The Salt Lake Temple V: "The Crossroads of the West"

 Previously: An AI-Generated Script?

No intelligent discussion of the construction of the Salt Lake Temple is possible without taking a second look into the building of the transcontinental railroads between 1863 and 1869.

When you begin to examine the official historical claims of men with picks and axes laying almost 1,800 miles of track in only six years, while simultaneously constructing dozens of tunnels and bridges, logistics begin to get murky, timelines become impossible, and labor documentation...well, it just doesn't exist. 

The railroad narrative deserves further investigation and a dose of healthy skepticism, and if it can't stand up to that scrutiny, then the entire post-1870 construction narrative in Utah won't either. Both stories needed to be written to match, or the "official" noble pioneer history of Utah unravels.

In other words, if the railroad was an already-existing infrastructure built by a previous Western civilization, then so was Salt Lake City and it's incredible stone buildings, including the temples. 

The stories about the railroads are imperative links to the entire Church history construction narrative. Brigham Young may have revealed a little too much when he said in 1853 that the Saints could not transport stone from the quarry to the temple without a railroad. There had to be a railroad to build the Salt Lake temple, he said (see JD: 1:279). 

As the story goes, when Brigham was coming West in 1847, he was always on the lookout for pathways across the Midwest where railroads could be built:

We never went through a canon [sic], or worked our way over dividing ridges without asking where the rails could be laid: and I really did think that the railway would have been here long before this... (Roberts, Documentary History of the Church, p. 248, emphasis added)

Is that another clue in our AI-scripted history telling us that the railroads were already here? Notice the photo above. Are they laying tracks, or just digging them out of the mud?

Think about it. The building of the transcontinental railroad would have been a massive undertaking, even today with the technology we have. They had only hand tools, horses and wagons, oxen and ox carts. But there are no photos of oxen in the historical railroad construction photos. Just men standing around and not actually doing any work. Why is that? 

Of the six-year timeline during which the railroad was constructed, the majority of it was finished in only four. A total of 1,776 (is that number a coincidence?) miles of track were laid between the Union Pacific and Central Pacific companies, stretching from Sacramento, California to Council Bluffs, Iowa. That would need to include surveying, digging and perfectly leveling hard rocky desert and mountain soil by hand with shovels and picks; hauling thousands of tons of excavated dirt and rocks to "somewhere" (never mentioned), all with horses and wagons.

It meant somehow hauling in tons of gravel (ballast) to the site each day and laying (by horses and carts again) a leveled gravel base to support the hundreds of thousands of logged and cut wooden railroad ties, chopped by hand with axes and milled in unknown sawmills from some unknown forest. 

Wooden ties laid directly on dirt without a preparatory gravel base would sink into the mud in harsh winters and wet spring snow melts, and the wood would quickly decompose. Without a gravel bed the iron rails would bend and buckle under the weight of trains if the logs were just laid directly on dirt. But a gravel support base is never mentioned in any of the stories we are supposed to believe. 

Logistically, this is impossible stuff: hundreds of thousands of tons of base layer gravel in horse drawn wagons spread with hand shovels; entire forests logged (somewhere); big trees chopped by hand axe then milled and cut uniformly and hauled down the mountains on muddy dirt roads with horses and wagons. And then hundreds of thousands of uniformly cast iron rails brought in with horses and carts. Try to even picture this. 

Yet we're told that the Central Pacific, beginning in 1863, built East from Sacramento, and the Union Pacific, starting at Council Bluffs in 1865, built West, until finally in 1868, the last few hundred miles of track was laid between Humboldt, Nevada, and the eastern mouth of Echo Canyon, Utah.

The tracks eventually met at Promontory Point, an isolated location some 30 miles west of Ogden, nestled awkwardly on a peninsula surrounded by the waters of the Great Salt Lake.

We hear that Brigham Young called some 4,000 LDS men and boys to go to work as graders for the railroad. 

These laborers, unnamed and undocumented, wielding their shovels, picks, scrapers, sledges, wheelbarrows, and crow bars, literally carved a perfectly graded road through Echo and Weber canyons, filling in swales with untold tons of compacted earth, leveling ridges, cutting through the sides of granite mountains, constructing bridges and viaducts, and blasting out tunnels with black powder.

Again, notice the photo above in Weber Canyon (these are supposedly LDS workers), What does that look like to you? Are they laying tracks, or just digging them out of the mud? Are those brand new wooden ties, or do they appear old, with bent rails on the top? 

How about the photo below (location unknown)? Are the tracks being installed or discovered?

We're told that the Mormons helped build about 1/5 of the transcontinental railroad, with a major junction in Ogden, making Utah "The Crossroads of the West".

The LDS part of the railroad was finished within a year, from May 1868 to May 1869. Nearly all the history books I've been able to find on the transcontinental railroads focus mostly on the financial aspect of the CP and UP, and Brigham's contract with them, leaving a lot of missing information about the actual construction process.

All the labor used by the railroad companies--the LDS Church's 4,000, the 10,000 Chinese supposedly brought in from China by the CP, plus the 10,000 Irish immigrants employed by the UP, as well as scores of starving Civil War veterans and American frontiersmen that supposedly flocked to the high wages offered by the railroads--are all undocumented. 

No matter what records you search in, whether the financial records of the UP and CP, or of the LDS Church, all you'll find is just a few names of men who were involved in the construction; names of men who are always written into the official history.  

For instance, in the LDS Church, we have Brigham Young, his son Joseph D. Young and John Sharp (a quarryman), and a handful of others named in documents. But as to the 4,000 common laborers, we have nothing showing that they actually existed or assisted on the railroad in any way.

We are expected to believe that 4,000 LDS men and boys graded over 100 miles of road through mountainous terrain in only one year.

The entire story of the building of the transcontinental railroads reads more like Greek mythology than actual fact, replete with tales of heroic railroad workers created through anecdotal accounts, told decades after the events. Documentation of any kind: purchase documents for material, labor rosters, and personal diaries from workers are not just scarce, they are nonexistent. 

Much of the "evidence" for the construction of the railroad comes from letters of correspondence between important financial figures like Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, Grenville Dodge, Thomas Durant, Brigham Young, Joseph D. Young, and John Sharp. But just like we see with accounts of temple construction in early Utah, the great masses of common laborers remain silent about their part in the construction. No journals, and no photographs with named pioneers. 

Because a match up of the railroad story is imperative to establish any kind of credibility for the temple construction narrative, the story of the transcontinental railroad must be carefully examined. This is a key piece to the puzzle in getting a clear picture of what was actually happening in the writing of the revisionist history in Utah, and why.

The railroad, we're told, was pioneer Utah's means of connecting  economically and industrially to the outside world and bringing immigrants into the territory at a record pace (a week from New York or Boston instead of 3-4 months by wagons and handcarts).

From 1870 onward, hordes of converts flocked into Utah, as well as massive amounts of outside goods, helping Salt Lake and other Utah cities to grow at exponential rates--at least that's what we're told.  

Let's dive in.

