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 most of the western part of the "First transcontinental railroad" in North America. Incorporated in 1861, CPRR ceased independent operations in 1875 when the railroad was leased to the Southern Pacific Railroad. Its assets were formally merged into Southern Pacific in 1959.
Following the completion of the Pacific Railroad Surveys in 1855, several national proposals to build a transcontinental railroad failed because of political disputes over slavery. With the secession of the South in 1861, the modernizers in the Republican Party controlled the US Congress. They passed legislation in 1862 authorizing the central rail route with financing in the form of land grants and government railroad bond, which were all eventually repaid with interest.[1] The government and the railroads both shared in the increased value of the land grants, which the railroads developed.[2] The construction of the railroad also secured for the government the economical "safe and speedy transportation of the mails, troops, munitions of war, and public stores".[3]
History
Authorization and construction
(Left): CPRR Original Chief Assistant Engineer L.M. Clement[4] & Chief Engineer T.D. Judah; (right): 1865 San Francisco Pacific Railroad Bond approved in 1863 but delayed for two years by the opposition of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors
In the fall of 1860, Charles Marsh, a surveyor, civil engineer and water company owner, met with Theodore Judah, a civil engineer, who had recently built the Sacramento Valley Railroad from Sacramento to Folsom, California. Marsh, who had already surveyed a potential railroad route between Sacramento and Nevada City, California, a decade earlier, went with Judah into the Sierra Nevada Mountains. There they examined the Henness Pass Turnpike Company's route (Marsh was a founding director of that company). They measured elevations and distances, and discussed the possibility of a transcontinental railroad. Both were convinced that it could be done.[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]
Gold Spike at the California State Railroad Museum, Sacramento, California. The museum also has a wall-sized painting of the Gold Spike ceremony which includes images of Charles Marsh and Leland Stanford (who were the only two Central Pacific directors to attend the Gold Spike ceremony at Promontory Summit, Utah).
In December 1860 or early January 1861, Marsh met with Judah and Daniel Strong in Strong's drug store in Dutch Flat, California, to discuss the project, which they called the Central Pacific Railroad of California. James Bailey, a friend of Judah, told Leland Stanford that Judah had a feasible route for a railroad across the Sierras, and urged Stanford to meet with Judah. In early 1861, Marsh, Judah and Strong met with Collis P. Huntington, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins Jr. and Charles Crocker to obtain financial backing. Papers were filed to incorporate the new company, and on April 30, 1861, the eight of them, along with Lucius Anson Booth, became the first board of directors of the Central Pacific Railroad.[14][15][16][17][18][19][20]
Planned by Judah, the Central Pacific Railroad was promoted by Congress by the Pacific Railway Act of 1862 which authorized the issuance of government bonds and land grants for each mile that was constructed. Stanford served as president (at the same time he was elected governor of California), Huntington served as vice-president in charge of fundraising and purchasing, Hopkins was treasurer and Crocker was in charge of construction. They called themselves "The Associates," but became known as "The Big Four." Construction began in 1863 when the first rails were laid in Sacramento.[21]
The Truckee River at Verdi, Nevada, c.1868–75. When the Central Pacific Railroad reached its site in 1868, Charles Crocker pulled a slip of paper from a hat and read the name of Giuseppe Verdi; so, the town was named after the Italian opera composer.
Construction proceeded in earnest in 1865 when James Harvey Strobridge, the head of the construction work force, hired the first Cantonese emigrant workers at Crocker's suggestion. The construction crew grew to include 12,000 Chinese laborers by 1868, when they breached Donner summit and constituted eighty percent of the entire work force.[23][24] The "Golden spike", connecting the western railroad to the Union Pacific Railroad at Promontory, Utah, was hammered on May 10, 1869.[25] Coast-to-coast train travel in eight days became possible, replacing months-long sea voyages and lengthy, hazardous travel by wagon trains.
In 1885 the Central Pacific Railroad was acquired by the Southern Pacific Company as a leased line. Technically the CPRR remained a corporate entity until 1959, when it was formally merged into Southern Pacific. (It was reorganized in 1899 as the Central Pacific "Railway".) The original right-of-way is now controlled by the Union Pacific, which bought Southern Pacific in 1996.
