In early 1866, Central Pacific workers were stalled in California, facing the monumental task of blasting 15 tunnels through solid granite in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Thousands of Chinese laborers would be pushed to their breaking point.

One-thousand miles to the east, workers on the Union Pacific faced Plains Indians desperate to defend their ancestral homelands from the encroaching railroad.

But the men in charge of the railroads knew that every mile of track meant money in their pockets, and they would stop at nothing to capture victory.

Order your copy of the new American History Tellers book, The Hidden History of the White House, for behind-the-scenes stories of some of the most dramatic events in American history—set right inside the house where it happened.

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