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Charles Crocker
Charles Crocker (September 16, 1822 – August 14, 1888) was an American railroad executive who was one of the founders of the Central Pacific Railroad, which constructed the westernmost portion of the first transcontinental railroad, and took control with partners of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Early years Crocker was born in Troy, New York on September 16, 1822. He was the son of Eliza (née Wright) and Isaac Crocker, a modest family. They joined the nineteenth-century migration west and moved to Indiana when he was 14, where they had a farm. Crocker soon became independent, working on several farms, a sawmill, and at an iron forge. At the age of 23, in 1845, he founded a small, independent iron forge of his own. He used money saved from his earnings to invest later in the new railroad business after moving to California, which had become a boom state since the Gold Rush. His older brother Edwin B. Crocker had become an attorney by the time Crocker was investing in rail ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stephen William Shaw
Stephen William Shaw (December 15, 1817 – February 12, 1900) was a California '49er and portrait painter who helped discover and name Humboldt Bay and introduced viticulture to Sonoma County by 1864. Early life Stephen W. Shaw was born December 15, 1817, at Windsor, Vermont, to Seth and Elizabeth Barrett Shaw, descendants of Puritans and American Revolutionaries. As a young adult, Shaw taught drawing and penmanship at Norwich Military Academy, and in Wooster, Ohio, between 1841-1842, Shaw advertised to execute portraits in Crayon in Wooster, Ohio in September 1842, then became an art teacher and director of the Boston Athenaeum before moving to the American South and making his living as an itinerant portraitist. In 1845, shortly after opening a studio in Lexington, Kentucky, Shaw painted his first known oil portrait. A year later, in Baton Rouge, Shaw painted a portrait of General Zachary Taylor which won a silver medal at the American Institute. In 1848, Shaw was commis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
California Gold Rush
The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) was a gold rush that began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California from the rest of the United States and abroad. The sudden influx of gold into the money supply reinvigorated the American economy; the sudden population increase allowed California to go rapidly to statehood, in the Compromise of 1850. The Gold Rush had severe effects on Native Californians and accelerated the Native American population's decline from disease, starvation and the California genocide. The effects of the Gold Rush were substantial. Whole indigenous societies were attacked and pushed off their lands by the gold-seekers, called "forty-niners" (referring to 1849, the peak year for Gold Rush immigration). Outside of California, the first to arrive were from Oregon, the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) and Latin America in late 1848. Of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atchison, Topeka And Santa Fe Railway
The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway , often referred to as the Santa Fe or AT&SF, was one of the larger railroads in the United States. The railroad was chartered in February 1859 to serve the cities of Atchison, Kansas, Atchison and Topeka, Kansas, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. The railroad reached the Kansas–Colorado border in 1873 and Pueblo, Colorado, in 1876. To create a demand for its services, the railroad set up real estate offices and sold farmland from the land grants that it was awarded by United States Congress, Congress. Despite being chartered to serve the city, the railroad chose to bypass Santa Fe, due to the engineering challenges of the mountainous terrain. Eventually Santa Fe Southern Railway, a branch line from Lamy, New Mexico, brought the Santa Fe railroad to its namesake city. The Santa Fe was a pioneer in intermodal freight transport; at various times, it operated an airline, the short-lived Santa Fe Skyway, and the fleet of Santa Fe Railroad Tugboa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deming, New Mexico
Deming (, ''DEM-ing'') is a city in Luna County, New Mexico, Luna County, New Mexico, United States, west of Las Cruces, New Mexico, Las Cruces and north of the Mexico–United States border, Mexican border. The population was 14,855 as of the 2010 United States Census, 2010 census. Deming is the county seat and principal community of Luna County. History The city is within the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, which was acquired from Mexico specifically to provide a southern route for a railroad to connect the United States with California. Deming was founded in 1881 and incorporated in 1902, and is named after Mary Ann Deming Crocker, wife of Charles Crocker, one of the Big Four (Central Pacific Railroad), Big Four of the California railroad industry. The Silver Spike was driven here on March 8, 1881 to commemorate the meeting of the Southern Pacific Railroad, Southern Pacific with the Rio Grande, Mexico and Pacific (a subsidiary of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, Atchison, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sierra Nevada (U
The Sierra Nevada () is a mountain range in the Western United States, between the Central Valley of California and the Great Basin. The vast majority of the range lies in the state of California, although the Carson Range spur lies primarily in Nevada. The Sierra Nevada is part of the American Cordillera, an almost continuous chain of mountain ranges that forms the western "backbone" of the Americas. The Sierra runs north-south and its width ranges from to across east–west. Notable features include General Sherman, the largest tree in the world by volume; Lake Tahoe, the largest alpine lake in North America; Mount Whitney at , the highest point in the contiguous United States; and Yosemite Valley sculpted by glaciers from one-hundred-million-year-old granite, containing high waterfalls. The Sierra is home to three national parks, twenty wilderness areas, and two national monuments. These areas include Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon National Parks; and Devils ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Snow Shed
