE]  On the porch of the Pacific Hotel for two hours he engaged me in conversation about what I knew of the country west of the Missouri River. He inquired particularly as to the comparative merit of the 42nd parallel, or Platte Valley lines. He stated that there was nothing more important before the nation at that time than the building of the railroad to the Pacific coast. He ingeniously extracted a great deal of information from me, and I found the secrets I had been holding for my employers in the East had been given to him. --Grenville Dodge

[PATRICIA LABOUNTY] So he actually uses the phrase Lincoln shelled my woods. He wanted to know all the ins and outs. He wanted to know the nitty gritty. And I think Dodge respected that. But not just for that, but for his political views as well. And of course, the very next year, the Republican Party is created, Dodge becomes a huge booster in the state of Iowa for the Republican Party and for nominating Lincoln.

[WILLIAM B. FEIS] I think it matched perfectly with his vision of the West. They were a party born over a crisis in the West, over the controversy over Kansas and Nebraska, and to Dodge that was making slavery national. But it was also a party that wanted to put money behind, government money behind building a railroad, making it a national project that would have national impact.

[NARRATOR] In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected the first Republican Party President of the United States. Southern Representatives immediately vacated Congress and prepared for secession. As part of Iowa's Republican delegation, Dodge attended Lincoln's inauguration in Washington.

[VOICE OF GENERAL DODGE]  Old Abe delivered the greatest speech of the age. It is backbone all over. And Washington, with its 100,000 Republicans, is very, very high tonight. We have won a great victory which has placed us in the true light of the Constitution and the South never should be allowed to break up this Union. Let the nation financially go under and let every river run with blood, but never let it be dissolved. --Grenville Dodge

[explosion booms]

[NARRATOR] On April 12th, 1861, Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, beginning the Civil War. 

[NARRATOR] Having raised the Council Bluffs Guard, Dodge appealed to Iowa Governor Samuel Kirkwood for a command in the Union Army. Friends urged him to stay out of the fight. “Now is the time for war contracts,” wrote fellow Iowa Republican Herbert Hoxie, “there must be money in this war someplace, and we ought to have our share. Don't enlist or take command of a company. Keep clear of that.” Facing similar pressure at home, Dodge told Ruth Anne he would rather take a position of leader than hereafter be forced to be a follower.

[WILLIAM B. FEIS] I think he realized, like many did, those who joined, that the Union was what this was all about. Slavery was a part of it, of course, slavery led to the war. But in the early days of the war, the men who joined to fight for the Union were mainly fighting for the Union. 

[WILLIAM B. FEIS] It was a thing that encapsulated everything that it was to be an American, the Constitution, a democratic republic, security, opportunity and secessionists, the South threatened that, and it was personal to many. 

[WILLIAM B. FEIS] He's hoping to have a railroad that's going to be funded by this government and the people of the Union. And it was, I think that was something worth fighting for. 

[NARRATOR] That summer, Governor Kirkwood gave Dodge command of the fourth Iowa Infantry. In a tent camp south of Council Bluffs, Colonel Grenville Dodge began drilling a thousand men for war. 

[VOICE OF GENERAL DODGE]  Dear mother, I go into the field in 20 days with as fine a body of men as ever drew a sword or shouldered a musket. I go into this war on principle. Pecuniarily it will ruin me. I put my trust in God. If I come out safe, I hope no one will have cause to regret my course. --Grenville Dodge

[NARRATOR] The fourth Iowa Infantry passed the winter of 1861 in Rolla, Missouri, building barracks, fighting disease and waiting. In the spring, Dodge and his men joined a Union campaign into northwestern Arkansas, where Confederate forces made their stand at Pea Ridge. The two day battle would secure Missouri for the Union and become the war's largest engagement west of the Mississippi.

[explosion booms]

[WILLIAM B. FEIS] His troops are key to preventing the Confederates from winning this battle. His brigade fends off at least three assaults by Confederate forces, and then he runs out of ammunition. He decides that the best thing to do is to retreat from the field. 

[screaming] 

[WILLIAM B. FEIS] The Confederates follow him, and then he has his men turn around with their last ammunition, and they fire a volley and then he charges them with bayonets. 

(men fighting)

[WILLIAM B. FEIS] In the reports that came out after that it said Dodge fought like a lion. The Confederate commander believed in that assault that Dodge had far more troops than he did. 

[VOICE OF GENERAL DODGE]  Annie, I have the satisfaction of knowing that I can do my duty though it rained bullets. I never cowered once, but I led charge after charge. My clothes are full of bullets. My horses fell, pierced with dozens of balls. The fighting was terrible. I have been highly complimented by General Curtis, by Colonel Carr, and by all. I saved the day. Had I given way, General Curtis and his army would today be prisoners. --Grenville Dodge

[NARRATOR] Dodge was promoted to Brigadier General for his leadership and bravery in battle. Home with Lettie and their second daughter, Ella, Ruth Anne received her husband's war correspondence with trepidation and fear.

[VOICE OF RUTH ANNE DODGE] Dear Ocean, I think the bravest is the one who is the coolest and most prudent and don't throw away his own life or his men's for the chance of being puffed in the paper. And I hope you think so, Ocean. Don't try to be foremost. Be brave. But save your life. And if you expose it, think how, if it is lost, it will cause lifelong misery to me and our children. 

[NARRATOR] In July, President Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act of 1862. The law provided federal loans and land grants to two companies for the construction of a transcontinental line. Central Pacific Railroad would build east from Sacramento, and Union Pacific Railroad would build west, the law stated, from a point on the western boundary of the state of Iowa, to be fixed by the President of the United States.

[WILLIAM B. FEIS] When the war comes, Southern representatives, senators and House members left to go back to their states who had seceded. So you basically have a northern dominated congress of northern states. And so it's very easy now to pass that legislation. But it was also to begin the process of connecting East and West and peopling it and getting that process underway.

[NARRATOR] So that the companies might repay their bond loans, Central Pacific and Union Pacific were guaranteed vast land grants per mile of track laid, totaling nearly 20 million acres. Friends and associates urged Dodge to quit the army, return home and take part in the coming financial windfall. 

[NARRATOR] But it was a different line that would earn Dodge's attention in the summer of ‘62, when he was assigned to repair the Mobile and Ohio Railroad from Columbus, Kentucky 150 miles south to Corinth, Mississippi. 

[CHUCK SPINKS] The Civil War was the first railroad war. The railroads were part of the battlefield, so whomever was using it, the other side would attack and destroy, burn the trestles, burn the bridges, rip up track. So it was the job of then the other side to come back and rebuild the bridges and relay the rail. And Grenville Dodge was an expert at that. 

[NARRATOR] On January 1st, 1863, President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation declared enslaved people in the rebelling Confederate States to be free. Within months, hundreds of refugee migrants gathered at Dodge's command outside Corinth, Mississippi. He organized a camp to house and feed them, and, acting without approval, raised and armed two regiments of black troops.

[VOICE OF GENERAL DODGE]  The government has announced its policy and the whole army approves of it. I believe that hereafter negro troops will be one of the parts of our army. Negroes are the only friends we have in the South, and I cannot see the benefit of making them enemies. --Grenville Dodge

[NARRATOR] Dodge was called to Corinth at the behest of commanding Union General Ulysses S. Grant. 

[NARRATOR] His orders were to protect supply lines and watch for Confederate reinforcements coming from the East, while grant focused Union forces on Vicksburg to the south.

[WILLIAM B. FEIS] When he got to Corinth, Dodge found that there had been a small unit that had already been in place that did scouting and spying and brought in information. So he took that and built on that, and it became this sprawling network out of Corinth in the fall of 1862, into 1863, through the Vicksburg campaign.

[NARRATOR] Dodge would build a spy apparatus of more than 130 agents stretching as far as Atlanta. Scouts traveling behind enemy lines learned Confederate troop locations and movements. They retrieved key information from spies embedded at Selma, Mobile, Chattanooga, Vicksburg and elsewhere.

[PATRICIA LABOUNTY] Dodge had no problem enlisting women to spy for him. They could go unnoticed, and they could be in places that no one would find suspicious and could overhear conversations.

[NARRATOR] Dodge funded the operation by selling seized cotton and other goods. When pressed by his superior officer, General Hurlbut, to provide names, locations and vouchers for his scouts, Dodge refused. His stance would be supported by General Grant.

