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The Octopus
1869 to 1881

Copyright 2000 by Joel GAzis-SAx

1869May 10. The Union Pacific meets the Central Pacific at Promonotory Point, Utah. Leaders of the two railroads drive the celebrated Golden Spike where the tracks join.
1869Hartwell Carver receives a free pass to travel on the trancontinental route he envisioned thirty seven years before.
1869Completion of the Santa Clara and Pajaro Valley Railroad.
1869August. The San Francisco Bay Railroad links with the San Francisco & Alameda Railroad, another short line under control of the Central Pacific.
1869August 14. Completion of the rail link between Sacramento and Stockton.
1869September 6. First Central Pacific engine to reach the San Francisco Bay uses track of the Western Pacific railroad, linking the East Coast with Alameda and eliminating the need to finish the transcontinental journey using riverboats dispatched from Sacramento.
1869November 2. Consolidation of the Western Pacific and the San Francisco Bay Railroad.
1869November 16. After learning that the rails for the Sonoma County route have been lost off Valparaiso, Chile, Asbury Harpending and his fellow investors organize the San Francisco and North Pacific Rail Road Company, thus allowing them to renegotiate the contract due to be lost by their San Francisco & Humboldt Bay Railroad.
1870Organization of the San Francisco and Northern Pacific Coast Railroad by Petaluma businessmen disgusted with the slow progress of Harpending's road.
1870February 5. Peter Donahue of the Union Iron Works tells Santa Rosa citizens that he can have twenty miles of the Sonoma County Railroad operating by the end of the year if they will back him in the State Legislature. A month later, they agree.
1870March 21. The San Rafael and San Quentin Railroad begins passenger service.
1870June 23. Consolidation of the San Francisco Bay Railroad with the Central Pacific.
1870June 28. Congress authorizes the Southern Pacific's transcontinental railroad.
1870August 2. Peter Donahue buys the San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad from Asbury Harpending. The first spike on the road is pounded in on August 30. On September 11, Donahue treats Petaluma citizens to an excursion.
1870October 12. Consolidation of the San Francisco & San Jose, the Santa Clara & Pajaro Valley, and the California Southern Railroad into the Southern Pacific Railroad Corporation.
1870October 31. Regular service on the San Francisco & Northern Pacific Railroad begins.
1871March 3. Congress authorizes the Southern Pacific to build a railroad linking San Francisco with Los Angeles via the Tejon Pass and eastwards to the Colorado, where the line will meet that of the Texas Pacific.
1871Peter Donahue sells the San Francisco & Northern Pacific Railroad to the California Pacific.
1871Andrew Hallidie adapts a mechanism which he developed for hauling freight across the mountains using a moving cable into the the cable car.
1871December 16. Incorporation of the North Pacific Coast Railroad.
1872A blizzard shuts down the Central Pacific Railroad over the Donner Pass for two weeks.
1872The Big Four incorporate a new San Francisco & North Pacific Railroad.
1873January 11. Beginning of regular passenger service on the narrow-gauge North Pacific Coast Railroad.
1873The Central Pacific sells the San Francisco & North Pacific to Peter Donahue!
1873San Francisco's Clay Street Railroad, the world's first cable car service, opens.
1875March 3. Congress grants the land 100 feet on either side of the right of way to any railroad legally chartered by any state, territory, or Congress.
1874October. Foundation of the Sonoma & Marin Railway Company by former San Francisco vigilante leader William Tell Coleman.
1875March 23. The Sonoma & Marin Railway buys the Petaluma & Haystack.
1875October 7. Incorporation of the Santa Clara County Railroad Company, an attempt by strawberry growers to beat the Central Pacific's high freight rates to San Francisco.
1875 October 25. Arcata Transportation Co. (later subsumed into the Arcata & Mad River Railroad Co.) begins operations using the 0-4-0 Diamond.
1875Alviso wharf owners decline to grant any railroad terminal privileges. This ends Alviso's importance as a commercial center.
1875 -1876Construction of the Tehachapi Loop.
1876Heavy rains make the completion of the Santa Clara County Railroad impossible and the company must dissolve.
1876March 25. James G. Fair founds the South Pacific Coast Railroad. Construction starts at Dumbarton Point on the San Francisco Bay in May.
1876A Central Pacific train accidentally leaves Brazil's Emperor Dom Pedro stranded at Cape Horn in the High Sierra.
1876July 14. Completion of the San Fernando Tunnel on the Southern Pacific's Los Angeles and Santa Clara route.
1876August. The failure of the Bank of California and subsequent suicide/accidental death of its president, William Ralston, creates a panic which helps end construction of the Los Angeles and Independence railroad.
1876September 5.Golden spike ceremony marking the completion of the Southern Pacific line linking northern California with Los Angeles.
1876October. The owners of the Sonoma & Marin Railway decide to sell the company to the highest bidder, which proves to be Peter Donahue's North Pacific Coast Railroad.
1876A flash flood wipes out Panamint City, California, ending the impetus for the construction of the Los Angeles and Independence route over the Cajon Pass. Crews stop 300 feet short of the summit.
1877The Southern Pacific reaches Yuma, Arizona.
1878June. Consolidation of the North Pacific Railroad, Sonoma & Marin Railway, Fulton & Guerneville Railroad, and Sonoma Valley Railroad into the San Francisco & North Pacific Railway Company.
1878Death of Mark Hopkins.
1879February 12. An explosion in the SPC summit tunnel kills more than twenty construction workers, most of them Chinese.
1880Establishment of the San Joaquin & Sierra Nevada Railroad.
1880May 15. The South Pacific Railroad begins passenger service between Alameda and Santa Cruz.