A Familiar Pattern

As the story goes, it was a man named Theodore Judah who dreamed of a transcontinental railroad stretching eastward through the California mountains that could carry passengers all the way to the Eastern United States. 

Judah, born in 1826, was only 35 years old when he began lobbying congress for a transcontinental railroad. A Connecticut man by birth, Judah became a civil engineer after training at Rensselaer Institute (the same college attended by Don Carlos Young). After graduating Judah went to work in the Northeast on various railroads.

At age 28, Judah was hired as chief engineer for the Sacramento Valley Railroad in California. The year was 1854, and the only way to travel West was to cross the plains in a wagon, or sail around Cape Horn to San Francisco. Judah and his wife chose the latter, and by 1857, Judah had become chief engineer of yet another company, the California Central Railroad. 

In 1859, Judah came up with a plan for the "Pacific Railroad" and was sent to congress to lobby for the cause. After returning empty-handed, Judah began meeting with potential financiers in the private sector, and by 1861, the Central Pacific Railroad had been incorporated. The backers, known as the "big four", included Leland Stanford (Stanford University founder), Collis P. Huntington, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker. 

In 1862, Judah was sent back to Washington to lobby Congress again, and was successful in getting the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 through both the House and Senate and on President Lincoln's desk. The Act allowed the issuance of government land grants and bonds to help fund the Central Pacific.

Remember, this was smack dab in the middle of the Civil War, strange timing for Congress and President Lincoln to think about building a railroad over 2,000 miles away.

Judah spend the next year surveying a route for the Central Pacific, starting in Sacramento, and heading northeast through Cisco and Donner Lake, right through the heart of the Sierra Nevada mountains. 

But on November 2nd of 1863, disaster struck, Theodore Judah suddenly passed away, the result of having contracted yellow fever from a recent trip to Panama. He was only 37 years old, and would never live to see his dream of a transcontinental railroad completed only six years later in 1869.

The Pacific Railway was Judah's baby, his vision, his dream. We're told that he had led survey teams in discovering the route, had organized the Central Pacific Railroad Company, and had single-handedly lobbied Congress into passing the Railroad Act. How ironic that he didn't live to see his creation completed. 

Yet this follows a pattern that we have seen so many times in studying the architecture of the Old World. An architect dying just weeks, months, or years before seeing their buildings completed, is not an uncommon theme. More than that, it's a pattern, a pattern telling us that a building, or even a railroad, may have already existed.

It had only been ten months before Judah's passing that the Central Pacific broke ground in Sacramento on January 8, 1863. But no track was laid that year. 

In 1864, only about 18 miles of track were laid, from Sacramento to New Castle. 1865 wasn't much better, coming in at 30 miles and ending up somewhere in the Sierra foothills. 

However, as track was built through the granite canyons of the Sierra Nevada mountains, construction was somehow expedited, and miles of track laid between 1866 and 1869 became exponential. The same pattern can be seen with the Union Pacific building from the East.

And all this was happening, we're told, while U.S. resources were being diverted to Southern Reconstruction efforts while the nation was recovering from the bloodiest war in American History. 

As you're about to see, much of the railroad narrative doesn't add up, leaving us with glaring anomalies and an absence of crucial documentary evidence of the construction period.

What follows will be a brief summary of the construction stories of both the Central Pacific and Union Pacific, ending with the final stretch with the help of the Mormons through Weber and Echo canyons. 

The only thing I will mention about Brigham Young's contract with the Union Pacific is that we're told he never got paid in full, and had to settle with railroad supplies that he used to build a railway branch from Ogden to Salt Lake City, then to Sandy, and eventually (1873) to the Little Cottonwood Canyon Quarry, which greatly expedited progress on the granite walls of the temple.

As you read, try to envision the shear massiveness of the task of building a railroad nearly 1,800 miles long. Think of the scores of bridges and tunnels that had to built simultaneously. Try to imagine what kind of labor force it would've taken to accomplish such an undertaking. Think logically about the logistics of coordinating construction efforts, managing labor, and manufacturing and shipping iron rails and other materials from the Eastern United States as the Civil War was ending. 

Ask yourself how construction crews from over 150 years ago could grade and lay track faster than we can do it today. Ask yourself if the story you're about to read was physically possible at all.

Central Pacific Myths and Legends

As the story goes, the Central Pacific carved its way through the Sierra Nevada mountains for over 100 miles, from Sacramento to Truckee. By the fall of 1865, the 30 miles of track laid that year had reached Colfax, but the most difficult terrain remained ahead, another 80 miles from Colfax to Truckee. 

From Cisco to the Donner Summit, over 7,000 feet of elevation would have to be accounted for, and since a locomotive could only handle climbing a grade of 116 feet per mile, men would have to hand-chisel the roadbed into the sides of steep granite slopes. 

The 10,000 plus workers under the direction of superintendent Charles Crocker constructed 15 tunnels and 37 trestle bridges through 80 miles of dense granite mountain terrain, in only two years (1865 to 1867).

We're told that Crocker had at his disposal these 10,000 men by the October of 1865, with 7,000 of them from China. 600 teams of oxen (remember, there is no photographic evidence for these oxen) were required to haul track materials from the end of the rails to where track was being laid. No accounting is given for how these 2,000 to 3,000 animals were fed and watered in those high mountain passes throughout the winter.

The men were "housed in tents, caves, dugouts, and board shacks" by night, and by day were suspended from ropes while setting black powder charges and using shovels, picks, and crowbars to carve a railroad bed out of a granite wilderness. Other crews were hauling dirt to fill in gorges and draws, harvesting lumber to build trestles, using scrapers to level road bed, and cleaning out debris in tunnels after explosives were set off. 

The work continued year round, through muddy rains in the spring to heavy snows in the winter. In some areas of high altitude, snow drifts remained all summer. The winter of 1866-67 was particularly harsh, with snow 12 to 60 feet deep from Cisco to the Donner Summit. Full-time snow shoveling crews were employed all winter long:

The snows gained upon the shovellers [sic] and the scrapers. Cuts were filling--the tunnel men had to excavate through twenty to 100 feet of drift before they reached the face of the cliff; and shut off from the world they burrowed like gophers... (Edwin L. Sabin, Building the Pacific Railway, p. 120, emphasis added)

Superintendent Crocker focused on boring tunnels in winter, as the men were sheltered inside. But black powder still had to be delivered to the job site, upwards of 500 kegs a day, at a cost of $54,000 a month. The powder was manufactured in Santa Cruz, then loaded onto wagons and hauled to the wharf, then loaded onto steamers, shipped upriver to Sacramento, and then hauled by teams of oxen through the mountains and to the tunnel sites. 

Most other materials (including iron rails) were manufactured in the Eastern United States, loaded onto cargo ships and transported around Cape Horn to San Francisco (a six month journey). Once materials were taken upriver to Sacramento, they were loaded onto train cars and shipped to the end of track, and then loaded onto wagons and hauled to the construction sites. 

According to Sabin (writing in 1919), some of these wagon trips were 24 miles long through unimaginable depths of snow:

As the snow gained and the working space became more crowded... Crocker loaded his extra laborers, their tools and supplies, upon ox-sleds; sent them across and down, to prepare the way through the Truckee River canyons near the Nevada line, or twenty eight miles.

He followed this thrust with a reinforcement of forty miles of track--rails, ties, fastenings, forty freight cars and three locomotives. For the twenty-four miles from Cisco to Donner Lake ox-teams and sleds hauled these tons of freight up to the summit through snow eighteen feet deep on the level, forty and sixty feet deep in the drifts... Here the loads were transferred to wagons and mud-skids and log-rollers for the four miles to Truckee. (Ibid, p. 122, emphasis added)

Not only did Crocker have "extra laborers" to send ahead to the Nevada border, but they somehow hauled multiple tons of iron rails on ox-drawn sleds and wagons over 24 miles of snow anywhere from 18 to 60 feet deep.

How was it physically possible for oxen to haul steel through 18 feet of snow? It's not like they had a snow cat to pack down the wagon path. 

Remember, this is just a story, there is no documentation for this account from any of the 10,000 laborers. No journals. No photos. 

Edwin L. Sabin's book, Building the Pacific Railway, published in 1919, is one of the major works on the transcontinental railroad. The main sources Sabin cites for his book are oral memories (produced 50 years after the fact), financial records of the Union Pacific, newspapers, and family records. 

The book is poorly documented, and Sabin is vague about which sources are cited for specific claims (like hauling iron rails through sixty feet of snow). He is a great writer, very descriptive, and the book reads more like a novel than a work of historical nonfiction. And unfortunately, there is no way to know if anything he is claiming is true. 

Sabin once worked in the Bancroft Library, and as I mentioned in my last post, Hubert Howe Bancroft, one man, is given credit for massive amounts of foundational American history, which should merit our criticism and suspicion.

Of the 15 tunnels carved out of the Sierra Nevada mountains, Summit Tunnel was the longest, spanning 1,659 feet. It took Chinese laborers nearly two years to build. 

As the story goes, a shaft with a diameter of 6-12 feet was drilled from the top of the middle of the tunnel at a depth of 75 feet, which took two months. This allowed crews to bore out the tunnel from four positions: the two far ends and from both directions in the middle. Somehow crews working from both directions met each other in the middle. 

Progress was slow and laborious. Hand drills were used to bore holes 2-3 feet deep. When about 20 holes were drilled, black powder charges were set off to blast out the remaining granite. Men would duck for cover and then clean-up crews would use wheelbarrows to haul off the loose rock and other muck created from the blast. Only 1-2 feet of rock face was removed from the tunnel each day.

The tunnel was built between 1865 to 1867, while thousands of other men were grading, laying track, harvesting lumber for bridges, and boring out other tunnels. Here is a photo of the abandoned Summit Tunnel today:

Remember, this is just one of the 15 tunnels and 37 bridges built through the mountains. To put this all in perspective, here is the timeline of the Central Pacific's progress:

• 1863: groundbreaking and 0 miles of track laid.
• 1864: 18 miles of track laid from Sacramento to Newcastle. 
• 1865: 30 miles of track laid from Newcastle to Sierra foothills.
• 1866: 48 miles of track laid through the mountains to Cisco. 
• 1867:40 miles of track laid from Cisco through Summit Tunnel and Donner Lake. 
• 1868: 230 miles of track laid across Nevada.
• 1869: 200 miles of track laid from the middle of Nevada to Promontory Point, Utah. 

Remember, all materials were shipped from the Eastern United States and Britain (even though the Railroad Act of 1862 stipulated that only American iron be used). There were no shipping containers back then, so the heavy steel rails (30 feet long and between 500-600 pounds) had to be loaded and off-loaded several times during the shipment process. Here is a breakdown of the logistics:

• After rails were produced in iron mills they were loaded onto wagons and hauled to the nearest train station. 
• Rails were loaded onto train cars and shipped to port cities like New York. 
• Rails were unloaded and re-loaded onto cargo ships. 
• Ships would sail from the Eastern seaboard, south down to Cape Horn, around South America, and back up to San Francisco, a voyage taking up to six months (some of the iron would arrive in California already rusted out). 
• In San Francisco rails were unloaded at shipping docks and then reloaded onto barge or steam ships that would travel upriver to Sacramento.
• Rails were off-loaded at Sacramento and reloaded onto train cars, bringing the rails as far down the newly laid track as possible.
• At the end of track, rails were off-loaded and then reloaded unto ox-drawn wagons or sleds, dragging the rails through mud, snow, and rough terrain sometimes over 20 miles to the construction site.  

How was it possible for manufacturers and shipping companies to keep up with demand? How was it possible for the CP to lay so much track during the construction period while dealing with shipping logistics and delays? 

During the same period, bridge building crews were busy constructing trestle bridges over 37 gorges and canyons through the Sierra Nevada mountains, some of which were 1,000 feet long and 100 feet tall.

According to the story, local pine was harvested and shaped on site, as there were no lumber mills in the mountains. This means that crews had to fell large trees, cut and shape them with hand saws, drag them to the bridge site with ox or horse-drawn wagons, and use them to construct the bridge. Here is a photo of one of these trestles:

Just imagine how long it would take to cut and shape just one tree into a square board with hand saws. Look at the precision of this bridge. How did they curve it so accurately? How was it leveled? How was it supported at the foundation? And notice of course that the bridge is already built. Where are the photos that show it under construction?

Look at all the soil at the bottom where the photo shows images of wagon crews. How was all that soil brought in and leveled with hand tools and wagons? How far was the soil hauled? During periods of rain or snow this process would have come to a complete halt, yet we're told that work proceeded through the winter and wet spring months.

And there are absolutely no details on the logistics of the construction process. 

This is just one bridge, there were 36 others built like it during the same period that 15 tunnels were bored out, and over 100 miles of track was laid through rugged mountains.

Are you getting a sense how impossible this entire process would have been? It would have been impossible today, even with all the technology we have!

Did you know that modern crews, using heavy equipment and advanced technology, can only lay 1-2 miles of track a day? Yet, we're told that during the CP's peak construction during 1868-69, they laid 10 miles in a single day, a record that has never been broken!

As if building trestles and blasting tunnels wasn't enough work for the CP, we're also told that workers constructed nearly 40 miles of wooden sheds to cover the railroad tracks through avalanche and deep snow country between Blue Canyon and Truckee. 

These sheds had pitched roofs and had to be tall enough to allow trains to pass safely through them. The lumber required to build a 40-mile stretch of sheds was around 65 million linear feet, with over 900 tons of iron fasteners. All the lumber was sourced locally, cut and shaped with hand tools, hauled to the track line on wagons, and assembled by building crews.

The more you dive into it, the more impossible the story gets. 

Once the CP made its way through the mountains and into the Great Basin of Nevada, track was laid at rapid pace. The CP averaged over 200 miles a year between 1868 and 69, during its march toward Promontory Point.

