Famous Givers and Their Gifts

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

Every one knew that a railroad was needed. Vessels had to go around Cape Horn, and troops and produce had to be transported over the mountains and across the plains at great expense and much hardship. Some persons believed the building of a road over the snow-capped Sierra Nevada Mountains was possible; but most laughed the project to scorn, and denounced it as "a wild scheme of visionary cranks."

"The huge snow-clad chain of the Sierra Nevadas," says Mr. Perkins, the senator from California who succeeded Mr. Stanford, "whose towering steeps nowhere permitted a thoroughfare at an elevation less than seven thousand feet above the sea, must be crossed; great deserts, waterless, and roamed by savage tribes, must be made accessible; vast sums of money must be raised, and national aid secured at a time in which the credit of the central government had fallen so low that its bonds of guaranty to the undertaking sold for barely one-third their face value."

In the presence of such obstacles no one seemed ready to undertake the work of building the railroad. One of the persistent advocates of the plan was Theodore J. Judah, the engineer of the Sacramento Valley and other local railroads. He had convinced Mr. Stanford that the thing was possible. The latter first talked with C. P. Huntington, a hardware merchant of Sacramento; then with Mark Hopkins, Mr. Huntington's partner, and later with Charles Crocker and others. A fund was raised to enable Mr. Judah and his associates to perfect their surveys; and the Central Pacific Railroad Company was formed, June 28, 1861, with Mr. Stanford as president.

In Mr. Stanford's inaugural address as governor he had dwelt upon the necessity of this railroad to unite the East and the West; and now that he had retired from the gubernatorial office, he determined to push the enterprise with all his power. Neither he nor his associates had any great wealth at their command, but they had faith and force of character. The aid of Congress was sought and obtained by a strictly party vote, Republicans being in the majority; and the bill was signed by President Lincoln, July 1, 1862.

The government agreed to give the company the alternate sections of 640 acres in a belt of land ten miles wide on each side of the railroad, and $16,000 per mile in bonds for the easily constructed portion of the road, and $32,000 and $48,000 per mile for the mountainous portions. The company was to build forty miles before it received government aid.

It was so difficult to raise money during the Civil War that Congress made a more liberal grant July 2, 1864, whereby the company received alternate sections of land within a belt twenty miles on each side of the road, or the large amount of 12,800 acres per mile, making for the company nearly 9,000,000 acres of land. The government was to retain, to apply on its debt, only half the money it owed the company for transportation instead of the whole. The most important provision of the new Act was the authority of the company to issue its own first-mortgage bonds to an amount not exceeding those of the United States, and making the latter take a second mortgage.

There is no question but the United States has given lavishly to railroads, as the cities have given their streets free to street railroads; but during the Civil War the need of communication between East and West seemed to make it wise to build the road at almost any sacrifice. Mr. Blaine says, "Many capitalists who afterwards indulged in denunciations of Congress for the extravagance of the grants, were urged at the time to take a share in the scheme, but declined because of the great risk involved."

Mr. Stanford broke ground for the railroad by turning the first shovelful of earth early in 1863. "At times failure seemed inevitable," says the New York Tribune, June 22, 1893. "Even the stout-hearted Crocker declared that there were times when he would have been glad to 'lose all and quit;' but the iron will of Stanford triumphed over everything. As president of the road he superintended its construction over the mountains, building 530 miles in 293 days. On the last day, Crocker laid the rails on more than ten miles of track. That the great railroad builders survived the ordeal is a marvel. Crocker, indeed, never recovered from the effects of the terrific strain. He died in 1888. Hopkins died twelve years before, in 1876."

With a silver hammer Governor Stanford drove a golden spike at Promontory Point, Utah, May 10, 1869, which completed the line of the Central Pacific, and joined it with the Union Pacific Railroad, and the telegraph flashed the news from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The Union Pacific was built from Omaha, Neb., to Promontory Point, though Ogden, Utah, fifty-two miles east of Promontory Point, is now considered the dividing line.

After this road was completed, Mr. Stanford turned to other labors. He was made president or director of several railroads,—the Southern Pacific, the California & Oregon, and other connecting lines. He was also president of the Oriental and Occidental Steamship Company, which plied between San Francisco and Chinese ports, and was interested in street railroads, woollen mills, and the manufacture of sugar.