Chinese labor was the most vital source for constructing the railroad.[26] Most of the railroad workers in the west were Chinese, as they could be hired at a lower cost to do the difficult work.[27] Fifty Cantonese emigrant workers were hired by the Central Pacific Railroad in February 1865 on a trial basis, and soon more and more Cantonese emigrants were hired. Working conditions were harsh, and Chinese were compensated less than their white counterparts, leading to far less white workers being hired. Chinese laborers were paid thirty-one dollars each month ($1,010 in 2022), and while white workers were paid the same, they were also given room and board.[28] In time, CPRR came to see the advantage of good workers employed at low wages: "Chinese labor proved to be Central Pacific's salvation."[29]:30
The difficulties faced by the Central Pacific in the Sierra Nevada - particularly the extensive tunneling required - were far more formidable than those encountered by the Union Pacific Railroad in the Rocky Mountains. The story that Chinese workers were suspended in wicker baskets over vertical granite cliffs at Cape Horn, California, to drill and blast a ledge for the Central Pacific has been repeated and exaggerated by uncritical historians.[30][31][32][33][34][35]
The slope there was steep, but definitely not vertical, the rock was not granite, and no one used any baskets. There is reliable, primary-source evidence stating that surveyors used safety ropes while staking out the route, but nothing about construction workers using ropes. Digging the cut was done downward from the top, and from each horizontal end of the cut. It is conceivable that a safety rope would have been useful when digging an initial footpath, that could then be enlarged into a shelf, but there was no reason to be suspended by ropes to dig or drill into the face of the cut. It wasn't done that way. And, most of the Chinese labor was not hired until later. So, the gangs that did the digging at Cape Horn were probably Irish.[36][37][38][39][40][41]
Central Pacific Director Charles Marsh had extensive civil engineering experience in projects of this nature, both from planning an earlier proposed railroad into the Sierras, and from building ditches and flumes through those mountains for his water company.[42]
Financing
Advertisement for CPRR First Mortgage Bonds (1867)
(Left): The Central Pacific built trestles initially in order to expedite construction of the railroad. Later, many of the trestles were filled in with dirt, such as this one near Secret Town, Placer County, California. Photo: Carleton Watkins; (right): The Last Spike, painting by Thomas Hill (1881). Some of the Central Pacific officials depicted in the painting were not actually at the Gold Spike ceremony in Utah.[43]
Construction of the road was financed primarily by 30-year, 6% U.S. government bonds authorized by Sec. 5 of the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862. They were issued at the rate of $16,000 ($265,000 in 2017 dollars) per mile of tracked grade completed east of the designated base of the Sierra Nevada range near Roseville, CA where California state geologist Josiah Whitney had determined were the geologic start of the Sierras' foothills.[44] Sec. 11 of the Act also provided that the issuance of bonds "shall be treble the number per mile" (to $48,000) for tracked grade completed over and within the two mountain ranges (but limited to a total of 300 miles (480km) at this rate), and "doubled" (to $32,000) per mile of completed grade laid between the two mountain ranges.[45] The U.S. Government Bonds, which constituted a lien upon the railroads and all their fixtures, were repaid in full (and with interest) by the company as and when they became due.
Sec. 10 of the 1864 amending Pacific Railroad Act (13 Statutes at Large, 356) additionally authorized the company to issue its own "First Mortgage Bonds"[46] in total amounts up to (but not exceeding) that of the bonds issued by the United States. Such company-issued securities had priority over the original Government Bonds.[47] (Local and state governments also aided the financing, although the City and County of San Francisco did not do so willingly. This materially slowed early construction efforts.) Sec. 3 of the 1862 Act granted the railroads 10 square miles (26km2) of public land for every mile laid, except where railroads ran through cities and crossed rivers. This grant was apportioned in 5 sections on alternating sides of the railroad, with each section measuring 0.2 miles (320m) by 10 miles (16km).[48] These grants were later doubled to 20 square miles (52km2) per mile of grade by the 1864 Act.
Although the Pacific Railroad eventually benefited the Bay Area, the City and County of San Francisco obstructed financing it during the early years of 1863–1865. When Stanford was Governor of California, the Legislature passed on April 22, 1863, "An Act to Authorize the Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco to take and subscribe One Million Dollars to the Capital Stock of the Western Pacific Rail Road Company and the Central Pacific Rail Road Company of California and to provide for the payment of the same and other matters relating thereto" (which was later amended by Section Five of the "Compromise Act" of April 4, 1864). On May 19, 1863, the electors of the City and County of San Francisco passed this bond by a vote of 6,329 to 3,116, in a highly controversial Special Election.