The company had laid 690 miles of track in only four short years. Do you believe it?

Union Pacific Impossible Logistics

Ground was broken for the Union Pacific railroad on December 3rd of 1863, near Omaha, Nebraska. The route began at Council Bluffs, Iowa, continued straight through Nebraska, wandered through the southern portion of Wyoming, and finally ended on the west side of the Wasatch mountains in Ogden and then Promontory Point, a total of 1,085 miles. 

Financial figures included Thomas C. Durant and Oakes Ames, two of the major players in the Credit Mobilier scam, which I won't get into here. Although, I will say that scandals always seem to be present in 1800s construction accounts, making it all the more implausible that work on the railroads (or other construction projects) progressed so quickly. 

Here is how those 1,085 miles of track are broken down from 1864 to 1869:

• 1864: the UP spent this year planning and laying no track down.
• 1865: 40 miles of track laid from Council Bluffs and to North Platte. 
• 1866: 260 miles of track laid through Nebraska and into Wyoming.
• 1867: 270 miles of track laid through Wyoming and reaching Cheyenne. 
• 1868: 254 miles of track laid Green River to Evanston.  
• 1869:262 miles laid from Evanston to Promontory Point

After 1866 things really ramped up for the UP, because while laying endless miles of track, they built several bridges over some very large rivers. These included:

• The Big Sioux River Bridge 
• The Platte River Bridge
• The Loup River Bridge
• The Medicine Bow River Bridge
• The Green River Bridge
• The Weber River Bridge

Many smaller trestle bridges and tunnels were also built by the UP during the same time period.

Building these bridges while grading and laying track, fighting Indians off government-granted railroad lands, and blasting out tunnels would've taken an unimaginable amount of man-power and labor hours. And just like the history of the CP, the UP's labor force is mostly undocumented. 

Let's consider the logistics of building just one of these bridges: the Loup River Bridge near Columbus, Nebraska, a 1,500 foot-long iron behemoth. 

Sabin claims on page 145 of Building the Pacific Railway that the UP constructed the bridge out of iron before continuing the track for the next 400 miles across the Nebraska plains. However, other accounts claim that a wooden trestle was built temporarily so that track could be laid ahead while the iron bridge was being constructed. 

For argument's sake, let's just assume Sabin (his account is the oldest) was correct, and that the iron bridge was constructed before tracks continued west. This narrative creates some astronomical logistical problems. 

The first step in building a bridge is to construct the support piers that hold its massive weight. On the Loup River Bridge these were built out of stone blocks and held together with water-resistant mortar. The piers had to rest on the riverbed and had to withstand the force of perpetual currents while supporting hundreds of tons of weight. 

According to Sabin, the Loup River Bridge was built during the spring and early summer of 1866, the time of year when the water would've been the highest and swiftest. The 1,500 foot long bridge would've required about a dozen stone piers, built about 100 feet apart. Because masonry cannot be laid under water, cofferdams or caissons were used to create a dry working space on the river bed. They are constructed of metal or wood and look something like this:

Although there are no records of the Union Pacific either constructing or purchasing cofferdams to use on any of the bridges they built during the race to Promontory Point, they could not have built any river bridges without their use.

Cofferdams would've been very awkward to ship, and were most likely built on site. Timber and sheet metal were needed to construct them and would've had to be sourced locally or shipped to the site. Once the dam was built, workers had to lower it into the river, using either steam cranes or ropes and pulleys (steam cranes had only been around for a decade and there is no record of the UP using them to build bridges). 

In order to use ropes and pulleys (block and tackle) a very sturdy derrick would've had to have been built close to the river (one that could hold thousands of pounds), and while this may have worked for the first pier, how would laborers have lowered cofferdams into the river several hundred feet offshore? Of course we are given no details of how this was done.

But let's say the men were successful in getting the cofferdam down into the river bed in the location of the first pier. Well, the next step would be to pump out the water. Depending on the size and depth of the cofferdam, it may have held several hundreds or thousands of gallons of water. This would've required manual hand pumps or steam pumps to remove the water. Again, there no records of the UP using steam pumps during this time so we're left to assume that water had to pumped out by hand. 

How long do you think it took to pump water out of just one cofferdam? 

Once the water was removed and the workers had access to dry riverbed, the next step was to excavate the bed and backfill it with compacted material that was strong enough to support the massive weight of the pier and the iron bridge. Materials like pit run and gravel would've had to be hauled in either on train cars or horse-drawn wagons, offloaded with shovels onto the shore of the river, and somehow transported over the river and dumped into the cofferdams. Hand compactors would've been needed to be used to tamp down and compact the material.

Once that was done, stone blocks would have to hauled in for masons to construct the piers. These blocks would have to be quarried somewhere, shaped to specification with hand drills and chisels, shipped to the site, offloaded onto the river bank, and somehow moved over the running river to each cofferdam site and lowered in by hand.

Once the blocks were available to masons, they would have to be laid with some kind of water-resistant mortar. The available choices during the 1860s would've been hydraulic lime mortar, Roman or Portland cement, or bituminous mortar. Once the piers were built to a specific height above the water, they would have to be leveled with each other. This would've been very difficult to do without modern laser levels and surveying equipment.

The next task would've been the transportation and installation of massive iron beams to construct the actual bridge. Before we get too far into those logistics, here is a photo of the bridge that I found online showing two sets of tracks and the typical vanilla skies we see in 19th century photos:

A lot of posing in nice clothes, but as always, we see no work actually being done by the men in the photos. This one doesn't show any piers and the material the iron beams are resting on appears to continue all the way across the river, which begs the question: how was this much fill material brought in, compacted and levelled with hand tools?

Of course, this could be a photo of any bridge, anywhere in the world. How do we really know what we're looking at?  

Again, we are not told about any of the logistics of this bridge. But we do know what it looks like today, after having been rebuilt a few times since the original in 1866:

Now about those iron beams. Small beams would've been anywhere from 15 to 30 feet long and 500 to 3,000 pounds. Beams required for larger bridges, like the Loup River Bridge, could have been over 30 feet long and weighed up to 5 tons (10,000 pounds). Again, workers would've had to use steam cranes or derricks to hoist the beams over the river and onto the stone piers so they could be bolted into place. 

How was this done? We are not told. 

Iron beams would've been manufactured in foundry shops in big cities like Chicago or New York. In order to reach the bridge site, they would have to be shipped on train cars or river barges, offloaded by hand onto wagons, and hauled to the construction site. 

Let's just think about this for a moment: how could a wooden-wheeled wagon even haul 1 beam at 10,000 pounds? 

Let's say that all this was possible, and that there really were thousands of undocumented workers at the UP's disposal to construct this bridge. Let's say they somehow figured out a way to move a cofferdam 12 times across the river in order to construct 12 stone support piers. Let's say that shipping companies kept up with demand and delivered thousands of pounds of iron beams to the job site in a timely manner. Let's even say that derricks and ropes and pulleys were sufficient enough to hoist the beams over the river and onto the piers as the bridge was constructed from one side of the river to the other. 

