hubert howe bancroft - Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History ...

YERBA BUENA ISLAND. 601
out into the interior counties. It had the right from
congress to build its road to meet the Atlantic and
Pacific at the eastern boundary of the state near Fort
Mojave; and the right, also from congress, to construct
a line from near Tehachipi pass, via Los
Angeles/ to Fort Yuma on the Colorado river, to
meet the Texas and Pacific, provided, of course, that
the latter did not get its track down first. But after
the training they had received in constructing the
Central road, and relying upon the ability of their
president, C. P. Huntington, to accomplish whatever
was desired in Washington, the Southern Pacific
directors had little doubt of being able to prevent any
eastern company coming into California.
It is necessary before proceeding further to refer to
the part taken by San Francisco in the railroad history
of the state. Its position upon the point of a
peninsula west of the mainland, from which it was
separated several miles by the waters of the bay,
made it impossible that it should be a railway center,
like Chicago or St Louis. The only railroad having
its terminus in the city and county of San Francisco
was, and still is, that part of the Southern Pacific
which was formerly the San Francisco and San Joo6
road. Yet the selection of a terminal point for the
transcontinental roads was a matter of much importance
to the city. While the California Pacific was
independent, with its terminus at Vallejo, and its
eastern extension branch promising a new system, it
was feared that Vallejo would become the terminal
point for the northern roads. Afterward this anxiety
was transferred to Oakland, and then to Yerba Buena
or Goat island, concerning which latter something
should hero be said. At Sacramento, at the session of
1871-2, a dispatch, signed by twenty-two state sena-
T Huntington to D. D. Col ton: 'We ought to get a large amount of land
from parties along the line between Spadra and San Gorgonio pass, if we
build them a line to get out on.'