The City and County's financing of the investment through the issuance and delivery of Bonds was delayed for two years, when Mayor Henry P. Coon, and the County Clerk, Wilhelm Loewy, each refused to countersign the Bonds. It took legal actions to force them to do so: in 1864 the Supreme Court of the State of California ordered them under Writs of Mandamus (The People of the State of California ex rel the Central Pacific Railroad Company vs. Henry P. Coon, Mayor; Henry M. Hale, Auditor; and Joseph S. Paxson, Treasurer, of the City and County of San Francisco. 25 Cal. 635) and in 1865, a legal judgment against Loewy (The People ex rel The Central Pacific Railroad Company of California vs. The Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco, and Wilhelm Lowey, Clerk 27 Cal. 655) directing that the Bonds be countersigned and delivered.
In 1863 the State legislature's forcing of City and County action became known as the "Dutch Flat Swindle". Critics claimed the CPRR's Big Four intended to build a railroad only as far as Dutch Flat, California, to connect to the Dutch Flat-Donner Pass Wagon Road to monopolize the lucrative mining traffic, and not push the track east of Dutch Flat into the more challenging and expensive High Sierra effort. CPRR's chief engineer, Theodore Judah, also argued against such a road and hence against the Big Four, fearing that its construction would siphon money from CPRR's paramount trans-Sierra railroad effort. Despite Judah's strong objection, the Big Four incorporated in August 1863 the Dutch Flat-Donner Lake Wagon Road Company. Frustrated, Judah headed off for New York via Panama to raise funds to buy out the Big Four from CPRR and build his trans-Sierra railroad. Unfortunately, Judah contracted yellow fever in Panama and died in New York in November 1863.[49]
Nearly all the company's early correspondence is preserved at Syracuse University, as part of the Collis Huntington Papers collection. It has been released on microfilm (133 reels). The following libraries have the microfilm: University of Arizona at Tucson; and Virginia Commonwealth University at Richmond. Additional collections of manuscript letters are held at Stanford University and the Mariners' Museum at Newport News, Virginia. Alfred A. Hart was the official photographer of the CPRR construction.
Locomotives
CPRR #113 Falcon, a Danforth 4-4-0, at Argenta, Nevada, March 1, 1869 (photo: J.B. Silvis)
The Central Pacific's first three locomotives were of the then common 4-4-0 type, although with the American Civil War raging in the east, they had difficulty acquiring engines from eastern builders, who at times only had smaller 4-2-4 or 4-2-2 types available. Until the completion of the Transcontinental rail link and the railroad's opening of its own shops, all locomotives had to be purchased from builders in the northeastern U.S. The engines had to be dismantled, loaded on a ship, which would embark on a four-month journey that went around South America's Cape Horn until arriving in Sacramento where the locomotives would be unloaded, re-assembled, and placed in service.
Locomotives at the time came from many manufacturers, such as Cooke, Schenectady, Mason, Rogers, Danforth, Norris, Booth, and McKay & Aldus, among others. The railroad had been on rather unfriendly terms with the Baldwin Locomotive Works, one of the more well-known firms. It is not clear as to the cause of this dispute, though some attribute it to the builder insisting on cash payment (though this has yet to be verified). Consequently, the railroad refused to buy engines from Baldwin, and three former Western Pacific Railroad (which the CP had absorbed in 1870) engines were the only Baldwin engines owned by the Central Pacific. The Central Pacific's dispute with Baldwin remained unresolved until well after the road had been acquired by the Southern Pacific.
In the 1870s, the road opened up its own locomotive construction facilities in Sacramento. Central Pacific's 173 was rebuilt by these shops and served as the basis for CP's engine construction. The locomotives built before the 1870s were given names as well as numbers. By the 1870s, it was decided to eliminate the names and as each engine was sent to the shops for service, their names would be removed. However, one engine that was built in the 1880s did receive a name: the El Gobernador.
Virginia and Truckee 18 Dayton was built for the Virginia and Truckee Railroad and never served on the Central Pacific, but the engine was one of two locomotives built by the CP's Sacramento shops in preservation (the other being CP 233). Moreover, its specifications were derived from CP 173, and thus is the only surviving example of that engine's design.