[WILLIAM B. FEIS] I went to research this. I was at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and the Army records, they have all of the vouchers for Secret Service and everything, and I looked through these vouchers, and I never found a single one from Dodge's command. And then I went to the State Historical Society of Iowa, and I looked in the Dodge papers, and there they were. They should be with the army files. But he kept them there. And so the Army never knew who worked for him, how much they were paid.

[NARRATOR] In July 1863, Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg marked a turning point in the war. Dodge was approached by Doctor Thomas C. Durant, head of the newly formed Union Pacific Railroad, to leave the army and become its chief engineer. A doctor by training, Durant had earned a fortune in railroads and a reputation for ruthless dealing. Dodge elected to stay at the front, but he asked Durant to involve him after the war. “Have an eye for me at some point,” he wrote the doctor, “this I know you will do.”

[NARRATOR] Over the next year, Dodge and his men rebuilt railroads across the south, constructing 182 bridges and more than 100 miles of track. He was promoted to Major General and led the 16th Corps under General William Tecumseh Sherman in the campaign for Atlanta, fighting in some of the bloodiest conflicts of the war. 

[gunfire]

[VOICE OF GENERAL DODGE]  Unless you can conceive of a battlefield where 10,000 men fall, or hundreds of cannons thunder, and a hundred thousand muskets belch forth death for hours, you can have no conception of a battle. --Grenville Dodge

[VOICE OF RUTH ANNE DODGE] Dear Ocean, the days and weeks creep by, and still there is no sign of Sherman's army resting. This summer's work will use up our brave army terribly. Every bullet that hits one of our brave soldiers worse than kills those depending on him at home. The last thought at night, the first thought in the morning is what has fate in store for me? Little do you men know what agony at times we at home feel. Oh, when will this war end? 

[NARRATOR] By the summer of 1864, Union forces dug in outside Atlanta and cut off supply lines. Dodge and the 16th Corps prepared to wait it out. Then something happened that would remove Dodge from the eastern front for good.

[WILLIAM B. FEIS] He goes to the front line trenches of his troops, and he's going to be kind of observing the Confederates who are across the way. One officer looks through the portal and then Dodge looks through. But what they didn't know, and what he didn't know was that Confederate snipers looked for shadows. When they saw a shadow in the box, they knew somebody's head was there. 

(gunfire)

[WILLIAM B. FEIS] Dodge, all of a sudden topples over backwards. His hat flies off and there's blood everywhere. So everyone pretty much thinks that Grenville Dodge is now no more. 

[NARRATOR] Word of Dodge's shooting spread quickly. He was all but declared dead on the front page of the New York Herald, but the bullet that struck his head outside Atlanta was a ricochet. He regained consciousness in General Sherman's tent with a fractured skull and severe concussion. He would experience headaches the rest of his life. Atlanta fell in September, and the Confederacy entered its final days. Reassigned to Saint Louis, Dodge took command of the Department of the Missouri, overseeing much of the Western frontier. His task, put down guerrilla uprisings and bring order to the plains.

[VOICE OF GENERAL DODGE]  In command of the Department of the Missouri, I found all the Indian tribes on the plains at war. General Grant sent a dispatch asking if a campaign upon the plains could be made in the winter. Having spent 8 or 10 years of my life upon the plains before the war, I answered that it could. --Grenville Dodge

[PATRICIA LABOUNTY] You're looking at a region to the central part of the United States, the Great Plains region, the largest part of the Louisiana Purchase, however you want to think about it, you have a succession of agreements. So even in Louisiana Purchase, it says that the agreements that the Spanish and then later the French, made with indigenous people in this region, needed to be recognized by the United States in the purchase. And now we are going to award some of it to the railroads. But it was predicated upon the extinguishing of the land rights indigenous people had. So none of that had been decided. The U.S. government was sending envoys to indigenous nations who were not organized that way, making a treaty that people signed. And then when the treaty was broken by either side, you know, violence ensued. 

[NARRATOR] After the 1864 Sand Creek massacre, in which Colorado militia killed nearly 200 Cheyenne and Arapaho, many of them women and children, violence spread across the plains. Fighters cut telegraph lines, attacked stagecoaches and wagon trains and killed settlers. 

