Southern Pacific Railroad

Major railway company in the southwestern USA. By linking up with the Santa Fe Railroad in Texas in the 1880s, it created the second continuous railway line across the continent.

The Southern Pacific was established in 1861 by the same ‘Big Four’ group of Sacramento businessmen that had financed the Central Pacific Railroad. It received its charter in 1865, and began to build a branch line across the Central Valley of southern California to connect with the main line. By the 1870s, it had become the more important of the two companies, and subsumed the Central Pacific in 1884. It was granted substantial public lands for construction of its lines, and became such a powerful concern in California that it was attacked as an ‘octopus’ reaching into all aspects of the state's life. In more recent times, it relinquished most passenger services in 1971, and merged with the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad in 1988. In 1996, when it was acquired by the Union Pacific Corporation, it became the company's largest railway concern.

In the late 1870s, the Southern Pacific extended southeast from Los Angeles across the Colorado Desert to Yuma, Arizona, with the aim of meeting other railway lines that were being built west across Texas and New Mexico. By 1883, it was running services from Los Angeles via El Paso, Texas to New Orleans, Louisiana. Its most famous train, the Sunset Limited, travels this route; by extending its schedule to Jacksonville, Florida, in 1993, it became the first US train to offer passengers a journey from coast to coast without having to change. This long-distance service is operated on behalf of Amtrak (the National Railroad Passenger Corporation).