We go out of Summit Valley through what I call Lake Pass, while Fremont’s route, or the old Emigrant road, goes over Truckee Pass, which is about 700 feet higher, and a few miles off my route. We strike the foot of Truckee Lake, or the cabins of the Donner party, nine miles from the summit, and from there it is an easy grade down the Truckee River, descending about 40 feet per mile, over a smooth country. The elevation of the pass is 6,690 feet. There are two other passes leading out of Summit Valley, which I had not time to explore, but either of them are practicable, although a little higher. This route is at least 150 miles shorter than the Beckwourth route; crosses the state at the narrowest point, and is on a direct line to the Washoe mines. I will undertake to build a railroad over this route in two years, for $70,000 per mile, from Sacramento City to the state line or Washoe. Thus the question of crossing the Sierra Nevada, I consider solved.
After the tentative organization of his proposed railroad, and the publication of the news of his discoveries in the newspapers, Judah went to San Francisco. He managed to get in touch with some capitalists, but was unable to secure their support. If Congress did not pass a Pacific Railroad bill, they said, no railroad could be built; if a bill was passed, the road still could not be completed for ten or twenty years. They had other interests, and were disinclined to consider a scheme of this sort, however technically feasible. If we may believe the newspapers of the time, no inconsiderable reason for the reluctance of the men approached was the provision of the constitution of California making stockholders liable for their proportion of all the debts and liabilities of any company in which they held stock.[9]
Sacramento Meetings
When he failed to secure support in San Francisco, Judah went to Sacramento. The city of the plains, as it was then affectionately called by its inhabitants, was less wealthy than San Francisco, but for that very reason might be expected to take an interest in a project which promised her, for some years at least, a position of relative advantage with respect to the trade of the interior. The leading newspaper in that city, the Sacramento Union, could be counted on to support any plausible Pacific railroad scheme for political reasons. The citizens had further the advantage of first-hand experience with the workings of the Sacramento Valley Railroad, which had been opened from Sacramento to Folsom in 1856, and was still the only railroad in the state.
It does not, however, appear that these various factors stirred the people of Sacramento to any extraordinary enthusiasm over Judah’s scheme, or that they regarded him in any other light than that of an engineer with a risky plan, which it was very desirable to have someone other than themselves finance. Judah, however, called a meeting at a local hotel, and people came. He told them he had made twenty-three barometrical reconnaissances over the Sierras, and had found a line. He needed money to carry the project further, in particular to make a thorough instrumental survey, and he asked them what they would subscribe. Nobody subscribed very much. Huntington says that some gave a barrel of flour, and some a sack of potatoes. Still, the additional subscriptions necessary to the legal organization of Judah’s company probably amounted to as much as $56,500[10] on the 115 miles of line contemplated, and small miscellaneous offerings were not likely to carry the promoter very far.
Collis P. Huntington
It is at this juncture that we first hear the names of Collis P. Huntington, Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins, all prosperous business men in Sacramento. Huntington and Hopkins ran one of the largest hardware stores in the town. Stanford and Crocker were merchants, and in addition, Stanford had dabbled in California politics to the extent of becoming a candidate for the position of state treasurer in 1857 and for that of governor in 1859, getting badly beaten on both occasions. It is difficult, even at this late date, to estimate the qualities of the four men with confidence. Beyond question, Huntington had the greatest genius for business of the four. Born in Connecticut, and self-supporting from the age of fourteen, he was a trader par excellence. In his youth he peddled watch findings from New York to the Missouri River. Later, it is related of him that he started for California with a capital of $1,200, which he increased to $4,000 during an enforced stay of three months on the Isthmus of Panama. He was cool, calculating, unscrupulous, a tireless worker, and a man with few interests outside of work. Enterprise for the public good interested him little. He had few friends, and some of these he lost in later years. Narrow in his sympathies, vindictive, sometimes untruthful, sarcastic, and domineering, he gained his success through the keenness of his mind and the energy and persistence of his character, and also through qualities of courage and imagination which were not absent from his business plans.
