Legends of the Old West - HELL ON WHEELS Ep. 5 | “Last Mountain, Last Battle”

Episode Date: June 18, 2025

After surviving the chaos of the Hell on Wheels towns of Wyoming, the Union Pacific pushes into Utah. Once there, they call upon Mormon workers to help build through treacherous canyons as they inch closer to the finish line at Promontory Summit.  Thanks to our sponsor, HelloFresh! To get started, check out our plan: HelloFresh.com/legends10fm Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join Apple users join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes, bingeable seasons and bonus episodes. Click the Black Barrel+ banner on Apple to get started with a 3-day free trial. For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. On YouTube, subscribe to LEGENDS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Chevrolet employee pricing event is on now. Get a big cash purchase discount of up to $11,300 on the 2025 Chevrolet Silverado LDZR2 and Silverado HDZR2. With a factory installed lift kit and Multimatic DSSV dampers on both the Silverado LD and HDZR2, you'll have all the capability you need to leave the asphalt behind. Hurry in! Employee pricing is on for a limited time. Visit your local Chevrolet dealer for details. No Frills delivers. Get groceries delivered to your door from No Frills with PC Express. Shop online and get $15 in PC Optimum Points on your first five orders. Shop now at nofrills.ca. The Central Pacific Railroad had blasted through the Sierra Nevada mountains in the summer of 1868 and then spent the second half of the year marching

through the sweltering heat and dust of the Nevada desert. As the winter of 1868-1869 arrived and the railroad crossed into the great Salt Lake Desert of northern Utah, everyone involved understood the end was near. The most ambitious public works program in the short history of the United States was almost complete. Representatives of both railroads spent months haggling over the exact spot where the two railroads would meet.

And while they debated in boardrooms and the halls of Congress until they finally reached a compromise in the spring of 1869, the crews kept working. The Central Pacific made up for lost time from the mountain campaign by pouring on speed as it crossed the Nevada desert. At the Wyoming-Utah border, the opposite was happening for the Union Pacific. The U.P. had raced westward across Nebraska, northern Colorado, and southern Wyoming. It had battled its share of obstacles, like Sherman Summit and the Dale Creek Gorge, and its U.S. Army escort had fought actual battles with Native American

war parties. The actions were more like skirmishes, but the workers had lived in constant fear during the trek through Wyoming. The pace of construction stayed solid, despite the obstacles, and as the line approached Utah, it faced its final major challenge, a pair of switchback canyons through the Wasatch Mountains. But before the workers tackled the challenge, Union Pacific officials had to make a choice. The other obstacle that had constantly plagued the railroad was the lawlessness of hell-on-wheels towns which popped up every time the construction crew established a major work site.

By the end of 1868, rowdy, violent towns were popping up ahead of the railroad in anticipation of the next stop on the line. At the Wyoming-Utah border, one of those towns was Bear River City. And in the course of one night, it forced Union Pacific officials to make a detour. Like so many moments of mass violence in Hell on Wheels towns, the Bear River City riot began with a hanging. Ironically, Bear River City had a reputation for being one of the quieter towns along the Union Pacific.

It wasn't technically a Hell on Wheels town in that it wasn't a temporary pop-up camp of canvas tents and wooden shanties that existed solely to service the railroad workers. Bear River City had been founded years earlier as part of a smaller stop along the Overland and Immigrant Trails. But when word got out that the Union Pacific was going to go through the town, new people, mostly parasites, flocked to the tiny community to prey on the workers. When the earliest crews started to arrive, the violence sparked almost immediately. It began with the murder of a railroad worker.

His name was not recorded, nor was the name of the person who was accused of killing him. But a mob quickly formed and grabbed the man whom it believed was the killer. The mob strung the man up from a pole, and a crowd watched as the man jerked and spasmed until he was dead. The action happened too fast for the town marshal to stop it, but he would certainly stand and fight the storm that was coming. The man who had been lynched had a lot of friends in the Union Pacific, and they were convinced he was innocent. They armed themselves, rallied sympathizers from nearby camps, and descended on the town. By nightfall, Bear River City was a war zone. Zone.