Let's say all this was possible during the late spring and early summer when snow melts in highlands would've filled the river to the brim during typical flood seasons. If this was all possible, then what Sabin claims next seems highly improbable. 

On page 146 of the Building The Pacific Railway, Sabin claims that during the five month period between May and September of 1866, the UP had successfully laid 180 miles of track!

So let me get this straight...the UP built the Loup River Bridge, and laid 180 miles of track in only five months? From what I've seen of modern construction companies building local (and much smaller) bridges where I live, such a feat could not be repeated today. 

But Sabin isn't finished. On page 147 he declares that by December of 1866 the UP had laid 260 miles of track (an additional 80 miles during the late fall and early winter). How many other bridges were they required to construct while laying track this far West? We are not told, but one can imagine it would have been at least a few. 

Sabin claims that each mile of track required forty carloads of construction materials. Here is how those materials had to reach building crews:

The Union Pacific's base was at the west or frontier side of the unbridged Missouri, upon which navigation was practicable scarcely more than three months in the year, between freshet and low water. The nearest delivery of supplies was at St. Louis; thence they must be transported by steamboat up-river 300 miles; or at the end of the railroad then building across Iowa--the Chicago and Northwestern being distant over 100 miles. From end of railroad transportation was by wagon to the Missouri, and by ferry to the Omaha side. (Building the Pacific Railway, p. 142)

Sabin claims that the UP became proficient at laying over 1 mile of track per day, which means that shipping companies would have to ship 40 train carloads of iron every day to the end of track. Judging by the paragraph above, this would have been a logistical nightmare, especially on a river that was only navigable three months out of the year. This means that for the UP to continue apace in laying 1 mile of track per day, all the materials for an entire year would have to be shipped in a three month period. The math adds up to over 14,000 carloads of iron in just three months.

And remember, construction crews would've been ahead of the end of track by at least a few miles at a time, which means that these 14,000 carloads of iron had to be offloaded onto wagons and hauled to the jobsite with horses or oxen.  

Keep in mind that this was just for the track, and excludes the material for the iron and wood bridges that were constructed along the way. 

Do you really think this was possible? Unfortunately, there is no way to know because there are no records or documents verifying the delivery of this material.

Despite the alarming lack of official records and documents, Sabin paints the following picture of merry workers laying track in perfect rhythm to the robotic commands of their UP masters, as if thousands of men were functioning as a single organism:

The first construction train pulled in, halted noisily, and dumped its thunderous load. The construction train backed out; the boarding-train [carrying workers] pulled out to clear the way for the charge of the iron-truck hauled by rope and galloping horse with a shrieking urchin astride. Forty rails were tossed aboard; the iron-truck rumbled full speed to end o' track, passing another truck, tipped aside to give it right of way. 

The rail squads, five men to a squad, were waiting on right and left; two rails were simultaneously plucked free, to the truck's rollers, and hand after hand were run out to the ties. "Down!" signalled [sic] the squad bosses, almost in one voice. The end of each rail was forced into its chair. The chief spiker was ready; the gauger stooped; the sledges changed--another pair of rails had been set and truck rolled forward over the preceding pair, interrupting the busy hands of the bolters. 

Thirty seconds to each pair of rails; two rail lengths to the minute, three blows to each spike, ten spikes to a rail, 400 rails and 4000 spikes and 12,000 blows to a mile. To every mile some 2500 ties--say 2400 at the outset, 2650 on the grades--at $2.50 each, delivered. The roadbed is ever calling for more and more; six and eight-horse or mule teams toil on from end o' track with spoils from the immense tie-piles; in the mountains, the tie camps are heaping others by the thousands. 

The magnitude and precision of the undertaking awed beholders. The system reminded of the resistless march of the military ants of South America, or of a column of troops occupying a territory. (Ibid, p. 157-58)

So typical of Sabin, he's describing the event in such rich detail as if he was there himself, but he wasn't. He offers no documentation for this passage, names no person recounting a memory, and cites no journal. Yet his descriptive vignette paints a detailed picture in the mind, told with such boyish excitement as to invoke a feeling of appreciation for these unknown, unnamed, and undocumented railroad pioneers. 

Are you still believing any of this? 

The Mormons and the Race to the Finish

As the story goes, Brigham Young, Jr. (son of Brigham Young and Mary Anne Angell, Truman Angell's sister), was on board a train in Chicago and heard that some officers from the Union Pacific were in the city. It was July of 1867, and young Brigham Jr. sought out and approached Sidney Dillon, one of the "chief directors" of the UP, and began negotiations for the Mormon contract to build and grade the railroad through Utah.

The UP's planned route entered Echo and Weber canyons from the east, turned northwest into Ogden, and then curved around the northern end of the Great Salt Lake to Promontory Point. Even though Brigham preferred a southern route through Salt Lake City, we're told he signed the contract in May of 1868.

See the route below, follow the yellow line through the mountains:

A few weeks later on June 10th, a massive meeting was called in the new Tabernacle, which had been barely finished for the October conference of the previous year. Of the thousands of residents that attended the meeting, we're told that 4,000 LDS men and boys responded to the call to build the railroad.

It's funny, out of the supposed 4,000 workers, there are only two men who are cited as sources for working on the railroad. Let that sink in--2 out of 4,000. The two men are as follows:

• Heber Robert McBride
• John Gerber

McBride never mentions working on the railroad in his journal, but briefly mentioned it in his autobiography, written sometime after 1868. However, the autobiography isn't exactly available to the general public. The hand-written transcript is housed in the L. Tom Perry special collections library, and although Wikipedia and other websites cite it as a source for McBride's work on the Union Pacific railroad, references are missing the exact page number of the quote. 

Excerpts of the transcript are available on the Church History Library website, but these mostly mention the handcart history, and say nothing about the railroad. Unless you’re a high-credentialed LDS researcher, access to the autobiography may be limited or unavailable. 

John Gerber was a cook in a workcamp in Echo canyon, and only wrote about his culinary efforts in the journal, never specifically mentioning the railroad. The source comes from an article written in the Utah Historical Quarterly, entitled ""Women and the Transcontinental Railroad Through Utah," published in 2020. 

Because Gerber mentions being a cook in a camp at Echo Canyon in 1868, historians assume that he was in a railroad camp. But just like McBride, there is no hard evidence for this claim. Gerber writes about an incident in the camp when he accidentally cooked a batch of beans in a kettle that he forgot to wash the lye soap out of, which made several of the workers sick. But he never says a word about the railroad.

So do we have any evidence that 4,000 LDS men and boys worked on the transcontinental railroad in Echo Canyon in 1868?

Not exactly. 