Central Pacific's numbers 60 Jupiter, and 63 Leviathan. Although both engines have been scrapped, and therefore technically do not count as having been preserved, there are exact, full-size operating replicas built in recent years. The Jupiter was built for the National Park Service along with a replica of Union Pacific's 119 for use at their Golden Spike National Historic Site. Leviathan was finished in 2009, and was privately owned, traveling to various railroads to operate, until sold in 2018 to Stone Gable Estates of Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. Stone Gable relettered the locomotive as Pennsylvania Railroad No. 331, a now-scrapped steam locomotive that pulled Abraham Lincoln's funeral train, and operates on the estate's Harrisburg, Lincoln and Lancaster Railroad.[50]
June 28, 1861: "Central Pacific Rail Road of California" incorporated; name changed to "Central Pacific Railroad of California" on October 8, 1864, after the Pacific Railway Act amendment passes that summer.[51]
October 26, 1863: First rail of the Pacific Railroad laid at Sacramento.[54]
1864
April 26, 1864: Central Pacific opened to Roseville, 18 miles (29km), where it makes a junction with the California Central Railroad, operating from Folsom north to Lincoln.
October 8, 1864: Following passage of the amendment to the Pacific Railroad Act, the company's name is changed to "Central Pacific Railroad of California," a new corporation.
1865 CPRR journal coverEnd of the track near Humboldt River Canyon, Nevada, 1868Summit station at Sierra Nevada
1865
February 1865: Central Pacific hired its first 50 Cantonese emigrant laborers on a trial basis.
May 13, 1865: Central Pacific opened 36 miles (58km) to Auburn, California.
September 1, 1865: Central Pacific opened 54 miles (87km) to Colfax, California (formerly known as "Illinoistown.")
1866
December 3, 1866: Central Pacific opened 92 miles (148km) to Cisco, California.
1867
Summit Tunnel, West Portal (Composite image with the tracks removed in 1993 digitally restored)
June 25, 1867: 5,000 Chinese railroad workers went on strike in protest against the longer hours and wage inequality they were facing.[55]
August 28, 1867: The Sierra Nevadas were finally "conquered" by the Central Pacific Railroad, after almost five years of sustained construction effort by its mainly Chinese crew about 10,000 strong, with the successful completion at Donner Pass of its 1,659-foot (506 m) Tunnel No. 6 (a.k.a. the "Summit Tunnel").[56]
December 1, 1867: Central Pacific opened to Summit of the Sierra Nevada, 105 miles (169km).
1868
June 18, 1868: The first passenger train crosses the Sierra Nevada to Lake's Crossing (modern day Reno, Nevada) at the eastern foot of the Sierra in Nevada.
May 10, 1869: The Central Pacific and Union Pacific tracks meet in Promontory, Utah.
May 15, 1869: The first transcontinental trains are run over the new line to Sacramento.
September 6, 1869: The first transcontinental train reaches the San Francisco Bay at Alameda Terminal, achieving the first coast-to-coast railroad line.
August 22, 1870: Central Pacific Railroad Co. is consolidated with the California & Oregon; San Francisco, Oakland & Alameda; and San Joaquin Valley Railroad; to form the "Central Pacific Railroad Co.", a new corporation.
November 18, 1883: A system of one-hour standard time zones for American railroads was first implemented. The zones were named Intercolonial, Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific. Within one year, 85% of all cities having populations over 10,000, about 200 cities in total, were using standard time.
Theodore Dehone Judah was an American civil engineer who was a central figure in the original promotion, establishment, and design of the First transcontinental railroad. He found investors for what became the Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR). As chief engineer, he performed much of the route survey work to determine the best alignment for the railroad over the Sierra Nevada, which was completed six years after his death.
America's first transcontinental railroad was a 1,911-mile (3,075 km) continuous railroad line built between 1863 and 1869 that connected the existing eastern U.S. rail network at Council Bluffs, Iowa, with the Pacific coast at the Oakland Long Wharf on San Francisco Bay. The rail line was built by three private companies over public lands provided by extensive U.S. land grants. Building was financed by both state and U.S. government subsidy bonds as well as by company-issued mortgage bonds. The Western Pacific Railroad Company built 132 miles (212 km) of track from the road's western terminus at Alameda/Oakland to Sacramento, California. The Central Pacific Railroad Company of California (CPRR) constructed 690 miles (1,110 km) east from Sacramento to Promontory Summit, Utah Territory. The Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR) built 1,085 miles (1,746 km) from the road's eastern terminus at the Missouri River settlements of Council Bluffs and Omaha, Nebraska, westward to Promontory Summit.
A transcontinental railroad or transcontinental railway is contiguous railroad trackage, that crosses a continental land mass and has terminals at different oceans or continental borders. Such networks can be via the tracks of either a single railroad or over those owned or controlled by multiple railway companies along a continuous route. Although Europe is crisscrossed by railways, the railroads within Europe are usually not considered transcontinental, with the possible exception of the historic Orient Express. Transcontinental railroads helped open up interior regions of continents not previously colonized to exploration and settlement that would not otherwise have been feasible. In many cases they also formed the backbones of cross-country passenger and freight transportation networks. Many of them continue to have an important role in freight transportation and some like the Trans-Siberian Railway even have passenger trains going from one end to the other.