From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season is Hell on Wheels, the epic story of the transcontinental railroad. Despite countless hardships and obstacles, the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific did what many thought was impossible. They connected the American nation by rail. This is Episode 5, Last Mountain, Last Battle. Marshal Thomas Smith had been in office for just two weeks when Bear River City exploded into violence on November 19, 1868. There's a good chance he would have heard about the violence in towns along the tracks,

but he couldn't have been prepared for the night he was about to experience. Places like Rawlins, Creston, Bitter Creek, and Rock Springs had seen their share of chaos. Before them, Union Pacific workers had shot up the town of Julesburg, Colorado to instill some measure of order. The U.S. Army had been forced to step in and help the people of Laramie as they battled an outlaw gang for control of their town after the arrival of the railroad. The Union Pacific had viewed places like Julesburg, Laramie, Cheyenne, and others as vital to the construction effort. But after two straight years of dealing with hell-on-wheels towns and with the end of the

project in sight, railroad officials were less interested in devoting time and resources to dealing with the violent camps. So on November 19, 1868, Marshal Tom Smith was on his own. He stood between two furious factions, railroad men on one side and an angry mob on the other. Smith was no stranger to violence. He was a former middleweight prizefighter and a Union Civil War veteran who was at Shiloh in Vicksburg. But the last thing he wanted in his town, even a town as raw and dirty as Bear River

City, was mass bloodshed. He walked the muddy streets and warned both sides to disband. But the line had been crossed, and the storm had arrived. The gunfire started with sporadic bursts. One side would fire at a saloon or a tent, and the other side would respond. In short order, the violence escalated. A group of men set fire to the courthouse, the jailhouse, the newspaper office, the telegraph station, and council hall.

Nearly every public building was either shot to hell or set on fire. But in a supply store room, a group of townspeople and railroad workers mounted a desperate defense. Among them was a railroad grader named Theodore Haswell. Haswell recalled, quote, The leader of the mob with a revolver in each hand ran up to the front of the store room we were in and emptied both guns at us. Then we opened fire. He was severely wounded and five of the mob fell dead. With nearly every window of the building shot out and the woodwork torn with bullets, it seemed an act of providence that we were not all killed. The attackers came in waves, by some estimates nearly 200 strong.

And exactly which side they were on isn't clear. The situation had descended into the truest form of chaos. To the people in the storeroom, like Theodore Haswell, it didn't matter who was attacking them. The townspeople returned fire and repelled every advance, and the dead piled up in the street. Marshal Tom Smith was in the store room, and he spotted the attackers trying to flank the building. Smith stepped outside under fire to cut off their advance. He took a bullet and fell down, but he wasn't out of the fight.

He rose up and continued to fire like a madman in a stand that earned him the nickname, Bear River Smith. The battle raged until dawn. After nearly 12 hours of bloody combat, the cavalry from nearby Fort Bridger arrived. The soldiers immediately imposed martial law and restored a grim semblance of order. Most buildings lay in charred ruins. The ones that still stood were pockmarked with bullet holes. Sixteen men were dead and dozens more were wounded. For the Union Pacific Railroad, it was the last straw.

Union Pacific officials made a quiet but final decision. Bear River City would not be a depot, a division point, or a station stop. The tracks would not go near the town, and when the railroad stayed away, the town died. Within weeks of the riot, Bear River City became a ghost town. With the town dissolving, there was no need for a marshal. Marshal Thomas Bear River Smith headed east to Kansas and became Marshal of Abilene. At the same time the Transcontinental Railroad was being built in Nebraska and Wyoming, the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway was being built in Kansas.

While the transcontinental railroad gave rise to infamous hell-on-wheels towns, the Santa Fe Railroad gave rise to famous cow towns of Western lore. The first was Abilene, whose marshal was the now-famous Tom Bear River Smith. Tragically, in 1870, Mars Marshall Smith was killed while serving a warrant. The man who replaced him was the legendary Wild Bill Hickok. That was how Hickok started his most well-known job as a lawman. Bear River City no longer exists, but during its brief and bloody life, it was located about 10 miles south of Evanston, Wyoming, in the extreme southwest corner of the state.

An historical marker along Highway 150 is the only sign of the presence of the Old Ghost Town. Now, in the final month of 1868, with Bear River City bypassed, the Union Pacific turned southwest on a diagonal line toward the Wasatch Mountains in Utah. Railroad officials knew they would eventually enter Mormon territory in Utah, and they had spent months organizing the addition of Mormon workers. Brigham Young, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, had seen the future of Westward expansion coming.

