Southern
Pacific Company
Southern
Pacific Company, transportation system chartered (1865) in California and later
reincorporated in Kentucky (1885) and Delaware (1947). Small railroads-known
collectively as the Southern Pacific-were built and merged after 1865 in S
California to provide feeder lines to the Central Pacific RR and eventually to
provide connections between San Francisco and New Orleans. The Southern Pacific
RR survived the Panic of 1873 and inadequate financing, and in 1883, after the
company had purchased several Texas railroads, Houston, Galveston, and New
Orleans were reached.
In
1884 the Southern Pacific and Central Pacific railroads-which were conceived
and constructed as parts of one system-were combined under the leadership of
Leland Stanford
and Collis P. Huntington
as a unit of interdependent systems. Edward H. Harriman
gained control (1901) of the Southern Pacific after Huntington's death and
expanded the lines. The Southern Pacific Company added several smaller
railroads in the 20th cent. In 1923, after the U.S. Supreme Court had directed
(1922) the company to separate the control of the Southern Pacific and Central
Pacific railroads, the Interstate Commerce Commission allowed the Southern
Pacific to lease the Central Pacific's facilities. The Southern Pacific soon
gained control of several bus lines in the Far West and in 1938 took over the
trucking service previously provided by the Pacific Motor Transport Company.
At
the end of World War II the company failed to resume operation of its steamship
services from New York City and Baltimore to Galveston, thus abandoning a
service that it had operated for over half a century. After a series of mergers
and divestitures in the 1980s, the railroad emerged as the Southern Pacific
Rail Corporation, a public corporation with a large business in containerized
truck-to-train freight. The 1980s and 90s, however, saw the railroad
consistently lose money on operations, and in 1996 it was merged into the Union Pacific.
See
S. Daggett, Chapters on the History of the Southern Pacific (1922, repr.
1966); N. C. Wilson and F. J. Taylor, Southern Pacific (1952); G. L.
Dunscomb, A Century of Southern Pacific Steam Locomotives, 1862-1962
(1963).
transcontinental
railroad
Transcontinental
railroad, in U.S. history, rail connection with the Pacific coast. In 1845, Asa
Whitney presented to Congress a plan for the federal government to subsidize
the building of a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific. The
settlement of the Oregon boundary in 1846, the acquisition of western
territories from Mexico in 1848, and the discovery of gold in California (1849)
increased support for the project; in 1853, Congress appropriated funds to
survey various proposed routes. Rivalry over the route was intense, however,
and when Senator Stephen Douglas introduced (1854) his Kansas-Nebraska
Act, intended to win approval for a line from Chicago, the ensuing
sectional controversy between North and South forced a delay in the plans.
During the Civil War, a Republican-controlled Congress enacted legislation
(July 1, 1862) providing for construction of a transcontinental line. The law
provided that the railroad be built by two companies; each received federal
land grants of 10 alternate sections per mile on both sides of the line (the
amount was doubled in 1864) and a 30-year government loan for each mile of
track constructed. In 1863 the Union Pacific RR began construction from Omaha,
Nebr., while the Central Pacific broke ground at Sacramento, Calif. The two
lines met at Promontory Point, Utah, and on May 10, 1869, a golden spike joined
the two railways, thus completing the first transcontinental railroad. Others
followed. Three additional lines were finished in 1883: the Northern Pacific RR
stretched from Lake Superior to Portland, Oreg.; the Santa Fe extended from
Atchison, Kans., to Los Angeles; and the Southern Pacific connected Los Angeles
with New Orleans. A fifth line, the Great Northern, was completed in 1893. Each
of those companies received extensive grants of land, although none obtained
government loans. The promise of land often resulted in shoddy construction
that only later was repaired, and scandals, such as Credit Mobilier (see Credit Mobilier of
America), were not infrequent. The transcontinental railroads immeasurably
aided the settling of the west and hastened the closing of the frontier. They
also brought rapid economic growth as mining, farming, and cattle-raising
developed along the main lines and their branches.
