The history of the Southern Pacific is significant, however, for still other reasons than because it illustrates what men can do in spite of serious difficulties. The company’s record is important to the student of transportation problems because there is embodied in it much of the experience of the Pacific Coast with respect to railroad construction, railroad finance, railroad rate-making, and the relation of railroad corporations to the public at large, as represented by local, state, and national governments. What the Pacific Coast, and what in particular the state of California know, first hand, of the habits and policies of railroad corporations, is mainly derived from contact with the Southern Pacific Railroad and its auxiliary companies.
The narrative that follows is offered as a contribution from the far western portion of the United States which may help to explain the attitude of that section toward transportation matters; as well as an account of some phases of the earlier development of a railroad system which is now one of the most powerful in all the country, whether we compare this system with the railroads of the East or with those of the West.
The Southern Pacific system today embraces lines from Ogden and New Orleans on the east, to Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles on the west. The part of the system first built, however, and at all times the most important part of it, is that section reaching from a few miles west of Ogden, Utah, to the cities of Sacramento and San Francisco. This portion of the larger system was built and is owned by the Central Pacific Railroad Company.[1] It is therefore to the circumstances attending the construction of this portion of the line that attention will first be directed.
Early Activities of Theodore Dehone Judah
The promoter of the Central Pacific Railroad was a young engineer named Theodore Dehone Judah. Judah was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He obtained his first experience in railroad building on the Troy and Schenectady Railroad in New York. Later he built a railroad down the gorge of the Niagara River to Lewiston, served as resident engineer on the Erie Canal, and in 1854 had charge of the Buffalo and New York Railroad then building to connect with the Erie. This was a responsible position for a man with so brief a period of training. When Judah came to California in 1854 he was only twenty-eight years of age. He was soon to make it evident, however, that he possessed more than respectable engineering ability, while he also displayed a capacity for sustained enthusiasm in connection with the project for a transcontinental railroad which eventually overcame all obstacles and resulted in the formulation of definite and successful plans for a transcontinental line.[2]
Judah began work in California as engineer of the Sacramento Valley Railroad. He left the service of the company, however, before the road was finished to Folsom. Subsequently he made a survey for a railroad from Sacramento to Benicia, and also one for a short branch on the California Central Railroad. Still later he was employed by the trustee of the Sacramento Valley Railroad, J. Mora Moss, and the superintendent, J. P. Robinson, to explore the Sierra Nevada Mountains for wagon road routes north of the south fork of the American River, and at the same time to act as agent for the Sacramento Valley Railroad in soliciting freight.
Details of Judah’s activities between 1854 and 1860 are difficult to obtain. We know that he visited Washington in order to procure the passage of a bill making grants of land to California for railroad purposes. In 1859 he was the delegate from Sacramento to the Pacific Railroad Convention, where he urged the importance of a thorough survey before any decision should be made regarding the route of a transcontinental railroad. When the convention adjourned he was sent to Washington at his own expense to urge the passage of a bill such as the convention favored. He returned in 1860 without having accomplished his purpose, but convinced that Congress was in favor of granting federal aid to a railroad to California from the East, and that it would act when more important matters had been disposed of.[3]
Discovery of Transcontinental Route
It was after Judah’s return from Washington in 1860 that he undertook the explorations for the Sacramento Valley Railroad to which reference has been made. Doubtless while engaged on this work he visited Dutch Flat, and doubtless also his enthusiasm for a transcontinental railroad became generally known. Judah was no mountaineer, but he could readily profit by the knowledge of men acquainted with the country. Such a man he found in Daniel W. Strong, a druggist at Dutch Flat, who accompanied him on his explorations. We have Strong’s statement that he himself conceived the idea that immigrant travel could be diverted through the Dutch Flat country by the construction of a railroad, and that he hired assistants, made a reconnaissance, and found a continuous divide over which he thought a road could pass. Knowing that Mr. Judah was trying to find a pass over the mountains, he wrote to him, and Judah came from Sacramento to Dutch Flat. Strong says that he showed Judah the route he had discovered, and that Judah thought well of it.[4]