CHAPTERS ON THE HISTORY
OF THE
Southern Pacific
CHAPTER I
INCEPTION OF THE PROJECT
Significance of the History
The history of the Southern Pacific and the railroad companies connected with it affords one of the many examples in American economic life of a great industrial organization built up from small beginnings within the lifetime of one group of men. It is a story full of the interest which attaches to constructive achievement in any line. When we remember that as late as 1870 there was no railroad west of the Mississippi-Missouri River except the Northern, Union, Kansas, and Central Pacific railroads, which possessed a mileage as great as 300 miles, and when we recall that in 1860 the total railroad mileage of the states in this same territory amounted to only 6,000 miles, we are able to form some idea of the successful energy which created a system of 861 miles of railroad in the course of six and one-half years, across an unsettled country, in the face of obstacles due to climate, altitude, and distance from centers of traffic and of finance.