Amasa Leland Stanford was an American attorney, industrialist, philanthropist, and Republican Party politician from California. He served as the 8th Governor of California from 1862 to 1863 and represented the state in the United States Senate from 1885 until his death in 1893. He and his wife Jane founded Stanford University, named after their late son.
The golden spike is the ceremonial 17.6-karat gold final spike driven by Leland Stanford to join the rails of the first transcontinental railroad across the United States connecting the Central Pacific Railroad from Sacramento and the Union Pacific Railroad from Omaha on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory. The term last spike has been used to refer to one driven at the usually ceremonial completion of any new railroad construction projects, particularly those in which construction is undertaken from two disparate origins towards a common meeting point. The spike is now displayed in the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University.
The Pacific Railroad Acts of 1862 were a series of acts of Congress that promoted the construction of a "transcontinental railroad" in the United States through authorizing the issuance of government bonds and the grants of land to railroad companies. In 1853, the War Department under then Secretary of War Jefferson Davis was authorized by the Congress to conduct surveys of five different potential transcontinental routes from the Mississippi ranging from north to south. It submitted a massive twelve volume report to Congress with the results in early 1855. However, no route or bill could be agreed upon and passed authorizing the Government's financial support and land grants until the secession of the southern states in 1861 removed their opposition to a central route. The Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 was the original act. Some of its provisions were subsequently modified, expanded, or repealed by four additional amending Acts: The Pacific Railroad Act of 1863, Pacific Railroad Act of 1864, Pacific Railroad Act of 1865, and Pacific Railroad Act of 1866.
"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.
Alfred A. Hart (1816–1908) was a 19th-century American photographer for the Central Pacific Railroad. Hart was the official photographer of the western half of the first transcontinental railroad, for which he took 364 historic stereoviews of the railroad construction in the 1860s. Hart sold his negatives to Carleton Watkins, who continued to publish the CPRR stereoviews in the 1870s.
Donner Pass is a 7,056-foot-high (2,151 m) mountain pass in the northern Sierra Nevada, above Donner Lake and Donner Memorial State Park about 9 miles (14 km) west of Truckee, California. Like the Sierra Nevada themselves, the pass has a steep approach from the east and a gradual approach from the west.
Alameda Terminal was a railroad station and ferry wharf at the foot and west of present-day Pacific Avenue and Main Street in Alameda, California, on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay with ferry service to San Francisco. It was built in 1864 and operated by the San Francisco and Alameda Railroad. In 1869, it served as the original west coast terminus of the U.S. First transcontinental railroad, until the opening of Oakland Pier two months later. The western terminus was inaugurated September 6, 1869, when the first Western Pacific through train from Sacramento reached the shores of San Francisco Bay at Alameda Terminal, — thus completing the first transcontinental railroad "from the Missouri river to the Pacific ocean" in accordance with the Pacific Railroad Acts.
The Niles Canyon Railway (NCRy) is a heritage railway running on the first transcontinental railroad alignment through Niles Canyon, between Sunol and the Niles district of Fremont in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area, in California, United States. The railway is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Niles Canyon Transcontinental Railroad Historic District. The railroad is operated and maintained by the Pacific Locomotive Association which preserves, restores and operates historic railroad equipment. The NCRy features public excursions with both steam and diesel locomotives along a well-preserved portion of the first transcontinental railroad.
The California Pacific Railroad Company was incorporated in 1865 at San Francisco, California as the California Pacific Rail Road Company. It was renamed the California Pacific Railroad Extension Company in the spring of 1869, then renamed the California Pacific Railroad later that same year. Its main line from Vallejo to Sacramento was completed six months prior to the May 1869 golden spike ceremony of the Central Pacific/Union Pacific Transcontinental Railway.
The San Francisco and San Jose Railroad (SF&SJ) was a railroad which linked the communities of San Francisco and San Jose, California, running the length of the San Francisco Peninsula. The company incorporated in 1860 and was one of the first railroads to employ Chinese laborers in its construction. It opened the first portion of its route in 1863, completing the entire 49.5-mile (80 km) route in 1864. The company was consolidated with the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1870. Today, Caltrain and the Union Pacific Railroad continue to operate trains over part of the company's original route.