In speeches, sermons, and editorials, he proclaimed the Iron Horse would arrive in Zion. As much as he might have wanted to keep the Latter-day Saints separate from the rest of the world, that wasn't gonna happen. So he might as well find a way to profit from the arrival of the railroad. In the spring of 1868, Thomas Durant, as Vice President of the Union Pacific, sent a telegram

to Brigham Young. Durant's proposal was simple. If the Church would supply men to grade the ground in the canyons through the mountains, the Union Pacific would provide the supplies and free passage for Mormon teams. The goal was to begin at once and finish by November. Young telegrammed his reply, Yes, within an hour. Brigham Young agreed to supply between 5,000 and 10,000 men. He negotiated rates for the workers. And in May of 1868, six months before the Bear River riot,

notices appeared in Utah newspapers asking for laborers. Men showed up in droves. It helped that the summer of 1868 brought a grasshopper plague to the Salt Lake Valley. The pest destroyed crops and left many without food or income. The railroad offered an opportunity for survival. One Mormon worker later recalled, quote, The country was full of grasshoppers and everything devoured by them

and not a morsel of bread to be had. Consequently, I went to work for the railroad. Most workers came from Salt Lake City, Ogden, or Provo, but others came from as far away as England and Wales. Many were teenagers, but all were organized under a man named John Sharp. Sharp was a Mormon bishop, as well as Brigham Young's legal counsel. Soon, 1,400 Mormon men were assigned to grade the descent through Echo Canyon, about 30 miles southwest of Evanston, Wyoming. To the Union Pacific, the Mormon workforce seemed almost

too good to be true. Unlike other crews, the Mormons didn't drink themselves into oblivion at the end of each day. They didn't drink at all, and they didn't gamble or carouse. They said a prayer before each meal and ended each day with hymns. What they lacked in experience, they made up for in cohesion and teamwork. Slowly but surely, they carved a path through Echo Canyon while the rest of the Union Pacific made its way to them. The Mormon crews advanced through the canyons faster than anyone expected. They graded embankments, cleared rockslides, and blasted tunnels. When Grenville Dodge, the construction supervisor, went to inspect the work crews, he was impressed.

Reports circulated that he asked for all the Mormon workers he could get because he recognized their speed and discipline as unmatched on the line. Meanwhile, Brigham Young lobbied hard to reroute the railroad through Salt Lake City. From Echo Canyon, the line could zigzag north to Ogden or south to Salt Lake City. Young wanted the railroad to pass by the world-famous Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, but Dodge refused. Dodge knew that the shorter route with better ground for construction was the northern route to Ogden. Young wasn't pleased, and he soon preached a fiery sermon denouncing the decision and accusing Dodge of undercutting the will of God. But Union Pacific officials refused to yield.

If there was ever a time when speed of construction was the only priority, it was at the end of 1868 as the Union Pacific moved into Utah. Everyone knew the race was almost done. The debate over the final meeting spot was heating up, and the UP wasn't going to add extra time to the schedule for anyone. The course was charted, and the railroad angled toward its last major obstacles, Echo Canyon and Weber Canyon in the Wasatch Mountains. Echo and Weber Canyons were the Union Pacific's final gauntlet and its greatest engineering

trial, even more so than the Dale Creek Gorge. The mountains on each side of the canyons were barely wide enough for railroad tracks, much less the crews that were required to construct them. Echo Canyon came first and began deceptively wide, with rolling hills and rust-colored cliffs that lulled engineers into confidence. But very quickly, the walls rose higher and the space grew tighter. Echo Creek on the floor of the canyon hissed through the canyon's narrow turns. Every foot of progress had to be cut through loose soil, blasted through rock, or thrown together with temporary timber.

At one particularly tight stretch, construction stalled until a new grade could be blasted along the opposite bank of the creek. In another, an eight-mile detour had to be constructed to get around a tunnel that wasn't yet complete. Grenville Dodge left his headquarters and lived in the canyons, personally riding from field camp to cut site. Sometimes he issued orders from horseback, sometimes from a flat car rolling through the dust. He wrote, I have been constantly on the work, watching every detail and pushing it as no work was ever pushed before. The crews who were pushed like no others before them were the Mormon laborers who were led by church elders like John Sharp.

In places, the canyon squeezed so tight it felt like the earth would swallow a man whole. Sandstone walls loomed just a few feet apart. There was no room for wagons, no space for teams to pass. The sun barely reached the canyon floor, and every hammer blow echoed off the canyon walls like a gunshot. Progress was measured in wheelbarrows, not yards, and progress was constantly undone. Flash floods erased embankments overnight.