[NARRATOR] Dodge sent brigades west to restore communication lines and drive native communities away from overland routes. Reports described brutal encounters with dozens, sometimes hundreds, killed. 

[VOICE OF GENERAL DODGE]  The Indian character is such that he will not stand continual following, pounding and attacking. Their life and methods are not accustomed to it. None of our campaigns have been successful that have not been prepared to follow the Indians day and night, attacking them at every opportunity until they are worn out, disbanded or forced to surrender. We've got to clean the Indian out or give up. The government may take its choice. --Grenville Dodge

[NARRATOR] With violence escalating across the plains, the Army's strategy drew congressional scrutiny. Dodge and his men were withdrawn from the region in late 1865. 

[NARRATOR] While Dodge worked in the West, the nation he served was transformed by triumph and tragedy. On April 9th, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, effectively ending the Civil War. Six days later, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Dodge traveled to Springfield, Illinois, where he commanded the military guard at Lincoln's funeral, later calling it the saddest sight of his life. 

[VOICE OF GENERAL DODGE]  Lincoln embodied in the mind of the people two great issues that were really only one, the preservation of the American Union and the abolition of slavery. They were so plain, so vividly defined, and so back of him were the masses of the people, their eyes fixed with pathetic faith and loyalty upon that tall, gaunt, stooping, homely man who to their minds meant everything that makes a cause worth dying for. --Grenville Dodge

[NARRATOR] By 1866, Union Pacific executive Thomas Durant needed a chief engineer. 

[NARRATOR] Through his construction company, Crédit Mobilier of America, Durant profited from every mile of track Union Pacific laid. He frequently manipulated the route, adding unnecessary miles, curves and grades to increase subsidies. But his track was headed nowhere. Durant offered Dodge a $10,000 salary, stock options and control of the route. Dodge accepted and retired from the Army in May of 1866. He was 35 years old. In Omaha, Dodge brought military discipline to Union Pacific, and the line grew from 40 to 350 miles by the end of the year. 

[VOICE OF RUTH ANNE DODGE] Dear sister, Ocean is not very well. The Republicans have kept at him till he is consented to run for Congress, and now he is truly sorry. Representative Kasson and his wife were divorced. He has been proved a scoundrel politically and socially, and the good men of the party do not want to send him to Washington again. I hope they will beat him, though I would much rather Ocean should not be the man. 

[NARRATOR] Though he showed little interest, Iowa Republicans nominated Dodge for Congress. He spent Election Day in Colorado surveying the Rocky Mountains. News of his victory reached him days later.

[PATRICIA LABOUNTY] People thought he should be a congressional representative, and Dodge didn't say no, but he really didn't say yes either. And I think he had a lot of frustration for the practice of politics. Persuasive speaking and compromise in getting everybody on the same page. I don't think he enjoyed that process, and I don't think he enjoyed being in DC.

[VOICE OF GENERAL DODGE]  Dear Annie, yesterday, the 39th Congress adjourned and the 40th commenced operations. I have had the blues ever since I left home and this place is infernal. It is loaded down with applications and importunities, and I am sick to death of it. --Grenville Dodge

[NARRATOR] By the summer of 1867, Dodge had left Washington to rejoin his survey crews. The following year he took a leave of absence from the House of Representatives. For Dodge, one term in Congress was more than enough. 

(train whistle blows)

[VOICE OF W.A. BELL] On they came. Two men seized the end of a rail and start forward, the rest of the gang taking hold by twos. At the word of command, the rail is dropped in its place. Close behind the first gang come the gages, spikers and bolters, and a lively time they make of it. It is a grand anvil chorus that those sturdy sledges are playing across the plains. 

[VOICE OF W.A. BELL] Three strokes to the spike. Ten spikes to a rail. 400 rails to a mile. 1800 miles to San Francisco. 21 million times are those sledges to be swung before the great work of modern America is complete. --W.A. Bell. 

[NARRATOR] The operation consisted of 10,000 graders, woodcutters, bridge builders and track layers with 10,000 animals in tow. Dodge's team of surveyors led the way, followed by the bridge builders and behind them, Casement's Army, a team of a thousand men operating under the command of General John Casement, laying up to three miles of track per day. In the summer of 1867, Dodge established a supply depot and laid out a town at the base of the Laramie Range. He named it Cheyenne after the nearby Cheyenne people.

[PATRICIA LABOUNTY] Cheyenne, the Magic City on the plains was, you know, Dodge's creation. North Platte, Nebraska. Kearney. Grand Island. Grand Island was actually on the other side of the river and was moved to align with the railroad. And then you have the railroad and the agent Dodge, who were in charge of what's Main Street? Where's the railroad property going to be? Where is the town going to develop and how is it going to develop? What areas are going to be set aside for the military? How are we going to support the intervening mile sections, which were homestead? Right. So it was a question of business development alongside construction. So they were making the case for the railroad as they moved.

[NARRATOR] Dodge's line began to populate the West. In a mobile tent city called Hell on Wheels, gamblers, saloon keepers, prostitutes and outlaws chased eager clientele on the tracks of the Union Pacific. By year's end, Cheyenne had more than 4000 residents. The road climbed a gradual 15 feet per mile from the Platte Valley, reaching an elevation of more than 6000 feet at Cheyenne. From there, the line steepened into the Rocky Mountains, cresting at 8200 feet at Sherman Summit, the highest point reached by any railroad on the continent at the time. Westward the line descended along a rare natural slope of bedrock known as the gangplank. The route then reached Laramie, established months earlier by Dodge and his surveyors, and continued toward the Great Divide Basin. 

[VOICE OF GENERAL DODGE]  After reaching the west rim of the Red Desert, you immediately drop into the valley of Bitter Creek, the waters of which flow into the Pacific. The crossing of the continental divide by the Union Pacific is thus by way of an open prairie of comparatively low elevation, about 7000 feet instead of a mountain range. The work of building the road there was unexpectedly light, and it almost seems that nature made this great opening in the Rocky Mountains expressly for the passage of a transcontinental railway. --Grenville Dodge 

[CHUCK SPINKS]  One of the first obstacles that they encountered in the Laramie Mountains was Dale Creek. Following a moderate grade and a good alignment required a bridge across Dale Creek. Even though this bridge would end up being the highest railroad bridge in the world, when it was built, it was very feasible. They hired a bridge contractor to build it. All of the lumber and the steel for the bridge were milled in Chicago and taken to the site. They did have some exposure to wind. They placed cables attached to the top of the trestle and tied down in the canyon itself. Bridge also had interesting construction. It used trusses at the top of the bridge to support the tracks, which also helped to stiffen the the trestle. But it was still shaky and the speed limit across it was four miles an hour. So the trains when they got there, slowed down to a crawl. Of course, the passengers are probably scared to death, but that was one of the major engineering feats of the Union Pacific Railroad. 

[dog barking] 

[birds chirping]

[VOICE OF RUTH ANNE DODGE] Dear Ocean, Hoxie was over this morning. He told me the company had telegraphed you to return with surveys. As to being ordered about everywhere by Durant, I would not do it, and I have thought lately you could do better off the road than on. How can you like being gone so much and having so many times to fight men like Durant? I think there is more in Seymour's being out there now than you think. He is cunning and crafty and you had best look out for him. --Ruth Anne Dodge

[CHUCK SPINKS] I don't know how well Durant actually knew Dodge and knew what he was getting into when he hired Dodge. Dodge had his expectations that he would be responsible and in charge of the engineering aspects of the construction. Durant, in the meantime, had hired a consultant, a guy named Seymour, a civil engineer, and he started listening to Seymour more than Dodge. That started a long feud between Dodge and Durant. Speed became most important, and speed meant shorter, and shorter frequently meant steeper grades, sharper turns, cut corners, and that meant grades in alignment that Dodge didn't approve of. Those battles were constant until finally Dodge put his foot down and wouldn't accept anything from Seymour. 

[NARRATOR] In July 1868, Durant summoned Dodge to Fort Sanders, south of Laramie, intending to remove him as chief engineer. Instead, he arrived to find Dodge flanked by generals Philip Sheridan, William Tecumseh Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant, then a leading candidate for president.