See
J. Grodinsky, Transcontinental Railway Strategy, 1869-1893 (1962); R. W.
Howard, The Great Iron Trail (1962); L. M. Beebe, The Central Pacific
and Southern Pacific Railroads (1963); G. Hogg, Union Pacific: The
Building of the First Transcontinental Railroad (1967, repr. 1970); C. E.
Ames, Pioneering the Union Pacific (1969); J. J. Stewart, The Iron
Trail to the Golden Spike (1969).
Union
Pacific Railroad
Union
Pacific Railroad, transportation company chartered (1862) by Congress to build
part of the nation's first transcontinental railroad line. Under terms of the
Pacific Railroads Act, the Union Pacific was authorized to build a line
westward from Omaha, Nebr., to the California-Nevada line, where it was to
connect with the Central Pacific RR-which was to be built simultaneously from
Sacramento, Calif. Each railroad company, after completion of an initial 40 mi
(64 km) of track, was to be granted 6,400 acres (2,589 hectares) of public
lands and a loan of from $16,000 to $48,000 for each mile of track laid. In
1864, Congress doubled the land grant, considerably eased the terms of
government loans, and allowed the two railroad companies to borrow private
capital. Also in 1864 and again in 1866 the Central Pacific was authorized to
build eastward beyond the Nevada line.
In
1865 construction of the Union Pacific was begun from Omaha westward, and a
long succession of harrowing construction problems, Indian troubles, and delays
were encountered. Nevertheless, on May 10, 1869, the Union Pacific joined the
Central Pacific, NW of Ogden, Utah, thus connecting the Missouri River and the
Pacific Ocean by rail and completing the nation's first transcontinental
railroad. The joining of the roads was marked in ceremony by the driving of a
golden spike.
Construction
of both roads involved tremendous profiteering, and in 1872 the scandal
involving the Credit
Mobilier of America, an ephemeral holding company to which most of the
Union Pacific's liquid assets had been transferred (1867), was unearthed. The
fraud, combined with later mismanagement and overextensions, left the Union Pacific
with heavy financial burdens, and in 1893 the company went into receivership.
It was reincorporated (1897) as the Union Pacific Railroad Company in Utah, and
under the management of Edward H. Harriman the
railroad was expanded, vastly improved, and stabilized.
n
1901, Harriman added the Southern Pacific (see Southern Pacific
Company) and the Central Pacific to his expanding railroad empire, and his
spectacular attempt to control the Northern Pacific led to the formation of the
Northern Securities Company, a huge rail monopoly that controlled
transportation throughout the Northwest. Under pressure from President Theodore
Roosevelt, the giant holding company was dissolved by the Supreme Court in
1904. Four years later the court ordered the Union Pacific Railroad Company to
relinquish its control of the Southern Pacific, and in 1913 the separation was
completed.
The
Union Pacific also acquired large holdings in railroads in the East and later
gained control over Western motor-coach lines. In 1936 the railroad initiated
the development of Sun Valley, Idaho, into a popular winter resort. The Union
Pacific acquired the Missouri Pacific and Western Pacific RRs in 1982 and M-K-T
RR in 1988. In 1995 it agreed to purchase the Chicago and North Western RR, and
it acquired the ailing Southern Pacific in 1996. By 1997 the much-expanded
railroad was plagued by accidents, late arrivals, and congested rail lines;
federal regulators intervened, allowing two competing railroads to share Union
Pacific's tracks, to keep shipments moving (the track-sharing order was lifted
in 1998). Today the railroad, with around 33,000 mi (53,000 km) of track in the
West, Midwest, and Gulf Coast regions, is a subsidiary of the highly
diversified Union Pacific Corporation; in 1999 the corporation split the
railroad operation into three semiautonomous units (for the northern, southern,
and western sections of the system).
See
J. P. Davis, The Union Pacific Railway (1894, repr. 1973); G. M. Dodge, How
We Built the Union Pacific Railway (1910, repr. 1966); N. Trottman, The
History of the Union Pacific (1923); D. H. Bain, Empire Express:
Building the First Transcontinental Railroad (1999).