Bridges collapsed under their own weight. Grading crews would level a stretch only to tear it up and start over. Curves were too tight, slopes were too steep, or the soil was too unstable to hold the weight of a train. Engineers recalculated, and workers dug the same ground two or even three times to find a line that would hold. Shipments of iron and black powder became stranded as supply trains were stalled behind rock falls. Crews sat idle for precious hours while they waited for the next train to bring their tools.

Finally, after weeks of slow, claustrophobic progress, Echo Canyon flared open again. When it did, 500 men worked at a furious pace. Wheelbarrows rolled in double lines, and the railroad poured through the opening like a flood. But the thrill of forward progress was short-lived. At the end of Echo Canyon, the crew had to make a sharp turn to the north to begin work in Weber Canyon. The curves in Weber Canyon were worse than those in Echo Canyon, and the crew had to

make two more sharp turns as it navigated more than 30 miles of twisting canyons. About eight miles into the work in Weber Canyon, the crew marked a milestone. They found a distinctive pine tree that they dubbed 1,000-mile tree. It marked 1,000 miles of track between Omaha and Nebraska and that spot in Weber Canyon. The original tree has long since died,

but it was replaced by the Union Pacific in 1982 to continue the commemoration. A mile beyond the tree, workers who weren't from the area marveled at a natural geological formation called Devil's Slide. The unique feature looked like a mythical giant grabbed two enormous slices of rock and pressed them into the side of a mountain. With a gap in the middle, the rock formation looked like a steep stone slide that was left over from some ancient civilization.

Just past Devil's Slide, the crew made the second sharp turn and kept moving. It took nearly three months to punch through the canyons, and even that was a miracle of improvisation. The achievement was capped by the bridge at a spot called Devil's Gate, just before Weber Canyon emptied into the flat ground at the town of Ogden, Utah. The Weber River in the floor of the canyon made a severe curve that looked like an upside-down U. The crew built the bridge straight over the river rather than

try to wind around the natural curve. By early spring 1869, the two canyons were passable, but just barely. The tunnels were half-finished and trestles were temporary. Curves in the line were sharp enough to derail a train if taken too fast. But at that point, Grenville Dodge accepted the risks. The Union Pacific eased out of Weber Canyon and the Wasatch Mountains and found itself in the wide, mostly flat basin of the Salt Lake Valley. But the feeling of relief was quickly replaced by pressure. The debate over the location of the junction of the two railroads was about to end, and it would be more important than ever for the Union Pacific to get there first.

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Visit BMO.com slash VI Porter to learn more. This episode is brought to you by DZONE. For the first time ever, the 32 best soccer clubs from across the world to learn more. and you can watch every match for free on DAZN, starting on June 14th and running until July 13th. Sign up now at dazon.com slash FIFA. That's D-A-Z-N dot com slash FIFA. On April 8th, 1869, Grenville Dodge, Chief Engineer of the Union Pacific, was in Washington, D.C. for a secret meeting with Collis Huntington,

one of the Big Four investors of the Central Pacific. They had to hammer out a compromise over the meeting spot of the two railroads before Congress did it for them. By the end of the night, they agreed on a hill called Promontory Summit, northwest of Ogden. Promontory Summit would be the ceremonial spot which marked completion of the construction of the transcontinental railroad, and the city of Ogden would be the official junction of the two lines and the business headquarters of the finished railroad.

Now, finally, after four long years of construction for the Union Pacific and six for the Central Pacific, the two railroads knew their goal. They knew the spot that would be the end of the line. The final leg of the great race would be to see who could get there first. For the Union Pacific, the terrain up through Ogden and out to Promontory Summit was flat and forgiving and a welcome change from the tight chasms of the canyons. But the work wasn't easy, and easy terrain didn't mean good track. Grenville Dodge pushed his men to lay track day and night. They were in such a hurry to cover ground before the Central Pacific could claim it,

that they cut every possible corner. Instead of heavy-duty iron, they used lighter gauge rail. It was quicker to lay, but prone to warping. Ties were spaced too far apart, which made the track unstable. Spikes were driven hastily and sometimes at the wrong angle. In some places, workers didn't lay the tiles and the rails on a stable bed of crushed rock like they were supposed to do.

They just dropped the ties and rails directly on soft, shifting earth. Some of the final miles barely qualified as railroad tracks at all. One Union Pacific engineer admitted, It was good enough for the ceremony, but not for long. The goal at that point wasn't durability, it was distance. Every mile laid was a mile paid. Money from the government was tied to mileage, and with the project nearing an end, both railroads wanted to claim every possible dollar from Congress.

