Central pacific railroad

Searchable collections of manuscripts, war records, historic images, vital statistics, audio and video recordings from the State Library and Archives of Florida.

Southern Pacific Railroad advertisement from 1885. The company was founded in 1865 as a land holding company and became a railroad when it acquired the Central Pacific in 1885. The Central Pacific had employed as many as 12,000 emigrant Chinese laborers to build the railroad line from California to Utah where the "golden spike" was laid in 1869 to form the first transcontinental railroad. Utah was the connecting place with the Union Pacific railroad which had been built west from Council…

Geography of Chinese Workers Building the Transcontinental Railroad

Central Pacific Railroad local time schedule for 1873, offering train and boat service from San Francisco and Sacramento.

Researchers discovered the remains of a mid-19th century house, a centuries-old Chinese coin and other traces of the short-lived town of Terrace

Built by Schenectady Locomotive Works in 1869, the Nevada Northern #1's story began on the roster of the Central Pacific Railroad as number 161 "Juno" and carried this name until 1885. The Southern Pacific who eventually absorbed the Central Pacific, renumbered the locomotive to 1228. The locomotive was then sold to the Nevada Northern Railway in 1905. In years between its time on the CPRR / SP and the Nevada Northern, various upgrades were made, converting this classic 4-4-0 from a…

Elko got started in 1868 as a railroad town along northeast Nevada’s Humboldt River. But calling it a town might’ve been stretching the matter. It

Central Pacific #229 "Mastodon," a 4-8-0 "Twelve-Wheeler" locomotive built by the railroad's Sacramento shops in 1882. The world's first successful 4-8-0 locomotive, it inspired railroad president Leland Stanford to build an even larger one (named "El Gobernador"), which looked nearly identical to the "Mastodon." Renumbered Southern Pacific #2925 in the early 20th century, "Mastodon" was converted from wood to oil-burning to serve on the SP's Oregon lines, and was sadly scrapped in June…