The only other documentation of railroad work is the from the leaders themselves. They include:

• Brigham Young: sources include letter of correspondence to UP officials and other LDS leaders.
• Brigham Young, Jr.: cited as an early negotiator with the UP in Chicago.
• Joseph A. Young: cited as a contractor for the UP in charge of LDS crews.
• John Sharp: cited as a partner with Joseph A. Young. 
• Ezra T. Benson: cited as a contractor for the grading of the Central Pacific from Ogden to Monument Point.
• Lorin Farr: mayor of Ogden who partnered with Benson. 
• Chauncey W. West: a Weber Stake President and contractor for the CP.
• Lorenzo Snow: contractor for the CP. 
• John W. Young: another son of Brigham Young who coordinated with UP officials and oversaw work crews in Echo Canyon.

Less than a dozen total men mentioned in the construction history of the transcontinental railroad--out of a total of 4,000.

Tell me dear readers, is this enough evidence to prove that such an undertaking actually took place? Shouldn't there be thousands of journal entries from the common laborers talking about their experiences in Echo Canyon? Where are these diaries? 

Shouldn't there at least be photographic evidence? 

Well, there are a few surviving photos. Let's take a look at them. 

I see tents here but not any actual work on the railroad. 

And...more tents. 

Here we see Echo Canyon again with bent iron tracks on old wooden ties. It sure looks like workers are literally digging them out of the mud.

The official story here is that this part of Echo Canyon had to be completely dug out to ensure a safe grade for the track. The track you see ending into the embankment, was temporary, we're told, so that dirt could be hauled off. Supposedly, the workers are removing the rocky material from the mountain tier by tier, but if you zoom in on this photo you will not see a single person turning a shovel or removing any dirt. Most of the men are standing around and all of the handcarts and wagons are empty. And the men "working" on the steep sides of the hill on the left seem awkwardly out of place. Obviously, there would be nothing to do up there.  

Oh, and here we have railroad surveyors...or rock climbers, I'm not sure which. In any case they appear to be having a good time. 

What do you think? Are these photos "proof" that a railroad was constructed through Echo Canyon by Mormons in 1868?

What about books? Have any books been written on the construction history of the railroad in Echo and Weber canyons? 

I found one. 

Another master's thesis (if you've been following my series on buildings in Utah the best information always seems to be master's theses; I attribute this to the fact that young and ambitious graduate-level researchers are more inclined to search for hard truths than established historians).

The author is Thomas M. Stevens, and the thesis, entitled, "The Union Pacific Railroad and the Mormon Church," was published in 1972. Like most other master's theses it is available to read for free online. 

Stevens' thesis is an analysis of the financial aspects of Brigham Young's contract with the Union Pacific. However, he does have an entire chapter covering the "construction period" through Echo Canyon. And because I can't find any actual books written on the construction history of LDS participation in the building of the transcontinental railroad, this one chapter is about as good as we're going to get.

Stevens begins the chapter, entitled, "The Construction Period", with announcing that the spring of 1868 was "unseasonably wet" (of course it was). John Sharp had left Salt Lake City on May 30th of 1868 (a few weeks before the big meeting in the Tabernacle) with a crew of 50 men. 

The fifty men didn't have much to do (reminiscent of the story about the wall built around the SLT grounds) because UP officials had not yet surveyed the road or sent enough tools to the men. Finally, the Deseret News reported, that the first spade of earth was turned by Samuel B. Reed at Devil's Gate on June 9th of 1868.

Sharp, now with 80 men, still didn't have much to do. He was still waiting for UP engineers to complete their surveys...and those darn tools hadn't showed up yet. 

But Sharp didn't give up, he was determined to hire four hundred men and "five hundred teams" (teams of what? Oxen?) by July. 

Joseph Young, Sharp's partner, was busy procuring labor to build shanties for the workers. Why build shanties when laborers needed to be mobile?

July came and still no tools except for a few ploughs and scrapers. They needed them desperately, because workers needed to cut through what Stevens calls "solid rock" to grade out a roadbed. The contract also required the construction of two tunnels, 100 and 150 feet long. 

Stevens tells us that there was a "manpower shortage". In fact, he never claims there were 4,000 LDS laborers working on the project (you can find that claim on p. 328 of the book, Forty Years: The Saga of Building the Salt Lake Temple, by Mark Henshaw. You can also find the claim on page 20 of an article published in Utah Historical Quarterly Vol. XXVII, entitled, "Contracting for the Union Pacific," by Robert G. Athearn).

Stevens also claims there was a "drill" being used on the tunnel. Although he doesn't specify what type of drill. Other sources claim the tunnels were hand-drilled and blasted out with explosives. Yet Stevens claims that Brigham Young wanted 10 or 15 "drills running at each end of the tunnels." There are no documents verifying what type of drills these were. 

Stevens claims that work proceeded through the winter of 1868-69 and by December of 1868 John Sharp had 1,400 men in his employ. These men were working in high altitudes and in "very unfavorable weather conditions".

By March of 1869, just a few months before the Golden Spike ceremony at Promontory Point, the large tunnel still wasn't finished. So what did the UP have the Mormons do? 

Build a temporary track around the tunnel. Are you kidding me?

According to Sabin, these temporary tracks zigzagged for 10 miles around the tunnel, which he claims was 770 feet long:

The work continued. Those were the orders: work all winter, as all summer and fall. Thaws succeeded freezes, but the snow had gathered twenty feet, and the grade, shovelled [sic] partially bare, was a white-walled galley. To descend from the divide into Echo Canyon a tunnel of 770 feet, approached by two lofty trestles [bridges] of 230 feet and 450 feet, was necessary, or the grade would touch the 116-foot limit. The hard-frozen red clay and sandstone required nitroglycerin, and called for an expense of $3.50 a yard. But [Grenville] Dodge... could not wait upon the tunnel. 

By a zigzag temporary route named the "Z," of ten miles, the track circumvented the tunnel, and thus material was shunted down. The rails could not wait for the clearing of the grade either; they were laid upon the ice and glaring snow--a whole train, from engine to caboose, slid sidewise into the canyon's bottom, carrying with it iron and ties.

The tracks south the canyon bottom; and here the mushy ground yielded until crowbars were used to steady the superstructure while the construction train crept over. (Building the Pacific Railway, p. 190-91, emphasis added)

What on earth did we just read? Does this sound believable at all? Can you imagine a scene of scores of men using crowbars to steady a massive train, carrying thousands of tons of iron, on a track built over ice and snow in the bottom of a canyon?

As it turns out, this 770 foot tunnel described by Sabin is also Tunnel #2 built by the Mormons, which Stevens claims was only 150 feet long. Here is a photo of the mouth of it:

Does that tunnel look tall enough for a train to fit inside? And let's take a look at these "workers". The well-dressed man on the left has some high ambitions with that hand saw. The man straddling the railroad tie in the middle seems to be contemplating carving something into the tie with a wooden peg and a ladle-shaped hammer. It doesn't look like he'll be very productive. The man on the right holding the square, well, he just looks confused, even dumbfounded. 

I don't know about you but I don't see any actual work going on this photo...or any photo we've seen for that matter.

These photos of the railroad can be found in the book Westward To Promontory, a compilation of photographs taken by A.J. Russel. It was not published until 1969, long after the photographer's death. 

