The Western Pacific Railroad (1862–1870) was formed in 1862 to build a railroad from Sacramento, California, to the San Francisco Bay, the westernmost portion of the First transcontinental railroad. After the completion of the railroad from Sacramento to Alameda Terminal on September 6, 1869, and then the Oakland Pier on November 8, 1869, which was the Pacific coast terminus of the transcontinental railroad, the Western Pacific Railroad was absorbed in 1870 into the Central Pacific Railroad.
History
The Western Pacific Railroad (1862–1870) was formed in December 1862 by a group led by Timothy Dame and including Charles McLaughlin and Peter Donahue, all associated with the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad (SF&SJ), to build a railroad from San Jose north to Niles (then called Vallejo Mills), east through Niles Canyon (then called Alameda Cañon), north to Pleasanton, east through the Livermore Valley, and over Altamont Pass to Stockton, then north to Sacramento, with the plan that the transcontinental railroad would follow the Western Pacific to San Jose and then the SF&SJ to San Francisco. At the completion of the SF&SJ in January 1864, it was reported that the general contract for the Western Pacific was awarded to McLaughlin & Houston and that negotiations for iron, equipment, and rolling stock had begun. On October 31, 1864, the Central Pacific Railroad assigned all the rights of the Pacific Railway Acts of 1862 and 1864 to the Western Pacific for the route between Sacramento and San Jose, including land grants. The amending Act of March 3, 1865 ratified and confirmed the assignment made by Central Pacific Railroad to Western Pacific Railroad and authorized Western Pacific Railroad as one of the charter companies.
Construction and transactions
The construction of the Western Pacific Railroad began in February 1865 near San Jose and northward under a contract taken by J.B. Cox & Myers. After Chinese laborers had helped complete the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad in 1864, a force of 500 Chinese laborers was grading the roadbed and laying tracks for the Western Pacific in 1865. By October 1866, Western Pacific completed 20 miles (32 km) of track north and east from San Jose, reaching halfway into Alameda Cañon (now Niles Canyon) to a point just beyond Farwell. The first cars left San Jose to Vallejo Canyon (Alameda Cañon) on October 2. It had also surveyed, and started work on some places on, the rest of the line through Alameda Cañon, through Livermore Valley, over Livermore Pass (now Altamont Pass), and on to Stockton and Sacramento, before running out of money and halting all construction. Part of the difficulty was that federal land grants were not available where Mexican land grants had previously been made.
In June 1867, the five Associates (Big Four plus E. B. Crocker) of the Central Pacific completed a complicated transaction with moribund Western Pacific (WP) and resuscitated it and its assets while Charles McLaughlin, the only Western Pacific owner left, retained rights to sell his land grants. In September 1867, Governor Stanford led Charles Crocker and Samuel Montague to show them the projected WP line, which would captured his interest that it would soon be dubbed "The Governor's Road". In October 1867, patterned after the structure of the ill-fated Crédit Mobilier of America, the Contract and Finance Company was incorporated to act as the stock/asset holding/laundering subsidiary formally independent of Central Pacific, but informally transferring stocks/assets back to the five CP Associates, to finance the construction and purchase of railroad. In early 1868, contractors Turton, Knox & Ryan broke ground on the Western Pacific line from Sacramento southward to Stockton and beyond, including Livermore Pass. Meanwhile, Central Pacific concluded that the route via San Jose to San Francisco was too long and that it would be better to change to a route using ferryboats from the planned CPRR's Oakland Pier in Oakland. The decision to make Oakland the western terminus of the WP line was finally wrapped up, under the charge of Gov. Stanford, in a series of complex transactions and legislative compromise in April 1868. The CPRR briefly considered a shorter route west from Dublin/Pleasanton to the Hayward/San Leandro area (a route used by Bay Area Rapid Transit more than 100 years later), but decided that the grades were too much of a disadvantage compared to the 1% grade of the Alameda Cañon route.
Since Central Pacific had decided to make Oakland the west coast terminus of the First Transcontinental Railroad, its subsidiary purchased in August 1868 the majority of stock in San Francisco and Oakland Railroad (SF&O), which provided ferry-train service from a San Francisco ferry terminal connecting with railroad service through Oakland to San Antonio. After the 1868 Hayward earthquake bankrupted the San Francisco and Alameda Railroad (SF&A), the CP subsidiary also purchased in August 1869 the majority of stock in SF&A, which provided ferry service from San Francisco and train service from Alameda Terminal to the quake-damaged terminal at Hayward, California. After the Central Pacific completed the western half of the first transcontinental railroad from Omaha to Sacramento with the golden spike ceremony on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Summit, J. H. Strobridge with some crew and equipment went to Vallejo Mills (now Niles) at the west end of Alameda Cañon to commence in June 1869 to build a new rail line from Vallejo Mills northward towards Oakland. Meanwhile, Turton, Knox & Ryan dispatched workers to continue the railroad in Alameda Cañon eastward from the point where the 1866 Western Pacific rails abruptly stopped. By July 1869, Strobridge had 500 Chinese workers on the leg from Vallejo Mills towards Oakland. On the other two fronts, Turton, Knox & Ryan had a larger force of upwards of 2,000 men, mostly Chinese, some deployed working eastward from the middle of Alameda Cañon towards Livermore Pass and some working southward from Sacramento towards Stockton. This line included two engineering challenges: boring a 1,200 ft (370 m) tunnel through hard material near Livermore Pass and bridging the San Joaquin River at Mossdale south of Stockton.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
