This document provides an overview of oral history and photograph collections at the University of Utah related to the Transcontinental Railroad. It summarizes several collections, including the Golden Spike Oral History Project which contains 26 interviews from 1974 documenting the history of the Golden Spike historic site. It also mentions interviews from the 1970s with Japanese Americans, Hispanics, and others who discuss their experiences working on the railroad and in associated industries. Photograph collections highlighted include those related to the Bamberger Railroad and individuals who worked on the Transcontinental Railroad.

1. Transcontinental Railroad
[in words and images]
Oral History and Photograph Collections in the
University of Utah Special Collections

2. Finding Oral History and Photograph Collections @
Marriott Library
● ArchivesWest
● Marriott Library Digital Library
● Complete list of oral history projects held by Marriott Library

3. Golden Spike Oral History Project
26 interviews conducted in 1974 documenting the creation and history of Golden
Spike historic site. Transcripts available online, audio in Special Collections
Reading Room.

4. Interview with Bernice Gibbs Anderson, 1974
“And there is another story I heard from Park Valley...maybe it's a good
thing I can't remember their names, but I'm sure it's authentic because this
man lived there for years and… he's dead, of course, but he told me one
day that the people out there found one day, bodies of as many as two
carloads of Chinese that had been washed up on the north shore of the
lake. Now they had been killed some way before that. The sentiment
against the Chinese coming in here was so bad at the time that nobody
seemed to want them to come in except Central Pacific. And they were
good laborers. Had it not been for the Chinese, they wouldn't have built
Central Pacific in the time they did.”

5. Interviews with Japanese-Americans in Utah
“At that time... the railroad gangs were mostly Oriental. Either Chinese or
Japanese. And the Great Northern also had Irish immigrants. And the
cowboys in Montana didn't like these foreigners invading their country.
And putting the Iron Monster through their open plains. So some drunken
cowboys came into camp and shot up and killed several of them. And
Father escaped and hid out in the fields and came to Salt Lake after about
a month of walking nights and hiding in the daytime, which is quite a
distance, about 500 miles.”
-- Edward Hashimoto, son of Edward D. Daigoro, a railroad laborer

6. Japanese Oral Histories
Interviews conducted in the late 1960s by the Japanese-American
Citizens League. Many interviewees were born prior to 1900, and discuss
work and life on the railroad, laboring in the mines, and farming the land.
Currently available in Reading Room.

7. Hispanic Oral Histories and Spanish-speaking
peoples in Utah oral histories
Many interviewees discuss working for the railroad; transcripts only, currently
available in the reading room.
Brigham Young University oral history projects
Interviews with Bamberger Railroad officials, vice president, and other employees
of the railroad.
Transcripts only, available onsite.

8. Brigham Madsen photograph collection

9. Bamberger Family Photograph Collection

10. P1937 Tomojiro and Yasu
Asahara Collection

11. P1413 Tsutomu “Tom” Inouye and Shirley Sugimoto
Photograph Collection

12. Need help?
jessica.breiman@utah.edu
www.lib.utah.edu/collections/special-collections/