The Oakland Long Wharf was an 11,000-foot railroad wharf and ferry pier along the east shore of San Francisco Bay located at the foot of Seventh Street in West Oakland. The Oakland Long Wharf was built, beginning 1868, by the Central Pacific Railroad on what was previously Oakland Point. Beginning November 8, 1869, it served as the west coast terminus of the First transcontinental railroad. In the 1880s, Southern Pacific Railroad took over the CPRR, extending it and creating a new ferry terminal building with the official station name Oakland Pier. The entire structure became commonly and popularly called the Oakland Mole. Portions of the Wharf lasted until the 1960s. The site is now part of the facilities of the Port of Oakland, while passenger train service operates at the nearby Jack London Square/Dellums Station and another nearby station in Emeryville.
Samuel Skerry Montague (1830–1883) was a railway engineer responsible for building railways in the United States. He was appointed chief engineer of the Central Pacific Railroad in 1863. He also worked on the Southern Pacific Railroad and the First transcontinental railroad.
The Overland Route was a train route operated jointly by the Union Pacific Railroad and the Central Pacific Railroad/Southern Pacific Railroad, between the eastern termini of Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Omaha, Nebraska, and the San Francisco Bay Area, over the grade of the first transcontinental railroad which opened on May 10, 1869. Passenger trains that operated over the line included the Overland Flyer, later renamed the Overland Limited, which also included a connection to Chicago.
The San Francisco and Oakland Railroad (SF&O) was built in 1862 to provide ferry-train service from a San Francisco ferry terminal connecting with railroad service through Oakland to San Antonio. In 1868 Central Pacific Railroad decided that Oakland would be the west coast terminus of the First transcontinental railroad and bought SF&O. Beginning November 8, 1869, part of the SF&O line served as the westernmost portion of the transcontinental railroad. It subsequently was absorbed into the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP). The track in Oakland was electrified in 1911 and extended across the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in 1939. Service was abandoned in 1941.
The Western Pacific Railroad (1862–1870) was formed in 1862 to build a railroad from Sacramento, California, to the San Francisco Bay, the westernmost portion of the First transcontinental railroad. After the completion of the railroad from Sacramento to Alameda Terminal on September 6, 1869, and then the Oakland Pier on November 8, 1869, which was the Pacific coast terminus of the transcontinental railroad, the Western Pacific Railroad was absorbed in 1870 into the Central Pacific Railroad.
The California Central Railroad (CCRR) was incorporated on April 21, 1857, to build a railroad from Folsom to Marysville, as an extension of the Sacramento Valley Railroad which terminated at Folsom. The first division of the CCRR was 18.5 miles long; it started at Folsom, crossed the American River, and ended at the new town of Lincoln, twenty-four miles south of Marysville. The bridge over the American River was the first railroad bridge of any importance built in California, and the American the first river in California crossed by trains. In 1858, California Central was probably the first California railroad to employ Chinese laborers and first to demonstrate that "Chinese laborers can be profitably employed in grading railroads in California."
Charles Marsh was an influential figure in the building of the first transcontinental railroad, as well as in building water systems for mining in the Sierra Nevada Mountains during the California Gold Rush. He was one of the founding directors of the Central Pacific Railroad. He was a surveyor and worked with Theodore D. Judah to survey and evaluate various possible routes for the first transcontinental railroad through the Sierra Nevada. He built a number of ditches and water pipelines to serve mines and towns there, and became known as the “Father of Ditches.” He was also one of the founders of the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad.
References
↑ Daggett, Stuart (1908). "Union Pacific". Railroad Reorganization(PDF). Vol.4. Harvard University Press. p.256. Archived(PDF) from the original on July 22, 2004. Retrieved December 13, 2011.
↑ Leo Sheep Co. v. United States,440U.S.668(1979).
↑ Wheat, Carl I. "A Sketch of the Life of Theodore D. Judah," California Historical Society Quarterly, p. 250, Volume IV, No. 3, September 1925.
↑ Comstock, David Allan. "Charles Marsh: Our Neglected Pioneer-Genius," Nevada County Historical Society Bulletin, p. 15, Volume 50, No. 2, April 1996, Nevada County Historical Society, Nevada City, California.
↑ United States Senate, Testimony Taken by the United States Pacific Railway Commission, Volume V, p. 2617, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1887.
↑ Central Pacific Railroad, Articles of Association, California State Archives, Sacramento, California.
↑ Lindars, Dom. Manuscript, The Ditches of Nevada City, Chapter 24, Stories of Fire and Ice, anticipated publication date: Spring 2023.
