Smithsonian Magazine - Forgotten History of Chinese Railroad Workers

In 1860s, over 12,000 Chinese immigrants traveled to the United States to work on the Central Pacific Railroad. While they were instrumental in the railroad's completion and represented the largest workforce at the time in US history, only a few dozen worker's names were ever recorded, and no single piece of written correspondence from any of the immigrants has been found. It was a history that became lost. Today, a team of archaeologists along with descendants of Chinese workers are turning to the ghost town of Terrace with the hope of recovering pieces of the lost past. This story was photographed and written for the 2022 April/May issue of Smithsonian Magazine