KWAN: You didn't see Charles Crocker, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins down in the railroad hammering away, setting black-powder explosives. HERNANDEZ: And, Kwan says, it wasn't rich, American industrialists who did the hard work. MAX CHANG: And to add what I call, like, the great Salt Lake salt to the wound, John Volpe, the secretary of transportation, then gave a speech, which basically said, who but Americans could lay 10 miles of track in one day? Who but Americans could dig tunnels through the solid granite of the Sierras? Max Chang is one of the organizers of this year's events. But then the representative's time was inexplicably cut from the schedule. Fifty years ago, at the 100th anniversary, a representative of the Chinese Historical Society of America was invited to speak. HERNANDEZ: After the railroad was done, the Chinese workers contributions were sometimes recognized and sometimes not. And so they didn't really record the names of those who died and didn't even bother to collect their bodies or search for them. KWAN: They were thought of as, really, just another tool. But Kwan says all that didn't get them much respect from their bosses. The Chinese had some of the most difficult and dangerous jobs. Their portion of the line started in California, crossed into Nevada and met up with the Union Pacific Railroad line in Utah. HERNANDEZ: At one point, the Chinese made up about 90% of the Central Pacific Railroad's workforce. MICHAEL KWAN: The Chinese railroad workers are just emblematic of the story of immigrants from everywhere.

Michael Kwan is the president of the Chinese Railroad Workers Descendants Association. HERNANDEZ: The event is significantly different from the one 50 years ago, when Chinese contributions were almost entirely ignored. A traditional Chinese lion dance opened up the ceremony. ROCIO HERNANDEZ, BYLINE: This weekend, more than 10,000 people from across the world gathered at Promontory Summit, where the transcontinental railroad was completed 150 years ago. Rocio Hernandez from member station KUER reports that the story of the Chinese has been largely in the shadows until now.

But the monumental feat might not have been possible without the manpower of Chinese immigrants. It was a moment that boosters believed brought the country together both literally and figuratively after the Civil War. That union was marked by a golden spike hammered into the tracks. Railroad tracks from the East Coast and the West Coast met for the first time in 1869 in northern Utah.

Golden spike celebration 2019