↑ Papers compiled by David Comstock, and "The Christine Freeman Directory," Searls Historical Library, Nevada City, California.
↑ "Central Pacific Railroad Company," Marysville Daily Appeal, p. 2, May 3, 1861, Marysville, California.
↑ "Railroad Across the Sierra Nevada," Marysville Daily Appeal, p. 2, June 30, 1861.
↑ Kraus, George. High Road to Promontory: Building the Central Pacific (now the Southern Pacific) across the High Sierra, pp. 14, 47-48, Castle Books, New York, New York, 1969.
↑ Chang, Gordon H; Fishkin, Shelley Fisher (2019). The Chinese and the iron road: Building the transcontinental railroad. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ISBN9781503608290.
↑ White, Richard (2011). Railroaded: The transcontinentals and the making of modern America. New York: W W Norton & Co. ISBN9780393061260. Chinese labor proved to be Central Pacific's salvation.
↑ Spinks, Chuck. "Baskets and the Cape Horn Myth," unpublished paper, California State Railroad Museum, Sacramento, California, 2019.
↑ Strobridge, Edson T. The Central Pacific Railroad and the Legend of Cape Horn, 1865-1866, San Luis Obispo, California, 2001.
↑ Duncan, Jack E. A Study of the Cape Horn Construction on the Central Pacific Railroad, 1865-1866, Newcastle, California, 2005.
↑ Harris, Robert L. "Pacific Railroad – Unopen," The Overland Monthly, A. Roman & Company, San Francisco, California, September, 1869.
↑ Dadd, Bill. Great Trans-Continental Railroad Guide, G. A. Crofutt, Chicago, Illinois, 1869.
↑ Mintern, William. Travels West, Samuel Tinsley, London, England, 1877.
↑ Spinks, Chuck. "Baskets and the Cape Horn Myth," unpublished paper, California State Railroad Museum, Sacramento, California, 2019.
↑ Strobridge, Edson T. The Central Pacific Railroad and the Legend of Cape Horn, 1865-1866, San Luis Obispo, California, 2001.
↑ Duncan, Jack E. A Study of the Cape Horn Construction on the Central Pacific Railroad, 1865-1866, Newcastle, California, 2005.
↑ Harris, Robert L. "Pacific Railroad – Unopen," The Overland Monthly, A. Roman & Company, San Francisco, California, September, 1869.
↑ Dadd, Bill. Great Trans-Continental Railroad Guide, G. A. Crofutt, Chicago, Illinois, 1869.
↑ Mintern, William. Travels West, Samuel Tinsley, London, England, 1877.
↑ Comstock, David Allan. "Charles Marsh: Our Neglected Pioneer-Genius," Nevada County Historical Society Bulletin, pp. 10-11, Volume 50, No. 2, April 1996, Nevada City, California.
↑ Comstock, David Allan. "Charles Marsh: Our Neglected Pioneer-Genius," Nevada County Historical Society Bulletin, p. 15, Volume 50, No. 2, April 1996, Nevada County Historical Society, Nevada City, California.
↑ McLaughlin, Mark (July 28, 2004). "The Big Four and the 'Dutch Flat swindle'". Sierra Sun: Serving Truckee, Tahoe City, Kings Beach and Incline Village. Retrieved April 28, 2019.
↑ By-Laws of the Central Pacific Railroad Company of California, Incorporated: June 28, 1861 "THE INDUSTRIAL AND FINANCIAL RESOURCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, as developed by the official returns of the Northern and Southern States and Territories, with an APPENDIX containing a detailed description of Federal, State, and City securities, railroad and canal bonds and shares, bank shares, etc. from statements nearest Jan. 1, 1863, and the CHARTERS OF THE UNION PACIFIC RAILROADS, the GENERAL RAILROAD LAW OF CALIFORNIA, and the BY-LAWS OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC RAILROAD CO. OF CALIFORNIA." New York: SAMUEL HALLETT, Banker and Railroad Negotiator. 1864
Beebe, Lucius (1963). The Central Pacific and Southern Pacific Railroads. Berkeley, CA: Howell-North Books.
Chang, Gordon (2020). Ghosts of Gold Mountain. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Profiles how 20,000 Chinese railroad workers lived and worked while building the Central Pacific over Donner Pass. Shows changing attitudes of CPRR officials who employed the Chinese.
Cooper, Bruce C. (2005). Riding the Transcontinental Rails: Overland Travel on the Pacific Railroad 1865–1881. Philadelphia: Polyglot Press. ISBN1-4115-9993-4.
