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.
North America's first transcontinental railroad was a 1,911-mile (3,075 km) continuous railroad line constructed 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 US land grants. Construction was financed by both state and US government subsidy bonds as well as by company issued mortgage bonds. The Western Pacific Railroad Company built 132 mi (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 mi (1,110 km) east from Sacramento to Promontory Summit, Utah Territory. The Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR) built 1,085 mi (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 unpopulated interior regions of continents 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.
Promontory is an area of high ground in Box Elder County, Utah, United States, 32 mi (51 km) west of Brigham City and 66 mi (106 km) northwest of Salt Lake City. Rising to an elevation of 4,902 feet (1,494 m) above sea level, it lies to the north of the Promontory Mountains and the Great Salt Lake. It is notable as the location of Promontory Summit, where the First Transcontinental Railroad from Sacramento to Omaha in the United States was officially completed on May 10, 1869. The location is sometimes confused with Promontory Point, a location further south along the southern tip of the Promontory Mountains. Both locations are significant to the Overland Route, Promontory Summit is where the original, abandoned alignment crossed the Promontory Mountains while the modern alignment, called the Lucin Cutoff, crosses the mountains at Promontory Point.
Golden Spike National Historical Park is a United States National Historical Park located at Promontory Summit, north of the Great Salt Lake in east-central Box Elder County, Utah, United States. The nearest city is Corinne, approximately 23 miles (37 km) east-southeast of the site.
The Lucin Cutoff is a 102-mile (164 km) railroad line in the western United States in Utah which runs from Ogden to its namesake in Lucin. The most prominent feature of the cutoff was a twelve-mile-long (19 km) long railroad trestle crossing the Great Salt Lake; in use from 1904 until the late 1950s, when it was replaced by a earthen causeway.
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 to the Pacific coast.
The first Vallejo Flour Mill, in present-day Fremont, California, was built in 1853 by José de Jesús Vallejo (1798–1882), elder brother of General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, on his Rancho Arroyo de la Alameda. The Flour Mill was located at the mouth of Niles Canyon, then called Alameda Cañon, which served as the major course of Alameda Creek. A second Flour Mill was built in 1856, the stone foundation of which may still be seen today.
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.
Union Station, also known as Ogden Union Station, is a train station in Ogden, Utah, at the west end of Historic 25th Street, just south of the Ogden Intermodal Transit Center. Formerly the junction of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads, its name reflects the common appellation of train stations whose tracks and facilities are shared by railway companies.
Kelton is a ghost town, just north of the Great Salt Lake, in the Park Valley area of Box Elder County, Utah, United States. The town was inhabited during the period of 1869–1942. Once an important section station on the First Transcontinental Railroad, Kelton was dependent on the railroad throughout its history. The town suffered serious setbacks in the 1880s when its busy stagecoach route to Boise, Idaho was discontinued, and in the 1900s when the Lucin Cutoff left it off the main rail line. The strongest earthquake in Utah history caused severe damage in 1934, but Kelton ceased to exist only when the rails were completely removed during World War II.
Terrace is a ghost town in the Great Salt Lake Desert in west-central Box Elder County, Utah, United States.
The Overland Route was a train route operated jointly by the Union Pacific Railroad and the Central Pacific Railroad / Southern Pacific Railroad, between Council Bluffs, Iowa / Omaha, Nebraska, and San Francisco, California, over the grade of the first transcontinental railroad which had been 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. Although these passenger rail trains are no longer in operation, the Overland Route remains a common name for the line from Northern California to Chicago, now owned entirely by the Union Pacific.
The Big Fill was an engineering project on the First Transcontinental Railroad in the U.S. state of Utah. To avoid a costly 800-foot (240 m) tunnel through mountainous terrain east of Promontory Summit, Central Pacific engineers mapped an alternate route that still needed to span the deep Spring Creek Ravine.
The Historic Union Pacific Rail Trail State Park is a recreational trail that follows abandoned railroad lines in Summit County, Utah, United States.
The 650-foot (200 m) Dale Creek Crossing, completed in 1868 in southeastern Wyoming Territory, presented engineers of the United States' first transcontinental railroad one of their most difficult challenges. Dale Creek Bridge, the longest bridge on the Union Pacific Railroad (UP), reached 150 feet (46 m) above Dale Creek, two miles (3.2 km) west of Sherman, Wyoming. The eastern approach to the bridge site, near the highest elevation on the UP, 8,247 feet (2,514 m) above sea level, required cutting through granite for nearly a mile. Solid rock also confronted workers on the west side of the bridge where they made a cut one mile (1.6 km) in length.
The Comanche Crossing of the Kansas Pacific Railroad is a site where the last spike was driven into the first continuous transcontinental railroad on August 15, 1870. The site is east of Strasburg, Colorado, near railroad mile marker 602. A monument commemorating the event is located at Lyons Park in Strasburg.
The history of the Union Pacific Railroad stretches from 1862 to the present. For operations of the current railroad, see Union Pacific Railroad; for the holding company that owns the current railroad, see Union Pacific Corporation.
Mexican Canyon Trestle is a historic wooden trestle bridge in New Mexico's Sacramento Mountains, Otero County, New Mexico, just outside Cloudcroft, New Mexico. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
The tracklaying race of 1869 was an unofficial contest between tracklaying crews of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads, held during the construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad. In their competition to determine who would reach the meeting place at Promontory, Utah first, starting in 1868, the railroad crews set and broke each other's world records for the longest length of track laid in a single day, culminating in the April 28, 1869 record set by Chinese and Irish crews of the Central Pacific, who laid 10 miles 56 feet (16.111 km) of track in one day. That record was broken by approximately 1,000 feet (300 m) in August 1870 by two crews, working from both ends, during the construction of the Kansas Pacific.