Another interesting photo in the book is of the 1,000 mile tree. A pine tree in Echo Canyon that marked 1,000 miles from where the UP began laying track in Nebraska. Tell me, what is a telephone pole doing in this photo, a thousand miles from nowhere?:

And if you zoom in a little you can see a man who climbed to the top of the tree for the shot...except he appears to be sitting on nothing. A definite anomaly showing how these old photos have been tampered with. I recommend clicking on the link above to the book and looking at all the photos. None of them show any actual construction being performed.

The Mormon contract with the UP stipulated that the work be completed by November of 1868, originally only six months. But we're told that crews worked all winter long, through ice and snow, to reach Promontory Point by May of 1869. Yet, in less than a year, Mormon crews had graded and helped lay track over 100 miles of rough terrain, over half of that through rugged canyons. Quite an accomplishment for a horse-n-buggy society. 

The Golden Spike ceremony at Promontory was held on May 10 of 1869. This was supposedly when the "last spike" was driven into the iron rails connecting the last length of track between the CP and UP. Brigham Young did not attend, we're told, because he was on a trip to southern Utah, but was represented by John Sharp. However, Sharp is missing from any photos. 

There are anomalies surrounding the ceremony, which transpired at high noon (is this another clue?).

There are no official records or documentation proving the meeting actually took place. Details of the day's events come from interviews from attendees (like Grenville Dodge and Sydney Dillon of the UP) conducted decades after the fact. It is claimed that over 20 newspaper reporters were in attendance that day, but because of "noise and confusion," none of them were able to fully report the story, so accounts are contradictory. 

No one knows how many people were actually there, and estimates range from 500 to 3,000. These numbers are based on the photographs below:

 

According to researchers, the surviving photographs offer the best evidence that the meeting took place and that certain men were in attendance. I'm not sure how you would identify anyone in these photos. 

There were several ceremonial spikes used, only a few of which survive today. The "gold spike" is housed in the Stanford University art collection but there are no marks on it indicating it was ever driven by a mallet into an iron rail. Historians assume that after the ceremonial spikes were driven, they were taken up and replaced with iron spikes. But again, there is no evidence for this. Only three of the spikes are still in existence today, and none of them show any claw marks. 

There was also a ceremonial tie known as the laurel tie, made of laurel (or Oregon Myrtle) wood from California. The laurel tie ended up in the Flood Building in San Francisco, where it was destroyed in the San Francisco fire of 1906. And here is where we get the fire narrative inserted into the railroad story, a subtle clue that the railroad was already here and this meeting at Promontory never actually took place.

There are more clues that the entire story of the transcontinental railroad was indeed made up. To find the clues we have to look at secret societies and their symbols. 

The Hidden Hand...of History Writers

There is a degree in Royal Arch Freemasonry known as the Master of the Second Veil. It is the 7th degree, and when the initiate reaches this level they receive more access to hidden knowledge. Deductive reasoning tells us that if there is a "second" veil, then there must be a first, which means that lower initiates are taught something altogether different. It is reminiscent of the ancient Egyptian priests, who horded esoteric (occult) knowledge for themselves while teaching the profane (the common citizen) an exoteric substitute. 

You can read about this degree in Morgan's Freemasonry, beginning on page 95. One page 102, the final ceremony, where the Master of the Second Vail (Morgan spells it "vail") is mentioned, is revealed. When the initiate reaches the person acting as the master, the meeting represents "the virtues of departed innocence." 

The room in which the ceremony takes place is adorned with vivid colors in blue, violet, purple, and scarlet. There is a view of a chamber in which the Holy of Holies is seen with King Hyrum (Abiff) laying prostrate on the floor, surrounded by weeping brethren. On the right is a pedestal with the words "Virtue and Integrity" inscribed upon it. On the left is "death's skull and cross-bones," which I find very interesting. In the center of what Morgan calls the "panorama," is the "magnificent Royal Arch."

The sign of this degree is the hand being inserted into the shirt and held over the heart. This is known or has been called the "hidden hand." The hand and the heart hold significant meaning. The hand symbolizes action or doing, while the heart symbolizes belief and intention. Thus, the meaning of the sign is "what we are is what we ultimately do."

It appears that the Masons stole this sign from the Old Testament. In the 4th chapter of Exodus, the Lord told Moses to put his hand into his bosom. When he took it out the hand turned leprous, but then he was told to put the hand back in, and Moses pulled it out completely healed. This, the Lord said, was given as a "sign" for the children of Israel.

Regardless, those who display this sign are part of a club with an agenda to execute. I believe part of that agenda is the whitewashing and rewriting of history. 

Here are some famous people exhibiting the sign:

What does this have to do with the Mormons and the railroad? 

Well, you will just have to see for yourself. Below is a photo of Brigham Young, Jr., the man who first met with Union Pacific officials in Chicago in the summer of 1867. If you're wondering, he's the chubby man in the middle. Notice the hidden hand:

Representing the Union Pacific, we have Grenville Dodge, also displaying the hidden hand below:

And representing the Central Pacific, we have Mark Hopkins, one of the "big four" financial backers, displaying the same sign:

Each branch of the transcontinental railroad is represented (LDS, UP, and CP), telling us that they were all on the same team and part of a group that hides knowledge from the common people.

This brings us to Heber C. Kimball. 

Kimball received the first three craft degrees of Freemasonry in 1823. We're told that he petitioned to receive the York Rite degrees of Royal Arch Masonry in 1824 and was approved, but Anti-Masons burned down the lodge in Canandaigua, New York, where he was to receive them.

The source for this comes from a book written by Orson F. Whitney (Kimball's grandson) and published in Salt Lake in 1888. The following quote is a memory that Whitney recounted from a conversation with Heber decades earlier:

Heber was also a Freemason. In 1823 he received the first three degrees of masonry in the lodge at Victor. The year following, himself and five others petitioned the chapter at Canandaigua, the county seat of Ontario County, for the degrees up to the Royal Arch. The petition was favorably considered, but before it could be acted upon the Morgan anti-mason riot broke out, and the Masonic Hall, where the chapter met, was burned by the mobs and all the records consumed. (Life of Heber C. Kimball, p. 26)

There are two problems with this claim. First, there is no contemporary evidence that the Masonic Hall burned down in 1824. There are no records or newspaper articles in Canandaigua indicating that a fire took place in a masonic building. Here is what the structure may have looked like in the 1820s:

This building does not exist in Canandaigua today, but the only claim that it burned down in 1824 was made by Whitney in the 1888 biography of Kimball. This begs the question: why would Kimball, or Whitney, lie about a fire that consumed masonic records? What were they trying to hide? If those records were not destroyed in 1824 then what happened to them?

The second problem with the claim is that William Morgan's strange disappearance did not occur until 1826, meaning that the anti-mason riots didn't happen in 1824 as Whitney claimed. 

Morgan, who wrote a book exposing Freemasonry, was arrested on September 11 (interesting date), 1826 for defaulting on a loan and was incarcerated in a Canandaigua jail. He was released, arrested again, and then abducted from his jail cell and rumored to have been drowned in the Niagara River.