[PATRICIA LABOUNTY] In this, Dodge essentially forces a confrontation that, you know, you understood when I came on, I was in charge of where the railroad was going to go, its placement. If you don't stop, I'm going to not participate anymore. I'm going to leave. And Grant essentially tells Durant, if Dodge leaves, the federal government will no longer support this endeavor. So, Dodge is literally bringing the full force of not just the US Army and the military support for the building of the railroad, but actually federal support for this, the grants and the subsidies and certifying the railroad. And so Durant backs off. That photograph at Fort Sanders by Andrew Russell is phenomenal because you have Durant and Dodge are pictured, and they're as far apart as you could possibly get in the photograph.

[VOICE OF GENERAL DODGE]  I met them and refuted every one of their statements. Seymour and Durant did not face me in the matter at all. General Grant and General Sherman took very strong ground, telling them frankly that the government would not stand for any change in my lines. I had stated frankly that I would not submit to such interference as had been made, that it was not for the benefit of the road, but was simply for the purpose of driving me off of the road. A view of this gathering of officers was caught by a photographer. Probably no more noted military gathering has occurred since the Civil War. --Grenville Dodge 

[NARRATOR] On May 10th, 1869, Union Pacific and Central Pacific came together at Promontory Summit, Utah. As Central Pacific emerged over the Sierra Nevada from the West, Union Pacific crews labored through the winter to lay more miles of track before the two lines met. 

[NARRATOR] To hold the grade through Echo Canyon, crews blasted through the Wasatch Mountains and drove a tunnel more than 700 feet long. Approaching Ogden and the Great Salt Lake, Mormon contractors helped grade the roadbed, while Union Pacific crews excavated miles of rock and tunneled through hard limestone and quartzite at Weber Canyon. 

[NARRATOR] Winding slowly through a narrow gorge, they erected Devil's Gate Bridge to cross the Weber River. At Promontory, Union Pacific's Thomas Durant and Central Pacific's Leland Stanford took turns at the mall, driving a ceremonial spike. 

[PATRICIA LABOUNTY] The photograph we all think of as iconic of that moment was manufactured by the engineers, Simon Montague for Central Pacific and Dodge, who is on the right side in that photograph, frustrated by the pomp and circumstance of the day, and didn't think that any of the photographs before really represented the guys who got it done. So they invited the crews of the two locomotives, which are on top, and then all of their construction foremen to be in this photograph, like the real people who made it work. 

[PATRICIA LABOUNTY] And then that photograph became the iconic image of the day, because the glass plate photograph that was taken of the final spike being driven broke on site, which is the downside of glass plate photography. One of the most obvious omissions from the photograph are the Chinese crews that worked for Central Pacific and who, of course, were given the honor of laying the last rail during the ceremony. But they're not obviously represented. 

[NARRATOR] Dodge had steered the Union Pacific more than 1000 miles west from Council Bluffs. This is the way to India, he declared before taking his turn at the mall with daughter Lettie looking on. And with it travel from New York to San Francisco dropped from five months to just seven days. Dodge telegraphed President Ulysses S. Grant. 

[VOICE OF GENERAL DODGE]  The time to which you have looked interested today arrived. It is now all rail across the continent. It gives me great satisfaction that the work was completed during your administration. --Grenville Dodge 

[NARRATOR] At just 38, Dodge had helped unite the nation a second time. The next year, Dodge retired from Union Pacific and returned to Council Bluffs a wealthy man. He and Nathan supported hundreds of Council Bluffs families through their business ventures, and Dodge himself had amassed a fortune worth millions today. At home, he turned his attention to a project he had long neglected, his family. 

[MICHELLE HRDLICKA] They had three daughters. The oldest daughter, Lettie, the middle daughter, Ella, and the youngest was Ann Dodge and was the last Dodge to live in this home.

[NARRATOR] Dodge commissioned and helped design a 14 room Victorian home overlooking the Missouri River and the western frontier.

[MICHELLE HRDLICKA] One of the reasons he built it up on the bluff is it overlooked the city or actually the frontier at that time. But he could also see the railroad yard.

[PATRICIA LABOUNTY] Dodge's home in Council Bluffs, I think, really is a culmination of him finally achieving that level of respect that he had craved. This house he's building in 1869, you know, has plumbing. It has running water, like it has ice boxes. He's definitely present throughout the house as, you know, being a pragmatic engineer and hands on in all the details. 

