The strains of taps drifted over the sagebrush of Box Elder County, honoring the workers who laid more than 1,700 backbreaking miles of track before fancy-looking white men in top hats put a hammer to a ceremonial golden spike in America’s first transcontinental railroad.
“I really felt like for the first time I’m included in something … so incredibly American,” Chin said of Thursday’s celebrations honoring the 149th anniversary of the railroad’s completion at Golden Spike National Historic Site near Corinne.
Chin is the great-great-granddaughter of Yoon Thlin, a Chinese rail worker who was forced back to China 30 years after he helped build the railroad because of anti-Chinese sentiments.