Whitney was off by two years on his claim about the anti-mason riots in Canandaigua. This means that after Heber Kimball's petition and approval to receive the Royal Arch degree, he had full access to the lodge in Canandaigua for another two years. Do you really think Kimball would've waited that long for initiation once he was approved? 

Of course not. 

This is why I believe that Kimball did receive the initiation and was indeed a Royal Arch mason when he joined the LDS Church in the 1830s. He would've brought this knowledge to Utah with him and possibly passed it on to other masons in secret meetings in Salt Lake City...masons like Brigham Young, Jr., who displayed the sign of the Royal Arch in the photo I posted earlier.

Here is a photo of another son of Brigham Young (Joseph Don Carlos Young) displaying the same sign:

Don Carlos Young, as you may recall, was an architect in Utah who finished the Salt Lake Temple after Truman Angell died in 1887. He is also given credit as the designer of the Church Administration Building in 1917, another Old World beauty.

And just for fun, here is Joseph F. Smith making the sign of the hidden hand at a British mission home in 1906:

In my opinion, some elements of Royal Arch freemasonry have survived and were passed down in the LDS Church. The question is did this tradition originate with Heber C. Kimball?

Kimball died a premature death on June 22, 1868, not a month after Brigham Young's masonic sons are said to have begun work on the Young family contract with the railroad. Kimball was only 67 years old. 

A few weeks prior to his death, Heber was traveling alone from Salt Lake to Provo, at night, on his way to his home where a plural wife name Lucy lived. The buggy suddenly hit a small ditch, which sent Heber flying over the front of wagon and onto the ground. This resulted in a head injury, which ultimately led to his death. 

A few weeks later after speaking at the Tabernacle, he complained of dizziness and "torpidity" of his right side. A few days later he fell twice, and was subsequently confined to his bed. Complete paralysis followed, he lost the ability to speak, and eventually slipped away into a coma and peacefully passed away. 

On the same day Salt Lake mayor Daniel H. Wells issued a statement from the city, asking all businesses to close on the 24th of June, the day of Kimball's funeral.

Kimball had predicted his own death 8 months prior when his first wife Vilate, and obviously his favorite, died suddenly. Although we're not told how she died, the cause is attributed to heavy sorrow from the loss of her son, Brigham Willard Kimball, who died on the plains a few months before. While standing at her bedside Kimball declared, "I shall not be long after her." 

Kimball died from a brain bleed, or an intercranial hemorrhage, which can cause aneurysms, strokes, weakness, and paralysis. These symptoms can be delayed for several weeks after an injury and then cause sudden death. The carriage accident checks out as a likely cause of Kimball's sudden downturn in health. But any other incident involving blunt force trauma to the head could’ve resulted in the same outcome.

This makes me wonder, did Kimball's carriage really hit a bump in the dark that night, or was he met by a group of ruffians who beat him senselessly and left him for dead? Was he targeted by Freemasons for divulging forbidden secrets to his Mormon friends, or was he killed by his own people for some other reason? 

The truth is that we'll never know. Can we believe anything that emanates from LDS historical institutions? I for one, do not. 

But I do believe in the Book of Mormon, which explicitly warns us that secret combinations will play an integral role in the unfolding of the latter days. And that these clandestine groups will have their secret signs, and their secret words, and will quietly manipulate religion and government in the background of all societies.

In the clear language of the Covenant of Christ, we're warned that these secret societies use signs (like the hidden hand) to identify members:

They used their secret signs and words to identify any fellow gang member who had made the covenant. It didn't matter what crime his fellow gang member committed, he would be protected by the other gang members. They were able to murder, rob, steal, and commit whoredoms and all kinds of evil, violating the laws of the land and the laws of God also. Anyone who belonged to their gang and revealed their wickedness and corruption to the world was to be tried, not according to their country's laws, but according to the rules of their gang society, which had been established by Gaddianton and Kishcumen. Now these were the secret oaths and covenants Alma commanded his son not to make public, to prevent the resulting destruction. (CoC, Helaman 2:32)

Had Kimball violated some oath, or was it just an accident?

Join me next time as we dive into rock quarries and stone walls...

If you're interested in further research that questions the railroad narrative, see chapter 15 of James W. Lee's book, The One World Tartarians, click here to read that chapter.

Also, for comparison, here is a video about the transcontinental railroad constructed in Australia, another story with missing logistics and record-breaking construction speed:

There were transcontinental railroads built all over the world, all echoing the same construction story: super-fast speed with missing logistics. One of the most unbelievable was the Trans-Siberian railway built in Russia, spanning nearly 6,000 miles, built by 62,000 workers, and taking only 13 years. 

And here is a video speculating that train technology may have been inherited:

Postscript: A Look at Union Station in Ogden

According to the account, in 1869 the UP built the first "Union Station" building in Ogden, a two story wooden structure. By 1874, the CP also realized that Promontory Point wasn’t the most ideal place to have a junction so a deal was struck to make Ogden the junction city for both rail lines.

By the 1880s the wood building wasn't cutting it, so UP president Charles F. Adams had an architect draw up this Romanesque beauty:

And here is a photo of the real building with some slight modifications:

This thing had 33 (masonic number) hotel rooms, a restaurant, a barber shop, and office space. But the best part about this building is it only took two years to build. 

A contractor named Francis M. Sharp came all the way from Kansas City to construct this building (although we hear nothing about his crews of men). Excavation began in September of 1886 and a foundation of sandstone was laid by Christmas. Of course, back in the 1880s laying a foundation during the dead of winter was much easier than it is today.

With the foundation laid, Mayor David Eccles declared a city-wide holiday the day of the cornerstone ceremony. Businessmen were asked to close shop, and we're told between 5,000 and 6,000 people attended. 

And by way Mr. Eccles (also a railroad man) lived in this mud flooded house in Ogden:

Construction on the new Union Station was completely halted throughout 1887, as the UP had some financial business to attend to that year. But never fear, work resumed in 1888, and by July 31 of 1889 the building was completed and open for business. 

There is not a single word about the construction logistics of this building. They just built it, and that's all we need to know.

The new building serviced Ogden until a fateful day in 1923, when it was destroyed by...wait for it...fire! Yes, stone buildings burned so easily back then. One of the 33 hotel rooms was mysteriously set ablaze at 2:30 in the morning, but after firefighters extinguished the flame, the building was in ruins. 

Apparently, the building of only 36 years was not mourned. It had grown "dilapidated, ill-ventilated, unsightly, overcrowded, and unsanitary," and by April of 1924, grounds were cleared for a new building. 

The new...new building, built in the Spanish Revival style, was completed by November of 1924, taking less than 7 months to build! Here it is still standing today:

And there you have it. Union Station in Ogden follows the same pattern of so many Old World buildings all over the world. I believe that both stone buildings were already here, and the Romanesque one was destroyed on purpose.

This is where I leave you today. In the meantime enjoy this video on the Old World trains stations built across North America. You'll be amazed at the architecture: