History
Formation of Union Pacific, Central Pacific, and Southern Pacific Railroads.
The first railroads in America were operating by 1825, but it was not until 1862 that American railroading got a big boost from the federal government. In 1862 Congress passed the Pacific Railroads Act, which authorized two railroads, the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific. to build a rail line to link the eastern and western United States (Select Committee Report, 1856). Lincoln believed that having a railroad and telegraph line connecting the United States would help to prevent states from defecting to the South as the Civil War was being fought (Select Committee Report, 1856). Lincoln also thought the rail line could transport mail and goods and travel across the country faster than the stagecoach. During the civil war, Union troops could travel faster by train than their Confederate counterparts, who relied more on walking. The Pacific Railroads Act gave government bonds and land to the Union Pacific (building west from Council Bluffs, Iowa) and the Central Pacific Railroads (building east from Sacramento, California) (Select Committee Report, 1856). As added encouragement, the railroads were granted 100 feet of land on either side of the railroad tracks, and for every mile of track they built, they were given 10 square miles of land on alternating sides of the tracks in allotments of five square miles each (Select Committee Report, 1856).
The Central Pacific Railroad was incorporated in 1861, planned by Theodore Judah, and involved "The Big Four": Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Charlie Crocker, and Mark Hopkins (Pacific Railroad Act). Central Pacific Railroad laid its first rails in 1863, while the Union Pacific Railroad, incorporated on July 1, 1862, laid its first rails on July 10, 1865. The Central Pacific employed over 12,000 Chinese laborers, while the Union Pacific employed Irish workers. The two railroads met at Promontory Point, Utah, on May 10, 1869 (Pacific Railroad Act).
As the Union Pacific started to lay their first rails, another railroad - the Southern Pacific - was formed in San Francisco, led by Timothy Phelps (Yenne, 1996). The Southern Pacific was intended to link San Francisco and San Diego. It was purchased by the Big Four in September 1868 and was downgraded to branch line status. On February 17, 1885, a holding company called The Southern Pacific was formed to combine the Southern Pacific and the Central Pacific Railroads. A few months later, on April 1, 1885, the Southern Pacific Railroad completely overtook the Central Pacific Railroad, a process that would not be formalized until 1959 (Daily Alta, 1864). In 1901, the Union Pacific Railroad began to acquire the Southern Pacific Railroad. This acquisition process would not be complete until 1998, when the Southern Pacific would formally cease to exist.
San Francisco and San Jose Railroad
The idea of a railroad linking San Francisco and San Jose started in the early 1840s and was called the Pacific and Atlantic Railroad. Public support and funding would not materialize, and the idea of a railroad would fade away for almost 20 years. The railroad concept resurfaced in 1857 when a new company called the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad was formed to build the rail line. Again, the public was against the idea of a railroad linking the Peninsula. The San Francisco and San Jose railroad decided to try to raise public funds by putting a referendum before the voters of the San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties, asking them to buy stock in the company (Daly Alta, 1864). The referendum was expected to generate over 9 million dollars. Unfortunately, the referendum failed, with some voters feeling fraud was being perpetrated, and the company dissolved (Dunscomb 1984).
Another attempt to restart the railroad occurred in 1860 with industrialist Peter Donahue and his friends Judge Timothy Dame and Henry Newhall. They ultimately founded the rail line linking San Francisco to San Jose (Daily Alta, 1864). They paid the contractors, Houston and Mclaughlin, 2 million dollars, and it was divided up four ways ($500,000 each) between cash, county-issued bonds, mortgage bonds, and company stock. The 2 million dollars for the construction came from stock that San Francisco and San Jose Railroad issued and was owned mainly by the following stakeholders (Daily Alta 1863):
1. $300,000, San Francisco County
2. $100,000, San Mateo County
3. $200,000, Santa Clara County
4. $500,000, A.H Houston and C. McLaughlin (contractors)
5. $285,3000, other shareholders
6. $500,000, retained by San Francisco and San Jose Railroad.
Construction started July 15, 1861, and the railroad opened for limited service on October 17, 1863, to the end of the line in Mayfield (near Palo Alto), nine months before the first rails were laid by Central Pacific Railroad in Sacramento. A few months later, on January 16, 1864, the rest of the rail line opened, and passenger service to San Jose began (Heart, 2019). The railroad ran four trains a day, and the ride took 2 hours and 30 minutes, much quicker than the 8-hour stagecoach ride (Hear, 2019). Completing the rail line also opened up new economic means to transport goods, such as agricultural products, faster than before. Freight trains could go from San Jose to San Francisco in under 3 hours. The San Francisco and San Jose Railroad ran from San Jose to San Bruno before running west around San Bruno Mountain to Colma and northward into San Francisco before terminating near Fourth and King Streets. BART currently runs along this portion of the right of way (for more information, see the BART section in Chapter 3).
History of the Dumbarton Rail Corridor
The Southern Pacific Railroad eventually purchased the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad to access San Francisco ports. The Central Pacific Railroad would buy the Southern Pacific Railroad a few months later, opting to keep the name Southern Pacific (Boland, 2021). The San Francisco ports would generate enough business and freight that the Southern Pacific Railroad would need to find ways to increase capacity along the line. Some of the strategies included (Boland 2021):
1. Southern Pacific Railroad would reroute the rail line east around San Bruno Mountain (Caltrain's current route. This new route, called the Bayshore Cut-off, would be constructed by creating a strip of land within San Francisco Bay, resulting in part of San Francisco Bay becoming a large lake. In addition to rerouting the rail line, Southern Pacific also double-tracked the rail line so trains could run in both directions simultaneously.
2. The lake was later filled in to construct a significant freight yard called the Bayshore Yard. Southern Pacific abandoned the yard in the 1960s when freight traffic shifted to Oakland. A few remnants can still be found on the site, such as the Roundhouse, building foundations, a tiny powerhouse, and a buried trestle. Universal Paragon Corporation bought the Bayshore yard in the 1980s, and it is still waiting to be developed 30 years later.
3. Mayfield Cutoff, linking Palo Alto to the Southern Pacific's rail line in Los Gatos.
4. Southern Pacific also built the Dumbarton Cutoff. The Dumbarton Rail Corridor was operational in 1910, allowing freight trains to travel to and from the Peninsula and the East Bay without spending extra time going to Santa Clara before heading north. As a result, the Dumbarton shaved two hours from a crew's workday.
In the 1960s, most rail and port operations shifted from San Francisco to Oakland. Oakland had a natural deep-water port connected to the railroad mainline that connects Sacramento to Los Angeles. This caused freight in San Francisco and the Peninsula to dry up, making the Dumbarton Rail Bridge an unnecessary expense because freight traffic did not generate enough revenue to justify maintaining the bridge. The last freight train crossed the bridge in 1982, ending a century of service.
In 1988, the San Mateo County Transit Authority (SMCTA) was created to administer a half-cent sales tax that would generate $14,000,000 to purchase the western portion of the rail line along with the Dumbarton Rail Bridge. The Rail Corrido was eventually purchased for $6,000,000 in 1994 (Palo Alto Online, 1998). It was estimated to cost $130,000,000 to rebuild the line and restart the passenger rail service. In 1994, with a loan from Caltrans, the SMCTA purchased the Dumbarton Rail Corridor, but progress has been slow, and funding for the infrastructure project is still an ongoing issue (Cabanatuan 2000). In the early 2000s, Santa Clara County passed Measure A, a half-cent sales tax, which would generate funds for the Dumbarton Rail Corridor. State Senator Jackie Spear was responsible for sponsoring a U.S. Senate bill that earmarked $90,000,000 for the Dumbarton Corridor; the idea was to give the Altamont Commuter Express (ACE) trains (Stockton to San Jose) a way to connect to Redwood City and San Jose. Still, ACE was not interested in this proposal because they felt no money was generated to buy rolling stock and operating costs (Cabanatuan 2000). In 2004, Regional Measure 2 was passed to increase the bridge tolls by one dollar and generate $135,000,000, which was supposed to re-fund the Dumbarton Rail Corridor.
The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) took $91,000,000 from the Regional Measure 2 funds and shifted them to the BART extension. The BART to SFO extension was not generating the revenue ($145,000,000) needed to fund the BART to Warm Springs extension. MTC justified this by saying BART was a shovel-ready project while Dumbarton was not and that the money would be lost if not used by a specific date. This left the Dumbarton Rail Corridor with only $44,000,000. Redistribution of other Regional Measure 2 monies eventually left the Dumbarton Rail Corridor without funding. Alameda County tried to pass Measure B in 2012, which would have generated over $100,000,000 for the Dumbarton Rail Corridor, but it failed to get voter approval.
In 2016, Facebook decided to get involved with the Dumbarton Rail Corridor Project and was willing to spend over $1,000,000,000 (Shlaes, 2021). They believed their employees contributed to traffic congestion along Highway 84 and that a station incorporated into their Menlo Park headquarters would help reduce this traffic congestion. The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 and the resulting shelter-in-place drastically reduced mass transit ridership nationwide, and as people started working from home, Facebook withdrew its support for the Dumbarton Project (Shlaes, 2021). Due to Facebook's withdrawal from the Dumbarton Rail project, SamTrans was forced to re-evaluate the Dumbarton Project. SamTrans is still committed to using the Dumbarton Corridor for transportation. They need to decide what this future service will look like.
