This is part of an ongoing series about the
first Transcontinental Railroad which will be shared on three blogs for which I
post, and will eventually all end up on my own Trails & Rails blog.
Although there were many
who advocated for a transcontinental railway system starting as early as the
1840’s, one of the earlier promoters of the enterprise was an engineer who
dreamed of crossing the Sierra Nevada Mountains, one of the steepest, most
difficult mountain ranges in the United States. He may be credited with getting
the ball rolling in California years before anything substantial had been
organized and put into motion in the East.
T. D. Judah promotes a National
Railroad and Organizes the Central Pacific.
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| Theodore D. Judah |
Congress was in a
gridlock, but the dream of a Transcontinental Railroad lived on through the
efforts of private enterprise. In 1854, skilled engineer, Theodore D. Judah,
left his secure job in the East and moved to Sacramento, California, to pursue
his dream of locating a route over the Sierra Nevada range for a
Transcontinental Railroad. He believed that it was “the most magnificent
project ever conceived,” and he was obsessed with bringing it to fruition. He
took a job as chief engineer for the Sacramento Valley Railroad and, as a
result of his skill and engineering, the first railroad west of the Mississippi
was operating to the Placer mines in February 1856.
Theodore
Dehone Judah was born in 1826 in Bridgeport,
Connecticut, the son of Mary (Reece) and The Rev. Henry Raymond Judah, an Episcopal
clergyman. After his family moved to Troy, New York, Judah studied engineering
at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
At
age 21 Judah married Anne Pierce on May 10, 1847. Theirs was the first wedding
in the then new St James Episcopal Church of Greenfield, Massachusetts.
After
the Sacramento Valley Railroad, Judah resigned in order to devote full time to
realizing his dream. Almost everything he did from then until the day of his
death was for the great Continental Pacific Railway, and it was all done at his
own expense. Judah knew that only the federal government had the resources to
finance such an ambitious venture, and in 1856, he and his wife, Anna, made the
first of four trips east to solicit federal support. In 1857, he wrote a
pamphlet entitled A Practical Plan for Building the Pacific Railroad and distributed it to every member of
Congress. He urged them to donate alternate sections of land to help finance
the enterprise. The legislators were unable to reach consensus, and Judah
return to California without success.
Although some called him
“Crazy Judah,” he did not abandon his dream. On October 28th, 1859, he and Anna
sailed to Panama and then continued to cross the Isthmus by land on their third
trip to the East. On December 6th, Judah held an interview with President James
Buchanan. The president was in favor of the Pacific Railroad, but Congress was
still not behind the project. Theodore and Anna had brought charts, maps, ore
samples, and fossils that had been gathered on their Sierra expeditions. With
these, they opened a Pacific Railway Museum on Capitol Hill. However, the
legislators doubted that a railroad could ever cross the formidable Sierra.
As
the chief engineer of the Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR), Judah surveyed the
route over the Sierra Nevada along which the railroad was to be built during
the 1860s. Failing to raise funds for the project in San Francisco, he
succeeded in signing up four Sacramento merchants, known as the "Big Four."
The
Big Four
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| The Big Four of the Central Pacific Railroad
Company of California: Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Charles
Crocker, and Mark Hopkins |
"The Big Four" was the name
popularly given to the famous and influential businessmen, philanthropists and
railroad tycoons who built the Central Pacific Railroad, (C.P.R.R.), which
formed the western portion through the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains.
Composed of Leland Stanford, (1824–1893), Collis Potter Huntington,
(1821–1900), Mark Hopkins (1813–1878), and Charles Crocker, (1822–1888), the
four themselves personally preferred to be known as "The
Associates." With T. D. Judah as their primary motivator and chief
engineer, they managed financing and construction of the CPRR.
Realizing
that they needed more detailed information to sway Congress to their cause,
Theodore and Anna returned to California. Under Judah's direction, four parties
of engineers went into the Sierra early in 1861 to survey an exact route over
the mountains. Part of the road followed the old Donner Trail and continued
over Donner Pass. Judah used the surveyors’ reports to solicit local funding
for the incorporation of the Central Pacific Railroad of California. He
interested the “Big Four,” Leland Stanford, Collis P. Huntington, Mark Hopkins,
and Charles Crocker in the project. In April 1861, against the advice of
friends, the four partners threw their entire resources and personal credit
into the Central Pacific.
Leland Stanford, with a
law degree and his new bride, Jane, had followed his adventurous inclinations
to the West and settled in California in 1852. There he became a dealer in
groceries and provisions. Today he is known for Stanford University, which was
named for his son, Leland Stanford, Jr. Collis P. Huntington and Mark Hopkins
were partners in a large and thriving hardware business in Sacramento.
Huntington ultimately bore the responsibility of obtaining financing. He is
known today for the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. Charles
Crocker and his brother, Edward, were prosperous dry goods merchants. The Crocker
National Bank of San Francisco is part of their legacy.
For the Central Pacific
Railroad, Stanford was president; Huntington, vice president; Hopkins,
treasurer; Judah, chief engineer; and Crocker, general superintendent of
construction. Free enterprise had provided start-up funds for the fledgling
company, but the railroad could not be built without land grants and subsidies
from the federal government.
 |
| Charles Nordhoff |
Charles
Nordhoff wrote a handbook in 1882 titled California—for
Health, Pleasure and Residence—a handbook for travelers and settlers. This
history originally appeared in Harper’s
New Monthly Magazine in 1872. He used the wordy and effusive language style
of the day, but offered some interesting insights into the formation and
operation of the Central Pacific Railroad:
The story of the building of the Central Pacific
Railroad is one of the most remarkable examples of the dauntless spirit of
American enterprise. The men who built it were merchants, who probably knew no
more about building railroads, when they had past middle age and attained a
respectable commence competence by trade, than a Colusa Pike knows about Greek.
Huntington and Hopkins were hardware merchants. Stanford was at one time or a
wholesale dealer in groceries, the later governor of the state; the two
Crockers were dry goods men. These five, all at or past middle age, all living
in Sacramento, then an insignificant interior town of California, believing in
each other, believing that the railroad must be built, and finding no one else
ready to undertake it, put their hands and heads and their means to the great
work, and carried it through.
Mr. Nordhoff considered
there to be five men, as he included Edward Crocker, brother to Charles, who was
co-owner of the family retail business. Evidently, Edward minded the store while
Charles was the one mostly involved with the railroad venture. Charles Nordhoff,
again:
Moreover, you are to remember that these five
Sacramento merchants, who undertook to build a railroad through eight hundred
miles of an almost uninhabited country, over mountains and across an alkali
desert, were totally unknown to the great money world; that their project was
pronounced impractical by engineers of reputation testifying before legislative
committees; that it was opposed and ridiculed at every step by the moneyed men
of San Francisco; that even in their own neighborhood they were thought sure to
fail; and a “Dutch Flat Swindle,” as their project was called, was caricatured,
written down in pamphlets, abused in newspapers, spoken against by politicians,
denounced by capitalist, and for a long time held in such ill repute that it was
more than a banker's character for prudence was worth to connect himself with
it, even by subscribing for its stock.
Everybody knows what is the common fate in this
country of railroad projectors. A few sanguine and public-spirited men procure
a charter, make up a company, subscribe for the stock, drag all their friends
in, get the preliminary surveys made, begin the work—and then break down; and
two or three capitalist, who have been quietly waiting for this foreseen
conclusion-- foreseen by them, I mean—thereupon step in, buy the valuable wreck
for a song, and build and run and own the road. This is a business in itself.
Dozens of men have made millions apiece by this process, which is perfectly
legitimate; for, as the French say, in order to succeed you must be successful;
or, as we say in this country, to the victors belong the spoils.
The
“Big Four” refused to be caught in that trap. They were businessmen who had
built up their wealth using sound fiscal management. They were not playing at
building a railroad for the glory and prestige; they understood the importance
of having a means of transporting people and goods across the country for the
sake of building up California and the businesses in that state. However, they,
along with Judah, realized they needed government backing for a project of that
size.
Eventually, T. D. Judah
and the Big Four of California received enough of what they needed to get the
project started. Mr. Nordhoff again:
 |
| Theodore Judah monument, Sacramento |
Now the projectors of the Central Pacific
Railroad completed it, and today control and manage it; they did not let it
slip out of their fingers; and, what is more, being only merchants, totally
inexperienced in the railroad building and railroad managing, they did their
work so well that, in the opinion of the best engineers, their road is today
one of the most thoroughly built and equipped and best managed in the United
States. Their bonds sell in Europe but little if any below United States
government bonds, and their credit as a company, in London, Frankfurt, and
Paris, is as high as that of the government itself.
Unfortunately, Theodore
Judah lived only long enough to see construction begin on the railroad to which
he had been so devoted. He contracted malaria while crossing the Isthmus of
Panama while traveling
to New York to seek alternative financing to buy out the Big Four investors. He
died in New York City on
November 2, 1863. Anna
took his body back to Greenfield, Massachusetts, where he was buried in the
Pierce family plot in the Federal Street Cemetery.
Although
it does not involve the Transcontinental Railroad directly, the nearest Transcontinental
Railroad rail connection to the locality in the series, The Widows of Wildcat
Ridge, is in Evanston, Wyoming. My book, Diantha,
is now available on Amazon in both ebook format and print. Please CLICK HERE to access the book
description and purchase link.
Sources:
Museum
Memories, Volume 1
(Salt Lake City, Utah: International Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 2009), Pgs. 398-401.
Southern Pacific First Century (San Francisco: Southern Pacific Public
Relations Department, 1955) 3-8; Ambrose, Nothing
Like It, 42 - 62.
Nordhoff, Charles, The Central Pacific Railroad,
(Silverthorne, Colorado: Vista Books, 2008) originally published in 1882 by
Charles Nordhoff.
Wikipedia
