The Reno Arch & the railroad that built the city

“The Biggest Little City in the World” — and the railroad behind the boast, cut by Chinese hands.

Key facts

The first arch went up over Virginia Street on 23 October 1926 to promote a transcontinental-highway exposition — it celebrated the new cross-country auto routes.
The slogan “The Biggest Little City in the World” won a 1929 contest. The current arch dates from 1987, re-lit in blue and silver in 2018; the original 1926 arch now stands a few blocks east on Lake Street, by the river.
The transcontinental route the Arch brags about was the railroad first — and that railroad was cut through the Sierra by thousands of Chinese labourers (about twelve thousand of the fifteen thousand who built the Central Pacific's mountain grade, through fifteen tunnels).

Narration transcript

There it is — the Reno Arch, right over Virginia Street: "Reno, The Biggest Little City in the World." It's the city's signature, and people have been photographing themselves under it for almost a hundred years. The first arch went up in 1926 to celebrate the new transcontinental highways; the slogan won a contest in 1929; this particular arch is from 1987, lit up blue and silver since 2018. The original 1926 arch is still around, a few blocks east by the river.

But stand here a second and think about what the Arch is really bragging about. Before the highways, what made Reno a crossroads — what made it anything at all — was the railroad. The transcontinental line came right through here, and that line had to be chiseled through the solid granite of the Sierra, through fifteen tunnels, by hand. The crews who did that work were overwhelmingly Chinese — something like twelve thousand of them on the mountain grade alone. They built the road that this Arch celebrates.

Hold onto that, because it makes the next stop land the way it should. The same community that built the railroad under Reno's proudest symbol built a neighbourhood a two-minute walk from here — and here is what this city did to it.