[NARRATOR] In total, he would host five U.S. presidents at his home in Council Bluffs. But neither the house nor Iowa would hold him for long. 

[NARRATOR] After Promontory, Dodge became one of the most sought after railroad builders in the world. Working across the American West and abroad, he created multiple railroad construction companies and served as president of seven lines. In all, he was involved in the engineering and construction of more than 60,000 miles of rail. He amassed wealth and influence in the Gilded Age, awarding lucrative contracts to himself and his associates, and receiving millions in federal funds to supply goods to indigenous nations on the plains. Ruth Anne and Dodge finally came together in New York City, where they lived off and on for more than two decades, immersed in the culture and society she had once imagined on the frontier. 

[NARRATOR] As an elder statesman, Dodge honored Union veterans and helped memorialize leaders like General Sherman. He led tens of thousands as grand marshal at the dedication of Grant's Tomb for his friend, Ulysses S. Grant. Theodore Roosevelt called him essentially American and told Dodge, I would rather have had your experience in the Civil War and seen what you have seen than to be president of the United States. But Grenville Dodge's story would remain largely unknown.

[PATRICIA LABOUNTY] I think Dodge really does get a bad rap overall. There were biographies of him that were done at a time when sort of grandiose language was popular, and I think that damaged his reputation a little bit. I think he might have taken some bad advice when he wrote, you know, his couple of booklets or pamphlets and, you know, use that same type of language. But when you look at the things that Dodge did on a daily basis, things he wrote, you know, he always comes across as just not very grandiose and not a braggart and not someone who's trying to put himself above everybody else, but just really try to achieve the goals of the project. And that's who I think he probably was. And so I think he gets a bad rap in history. And in fact, for the history of building the transcontinental railroad, he's almost erased out of popular thinking, which is interesting to me because he, you know, was probably more than any other individual, at least on the UP side, critical to its completion.

[VOICE OF NATHAN DODGE] Dear Brother, if you still call this place your home and I hope you do, I think it would be well for you to contribute something every year to this hospital, same as you would probably do if you lived here. There is no better way to keep in sympathy with the changing population of a city than by making regular contributions to its most deserving charities. You have been away so much. I noticed the last time your name was mentioned in the papers, you were spoken of as a former resident of this city. --Nathan P. Dodge

[NARRATOR] In 1907, Dodge returned to his home in Council Bluffs, where he would live out his years with his daughter, Lettie. Ruth Anne remained in New York, visiting each spring when the lilacs bloomed. He invested in local charities, supporting libraries and hospitals, churches and schools, animal welfare groups and families in need. In his will, he established a trust that would continue to support Council Bluffs more than a century after his death. 

[NARRATOR] From an office above the Council Bluffs Savings Bank, formerly Baldwin and Dodge, he organized his papers, wrote recollections of Lincoln, the Civil War and Union Pacific and maintained regular correspondence with decision makers around the country. He died of pancreatic cancer on January 3rd, 1916, at the age of 84. Thousands lined the streets of Council Bluffs as Dodge was transported by caisson in a formal procession fit for a Major General. Ruth Anne, unable to travel, remained in New York. She died eight months later. “So passes the last of the titans of that elder day,” wrote the New York Sun. “Grenville M. Dodge was the American of yesterday, filling to the full the American ideal of courage, vision, action, and candor, and should have constant study from the American of today.” 

[WILLIAM B. FEIS] He was born into a very different country in 1831 than he left in 1916. He was in the moment with the Civil War that changed the nature of the very fabric of society, connecting East and West physically with the railroad, his business enterprises, and he became a millionaire. But he also was a reformer in ways he loved to help people. I mean, he really in his hometown, especially veterans. Then he died in the second year of World War I. So he witnessed a change of not just warfare, but of life in the United States and life in the world. I always think that had he been able, probably in World War I, had he lived to 1917, when the war came to the United States, he would have gone, I have no doubt. 

[ANNOUNCER] Unleash Council Bluffs celebrates all things that make our city unlike anywhere else, on purpose. Live music performances, rich railroad heritage, Loess Hills adventures, and historic architecture. Learn more at unleashcb.com. 

[ANNOUNCER] Funding for this program is provided by Friends, the Iowa PBS Foundation, generations of families and friends who feel passionate about the programs they watch on Iowa PBS.