The Cape Horn Myth

Year: 2019

By Charles R. Spinks, M.S., P.E., M.ASCE

Spinks reviews—and debunks—the long-standing story that Chinese laborers on the Central Pacific Railroad were lowered in baskets or bosun’s chairs to carve the precarious roadbed around Cape Horn above California’s American River. Drawing on engineering reports, contemporary letters, and later secondary analyses, he shows that the 1865-66 construction was a conventional side-hill cut in friable slate, worked from the top down, not by suspended crews, and that no primary source supports the dramatic legend. The paper also traces how the tale grew through travel guides, popular histories, and publicity art from 1869 to the 1960s, documenting each embellishment that turned routine grading into a mythic feat.