Related Research Articles
The Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) was a rail company chartered by U.S. Congress in 1862 to build a railroad eastwards from Sacramento, California, to complete the western part of the "First Transcontinental Railroad" in North America. Incorporated in 1861, CPRR ceased operation in 1885 when it was acquired by Southern Pacific Railroad as a leased line.
The Pacific Electric Railway Company, nicknamed the Red Cars, was a privately owned mass transit system in Southern California consisting of electrically powered streetcars, interurban cars, and buses and was the largest electric railway system in the world in the 1920s. Organized around the city centers of Los Angeles and San Bernardino, it connected cities in Los Angeles County, Orange County, San Bernardino County and Riverside County.
Henry Edwards Huntington was an American railroad magnate and collector of art and rare books. Huntington settled in Los Angeles, where he owned the Pacific Electric Railway as well as substantial real estate interests. In addition to being a businessman and art collector, Huntington was a major booster for Los Angeles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many places in California are named after him.
Collis Potter Huntington was an American industrialist and railway magnate. He was one of the Big Four of western railroading who invested in Theodore Judah's idea to build the Central Pacific Railroad as part of the first U.S. transcontinental railroad. Huntington helped lead and develop other major interstate lines, such as the Southern Pacific Railroad and the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway (C&O), which he was recruited to help complete. The C&O, completed in 1873, fulfilled a long-held dream of Virginians of a rail link from the James River at Richmond to the Ohio River Valley. The new railroad facilities adjacent to the river there resulted in expansion of the former small town of Guyandotte, West Virginia into part of a new city which was named Huntington in his honor.
"The Big Four" was the name popularly given to the famous and influential businessmen, philanthropists and railroad tycoons who funded the Central Pacific Railroad, (C.P.R.R.), which formed the western portion through the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains of the First Transcontinental Railroad in the United States, built from the mid-continent at the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean during the middle and late 1860s. Composed of Leland Stanford (1824–1893), Collis Potter Huntington (1821–1900), Mark Hopkins (1813–1878), and Charles Crocker (1822–1888), the four themselves, however, personally preferred to be known as "The Associates." Enriching themselves enormously with tax money and land grants, while heavily influencing legislature from within the Republican party, and through monopolizing tactics, the Big Four have been widely regarded as robber barons and even as the greatest swindlers in U.S. history.
Mark Hopkins was an American railroad executive. He was one of four principal investors that funded Theodore D. Judah's idea of building a railway over the Sierra Nevada from Sacramento, California to Promontory, Utah. They formed the Central Pacific Railroad along with Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, and Collis Huntington in 1861.
The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway was a Class I railroad formed in 1869 in Virginia from several smaller Virginia railroads begun in the 19th century. Led by industrialist Collis P. Huntington, it reached from Virginia's capital city of Richmond to the Ohio River by 1873, where the railroad town of Huntington, West Virginia, was named for him.
William Henry Barnum was an American politician, serving as a state representative, congressman, U.S. senator, and finally as chairman of the Democratic National Committee. He was also known as "Seven Mule Barnum".
T. D. Judah was the name of a 4-2-2 steam locomotive owned by the Central Pacific Railroad. It was named in honor of the railroad's first chief engineer, Theodore Dehone Judah, who had championed and surveyed a passable route over the Sierra Nevada for the Transcontinental Railroad.
This article lists events relating to rail transport that occurred during the 1790s.
References
- ↑ Marshall, John (2003). Biographical Dictionary of Railway Engineers (2nd ed.). Oxford: Railway and Canal Historical Society. ISBN 0-901461-22-9.
- ↑ Ambrose, Stephen E. (2000). Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad . Touchstone. pp. 47–48. ISBN 0-7432-0317-8. A footnote in the text cites the data to "Collis Huntington Memoir, Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley."