Great rail barons came from New York State

"On a larger scale, New York State really was the rail center of a growing nation in the last century. New York changed the rail industry and was changed by it. The great rail barons of this country (Vanderbilt, Gould, Harriman, Stanford, Crocker, Huntington, Hopkins and others) all came from New York. In fact, of the "Big Four" that built the Central Pacific Railroad, the western end of the Transcontinental Railroad, Leland Stanford was a native of Watervliet, Charles Crocker came from Troy, Collis P. Huntington came from Oneonta and Mark Hopkins came from near Watertown. Thomas Durant, Vice President of the Union Pacific Railroad and one of the men who drove the "Golden Spike" at Promontory, Utah on May 10, 1869, was an 1849 graduate of the Albany Medical College; he chose to make his fortune in railroads rather than to take his chances with medicine. ..."

From Albany Area Railroads.