Cooper, Bruce Clement (2010). The Classic Western American Railroad Routes. New York: Chartwell Books/Worth Press. ISBN978-0-7858-2573-9.
Fleisig, Heywood (1975). "The Central Pacific Railroad and the Railroad Land Grant Controversy". Journal of Economic History. 35 (3): 552–566. doi:10.1017/s002205070007563x. S2CID154908516. Questions whether promoters of the Central Pacific Railroad were oversubsidized. Confirms the traditional view that subsidies were not an economic necessity because they "influenced neither the decision to invest in the railroad nor the speed of its construction." Notes that estimates of rate of return for the railroad developers using government funds range from 71% to 200%, while estimates of private rates of return range from 15% to 25%.
Kraus, George (1975). "Chinese Laborers and the Construction of the Central Pacific". Utah Historical Quarterly. 37 (1): 41–57. doi:10.2307/45058853. JSTOR45058853. S2CID254449682. Shows how Chinese railroad workers lived and worked, and managed the finances associated with their employment. Concludes that CPRR officials who employed the Chinese, even those at first opposed to the policy, came to appreciate the reliability of this group of laborers. There are many quotations from accounts by contemporary observers.
Lake, Holly (1994). "Construction of the CPRR: Chinese Immigrant Contribution". Northeastern Nevada Historical Society Quarterly. 94 (4): 188–199.
Mercer, Lloyd J. (1970). "Rates of Return for Land-grant Railroads: the Central Pacific System". Journal of Economic History. 30 (3): 602–626. doi:10.1017/S0022050700086241. S2CID154314079. Analyzes the impact of land grants from 1864 to 1890 on rates of return from investment in the Central Pacific Railroad. Results suggest that even without land grants, rates of return were high enough to induce investment. Also, land grants did not pay for the construction of the railroad. Land grants, however, did produce large social returns in western states by accelerating construction of the system.
Mercer, Lloyd J. (1969). "Land Grants to American Railroads: Social Cost or Social Benefit?". Business History Review. 43 (2): 134–151. doi:10.2307/3112269. JSTOR3112269. S2CID156347832. Uses econometrics to determine the value of railroad land grants of the 19th century to the railroads and to society. The author summarizes and criticizes previous treatments of this subject, and discusses his own findings. Using the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific systems as the basis for his investigation, the author concludes that the railroad owners received unaided rates of return that substantially exceeded the private rate of return on the average alternative project in the economy during the same period. Thus, the projects were profitable, although contemporary observers expected that the roads would be privately unprofitable without the land grant aid. The land grants did not have a major effect, increasing the private rate of return only slightly. Nevertheless, he says the policy of subsidizing those railroad systems was beneficial for society since the social rate of return from the project was substantial and exceeded the private rate by a significant margin.
Ong, Paul M. (1985). "The Central Pacific Railroad and Exploitation of Chinese Labor". Journal of Ethnic Studies. 13 (2): 119–124. Ong tries to resolve the apparent inconsistency in the literature on Asians in early California, with contradictory studies showing evidence both for and against the exploitation of Chinese labor by the CPRR, using monopsony theory as developed by Joan Robinson. Because CPRR set different wages for whites and Chinese (each group had different elasticities of supply) and used the two classes in different types of positions, the two groups were complementary, rather than interchangeable. Calculations thus show higher levels of exploitation of the Chinese than found in previous studies.
Saxton, Alexander (1966). "The Army of Canton in the High Sierra". Pacific Historical Review. 35 (2): 141–151. doi:10.2307/3636678. JSTOR3636678.
Tutorow, Norman E. (1970). "Stanford's Responses to Competition: Rhetoric Versus Reality". Southern California Quarterly. 52 (3): 231–247. doi:10.2307/41170298. JSTOR41170298. Leland Stanford and the men who ran the CPRR paid lip-service to the idea of free competition, but in practice sought to dominate competing railroad and shipping lines. Analyzing the period 1869–1893, the author shows how Stanford and his associates repeatedly entered into pooling arrangements to prevent competition, bought out competitors, or forced rivals to agree not to compete. He concludes that Stanford and his partners viewed laissez-faire as applicable only to government controls, and not to businessmen's destruction of competition within the system.
White, Richard (2003). "Information, Markets, and Corruption: Transcontinental Railroads in the Gilded Age". The Journal of American History. 90 (1): 19–43. doi:10.2307/3659790. JSTOR3659790.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
