Thomas Hill, Lithograph after his painting The Last Spike, ca. 1870; chromolithograph; courtesy the Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley. This picture shows the ceremony held at Promontory Point, Utah, on May 10, 1869 to celebrate the completion of the first transcontinental railroad, which joined the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads.

Racial Discrimination and Anti-Immigrant Laws

Even after the available gold began to disappear and fewer individual prospectors journeyed to California, immigrants continued to arrive in large numbers. They came to work in massive industrial mining operations and on the railroads. The biggest of the railroad projects, the first transcontinental railroad, began in 1863. During its construction the railroad employed thousands of Irish and Chinese laborers. Once construction was completed, layoffs and unemployment helped fuel racial tensions and sparked violence, especially between Irish and Chinese immigrants.

These clashes over labor, immigration, and race in California shaped the development of government policies that controlled who was allowed to come to the state and where they were allowed to work. These local policies ultimately influenced national immigration laws. 

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