Union Pacific
This is meant to be sung to the melody of "Tucumcari", a song that Jimmy Rodgers made popular in 1959.
***
Coming out of Sacramento
people thought we were nuts
to build a road o'er the high Sierra.
Yeah, it's gonna take guts.
Grade the bed, lay the rail,
strike the spike a strong blow.
We're building a transcontinental railroad;
six hundred miles to go!
We blasted our way across the high Sierra,
in temperatures of forty below.
The ghosts of the Donner Party watched us
as we battled the snow.
Grade the bed, lay the rail,
strike the spike a strong blow.
We're building a transcontinental railroad;
five hundred miles to go!
We followed the course of the Humboldt River
across the Basin and Range.
We turned to the east at Winnemucca
through a land both arid and strange.
Grade the bed, lay the rail,
strike the spike a strong blow.
We're building a transcontinental railroad;
three hundred miles to go!
We laid our rails on the Salt Lake Desert,
a land of man-killing thirst.
We're heading straight for Ogden, Utah:
we want to reach that point first.
Grade the bed, lay the rail,
strike the spike a strong blow.
We're building a transcontinental railroad;
fifty more miles to go!
When we came to Promontory
and put the gold spike in place
we tied the United States together
across this wide-open space.
We graded the bed, laid the rail,
struck the spikes a strong blow.
We built a transcontinental railroad;
there's nowhere now we can't go.
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