With each passing day of April 1869, the Union Pacific felt like it was on the verge of reaching the summit first. It had been making headlines about its speed of construction for years. But then came the gut punch. On April 28, 1869, Union Pacific officials stood trackside and watched the Central Pacific crew lay 10 miles and 56 feet of track in a single day. The number was mind-boggling, and it would not have been believed if Union Pacific men hadn't seen it for themselves. The Central Pacific had made history by building a railroad through the Sierra Nevada mountains,

and it made history again in the Utah desert by laying the most miles of track in one day. The Union Pacific had often crowed about laying four or five miles of track in a day while the Central Pacific struggled to lay two. But those days were done. Now the only glory that remained was in the act of completion. Just finished the project, one final stretch of track lay ahead, one final push to Promontory Summit, and one final hell on wheels camp that would mark the end of the line. The last hell on wheels town rose from the banks of the Bear River in less than two weeks, like so many others before it.

In North Platte, Nebraska, tents turned to timber as gamblers and saloonkeepers followed the rails west. In Julesburg, Colorado, they built a town on the ruins of a battlefield and then tore it apart themselves. The population of Cheyenne, Wyoming, went from zero to thousands almost overnight. Laramie fought an outlaw gang to ensure its survival. And Bear River City didn't survive. Now came Corrin.

The nature of the town was similar to other Hell on Wheels towns, but Corrin had greater ambition. It was envisioned as a freight hub for the gold fields of Montana. The hope was that it would be a place where stage routes from Virginia City, Helena, and Bannock would meet the railroad. Corrin would be a gateway for supplies going west and gold going east.

It would be a defiant outpost in Mormon country where saloons and speculation outpaced scripture and settlement. By the end of April 1869, more than 500 buildings, many of them saloons, brothels, and gambling houses, rose out of the muddy streets. One visitor noted that the town had, quote, "...more whiskey than water, and more ambition than sense. The Salt Lake Deseret News printed a line that could have been ripped from any Hell on Wheels report before it.

It read, The place is fast becoming civilized. Several men have been killed there already. The last one was found in the river with four bullet holes through him and his head badly mangled. Corinne was a hell-on-wheels town, but the violence in town never boiled over into anarchy like it had in previous towns. Maybe it was because the town was in Mormon territory, or maybe it was because the railroad workers were flat-out tired.

They were exhausted and ready to be done. Jack Casement, one of the hard-driving construction bosses, was desperate to go home. He wrote to his family that he was, perfectly homesick, I think I would like to work in the garden or build a house. With the finish line so close, the men worked without pause. Their pace never slowed. As construction continued to push toward Promontory Summit, the line swelled to something surreal. From Corrine to Promontory, the Union Pacific became a moving city.

Tents and tool carts stretched out across the valley. Men worked by sunlight and then by lantern light. One reporter called it, quote, a mighty army strung out for 30 miles. Soon the town of Corrin, the last hell on wheels town, faded from view behind workers and the low hills of Promontory Summit came into sight. The men could quite literally see the finish line.

And as they hammered in tandem and built one final bridge over the Bear River, surveyors rode out and inspected the grounds of promontory. They picked the spot where the locomotives of the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific would face each other, nose to nose. Grenville Dodge and Jack Casement pushed the Union Pacific men to finish the home stretch. To the west, Charles Crocker and James Strobridge pushed the Central Pacific men to finish the home stretch. To the west, Charles Crocker and James Strobridge pushed the Central Pacific men equally

hard. The race wasn't over, but it was close. What began in Omaha and Sacramento had almost reached its end. In a few short days, just four years after the United States nearly tore itself apart through civil war, the nation would connect itself through nearly 2,000 miles of iron rail. Next time on Legends of the Old West, the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Railroads finally meet at Promontory Summit with a Golden Spike ceremony. But no sooner is the railroad declared complete than the fallout from the Credit Mobilier scandal begins.

Meanwhile, a nation reckons with what it gained and what it lost in the race to unite its coasts. That's next week on the season finale of the epic story of the transcontinental railroad here on Legends of the Old West. Members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week to receive new episodes. They receive the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials. And they also receive exclusive bonus episodes.

Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships are just $5 per month. This series was researched and written by Matthew Kearns. It was produced by Joe Guerra. Original music by Rob Valier. per month. This series was researched and written by Matthew Kearns. It was produced by Joe Guerra. Original music by Rob Valier. I'm Chris Wimmer. Thanks for listening.