WP and SF&SJ inclusion in Pacific Railway Legislation
From: "Larry Mullaly" lmullaly@jeffnet.org
Two questions:
1) The original Pacific Railway Act of 1862 did include transfer of rights from the CP to the [Western Pacific Railroad] to build a connector line between Sacramento to San Francisco. Was there subsequent legislation that allowed the Western Pacific to be awarded federal lands?
2) Although the Department of Interior appointed Commissioners to examine the San Francisco & San Jose in 1866, I do not see that the road was ever awarded government assistance. Why did the inspection take place if there were no benefits attached?
Any assistance would be appreciated.
—Larry Mullaly
posted from CPRR Discussion Group at 10:41 PM
6 Comments:
From: KyleWyatt@aol.com
I have nothing concrete – but can speculate.
On the WP, has anyone found a copy of the 1864 Pacific Railway Act, which modified the 1862 act and increased support?
By 1866 SF&SJ gearing up for the Southern Pacific. SP was incorporated on Dec. 2, 1865. SF&SJ was the northern piece of the SP line connecting to San Francisco (the destination of the transcontinental line), so inspection of the SF&SJ makes sense.
SF&SJ was also intended to be a link connecting the CP, via WP, with San Francisco, so inspection might have related to that. In any case, all elements of the transcontinental lines (central or southern) needed to meet minimum standards, so inspections would be required.
Kyle K. Wyatt
Curator of History & Technology
California State Railroad Museum
111 "I" Street
Sacramento, CA 95814
The Pacific Railway Acts are online at the CPRR Museum.
From: "Larry Mullaly" lmullaly@jeffnet.org
Your lead ... brought me to the Central Pacific Museum that has a full series of Pacific Railway legislation. Here I found that the Western Pacific land grant rights derive from an amendment to original 1862 act dated March 3, 1865 [13 Statutes at Large 504] that state in Section 2:
"And be it further enacted, that the assignment made by the Central Pacific Railroad Company of California, to the Western Pacific Railroad Company of said state, of the right to construct all that portion of said railroad and telegraph from the city of San José to the city of Sacramento is hereby ratified and confirmed ... "
This piece of corrective legislation ratified an unofficial agreement worked out between the CP leadership and some of the directors of the SF&SJ in 1862 whereby the San Franciscans agreed to support the bill favoring the Central Pacific in exchange for the right to build the portion of the line between Sacramento and San Jose.
The second question regarding the US Railroad Commissioners inspection of the SF&SJ continues to be a problem. Although the SP was chartered and awarded a land grant in 1865, the SF&SJ was not part of the SP at this time. Possibly it was presented to the federal government as part of tail end of the transcontinental line, although the original 1862 Pacific Railway Act only required the line to reach the “at or near San Francisco or the navigable waters of the Sacramento River” and San Jose, at the end of the chartered Western Pacific, should have sufficed for that purpose.
To all appearances the SF&SJ made a bold bid to get recognized as an official part of the transcontinental railroad, got as far as an inspection, but then failed to go any further. Lynn Farrar’s suggestion that the SF&SJ declined the offer of federal support because this would result in a mortgage not to their advantage may be the piece I am looking for.
—Larry
From: "Edson T. Strobridge" etstrobridge@fix.net
I think you will find Norman Tutorow's interesting description of how the Western Pacific came to acquire the right to build the western end of the transcontinental railroad after it had already been awarded to the Central Pacific (Section Nine of the 1862 railroad bill gave this right to the CPRR) and the reasons that C.P. Huntington and T.D. Judah give for assigning that portion of the road between Sacramento and San Francisco to Charles McLaughlin, Alexander Houston, Judge Timothy Dane, President of the SF&SJ RR and a number of others.
Tutorow also describes the Central Pacific's re-acquisition in June 1867 of their franchise to build the railroad which amounted to little more that a trade. The CPRR got the franchise, 16 miles of constructed track, four miles of rail and the reassigned contract for another twenty miles of rail from the Rensselaer Iron Co. In return they gave up the land grant and agreed to assume the remaining debt on the first twenty miles of rail to John Griswold, owner of the rolling mill. (Incidentally a piece of this original 50 lb. rail with the brand "R.I.C. 65" is/or was at the CSRM.
Norman Tutorow has documented in great detail his sources which may be of interest in pursuing the history of the SF&SJ and W.P. railroads. See his award winning biography of "The Governor, The Life and Legacy of Leland Stanford"; Vol. One, pp. 214-217 and pp, 259-261.
—Ed Strobridge
From: KyleWyatt@aol.com
If the inspection of the SF&SJ in 1866 was related to the WP (and CP), then the scenarios suggested [above] make sense.
If the inspection was somehow related to the SP (which as I understand it was much more closely affiliated with the SF&SJ than the WP was), then I suspect the inspection is a whole different story, and suggests that the SF&SJ/SP wished to consider the line all the way in to San Francisco as part of the authorized SP line. It might be worth checking SP reports instead of CP/WP reports to see if the SF&SJ inspection turns up.
Kyle K. Wyatt
Curator of History & Technology
California State Railroad Museum
111 "I" Street
Sacramento, CA 95814
From: "Mullaly, Larry" LMullaly@roguecc.edu
The SF&SJ is never mentioned in SP corporate reports of the 1860’s. In 1868 the SP report to the Secretary of Interior states that a contract has been let to build from San Jose to Gilroy as part of the Southern Pacific without mentioning that the contractors were directors of the SF&SJ. Nor are the SF&SJ reports any better (these focus on financial, facilities and rolling stock). Surprisingly there does not seem to be any mention of this is in the SF&SJ minute books either.
—Larry
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