Avalanche control or avalanche defense activities reduce the hazard avalanches pose to human life, activity, and property."Mitigation and Land Use - Avalanches" , Colorado Geological Survey Avalanche control begins with a risk assessment conducted by surveying for potential avalanche terrain by identifying geographic features such as vegetation patterns, drainages, and seasonal snow distribution that are indicative of avalanches. From the identified avalanche risks, the hazard is assessed by identifying threatened human geographic features such as roads, ski-hills, and buildings. Avalanche control programs address the avalanche hazard by formulating prevention and mitigation plans, which are then executed during the winter season. The prevention and mitigation plans combine extensive snow pack observation wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
First Transcontinental Railroad
North America's first transcontinental railroad (known originally as the "Pacific Railroad" and later as the " Overland Route") was a continuous railroad line constructed between 1863 and 1869 that connected the existing eastern U.S. rail network at Council Bluffs, Iowa with the Pacific coast at the Oakland Long Wharf on San Francisco Bay. The rail line was built by three private companies over public lands provided by extensive US land grants.Pacific Railroad Act of 1862, §2 & §3 Building was financed by both state and US government subsidy bonds as well as by company issued mortgage bonds.Pacific Railroad Act of 1862, §5 & §6 The Western Pacific Railroad Company built of track from the road's western terminus at Alameda/ Oakland to Sacramento, California. The Central Pacific Railroad Company of California (CPRR) constructed east from Sacramento to Promontory Summit, Utah Territory. The Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR) built from the road's eastern terminus at the Mis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Big Four (Central Pacific Railroad)
"The Big Four" was the name popularly given to the famous and influential businessmen, philanthropists and railroad tycoons who funded the Central Pacific Railroad, (C.P.R.R.), which formed the western portion through the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains of the First Transcontinental Railroad in the United States, built from the mid-continent at the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean during the middle and late 1860s. Composed of Leland Stanford (1824–1893), Collis Potter Huntington (1821–1900), Mark Hopkins Jr. (1813–1878), and Charles Crocker (1822–1888), the four themselves, however, personally preferred to be known as "The Associates." They enriched themselves utilizing tax money and land grants, while heavily influencing the State legislature from within the Republican party (Stanford was governor of California when the first of the Pacific Railroad Acts was passed), and through monopolizing tactics. Contemporary critics claimed they were the greatest swindler ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leland Stanford
Amasa Leland Stanford (March 9, 1824June 21, 1893) was an American industrialist and politician. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 8th governor of California from 1862 to 1863 and represented California in the United States Senate from 1885 until his death in 1893. He and his wife Jane were also the founders of Stanford University, which they named after their late son. Prior to his political career, Stanford was a successful merchant and wholesaler who built his business empire after migrating to California during the Gold Rush. As president of the Central Pacific Railroad and later the Southern Pacific from 1885 to 1890, he held tremendous power in the region and a lasting impact on California. Early life and career Leland Stanford was born in 1824 in what was then Watervliet, New York (now the Town of Colonie). He was one of eight children of Josiah and Elizabeth Phillips Stanford. Among his siblings were New York State Senator Charles Stanford (1819– ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Collis Huntington
Collis Potter Huntington (October 22, 1821 – August 13, 1900) was an American industrialist and railway magnate. He was one of the Big Four of western railroading (along with Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker) who invested in Theodore Judah's idea to build the Central Pacific Railroad as part of the first U.S. transcontinental railroad. Huntington helped lead and develop other major interstate lines, such as the Southern Pacific Railroad and the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, Chesapeake & Ohio Railway (C&O), which he was recruited to help complete. The C&O, completed in 1873, fulfilled a long-held dream of Virginians of a rail link from the James River (Virginia), James River at Richmond, Virginia, Richmond to the Ohio River, Ohio River Valley. The new railroad facilities adjacent to the river there resulted in expansion of the former small town of Guyandotte, West Virginia into part of a new city which was named Huntington, West Virginia, Huntington in his hono ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mark Hopkins, Jr
Mark may refer to: Currency * Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible mark, the currency of Bosnia and Herzegovina * East German mark, the currency of the German Democratic Republic * Estonian mark, the currency of Estonia between 1918 and 1927 * Finnish markka ( sv, finsk mark, links=no), the currency of Finland from 1860 until 28 February 2002 * Mark (currency), a currency or unit of account in many nations * Polish mark ( pl, marka polska, links=no), the currency of the Kingdom of Poland and of the Republic of Poland between 1917 and 1924 German * Deutsche Mark, the official currency of West Germany from 1948 until 1990 and later the unified Germany from 1990 until 2002 * German gold mark, the currency used in the German Empire from 1873 to 1914 * German Papiermark, the German currency from 4 August 1914 * German rentenmark, a currency issued on 15 November 1923 to stop the hyperinflation of 1922 and 1923 in Weimar Germany * Lodz Ghetto mark, a special currency for Lodz Ghetto. * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theodore Judah
Theodore Dehone Judah (March 4, 1826 – November 2, 1863) was an American civil engineer who was a central figure in the original promotion, establishment, and design of the First transcontinental railroad. He found investors for what became the Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR). As chief engineer, he performed much of the route survey work to determine the best alignment for the railroad over the Sierra Nevada, which was completed six years after his death. Early life and education Theodore Judah was born in 1826 (perhaps 1825) in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the son of Mary (Reece) and The Rev. Henry Raymond Judah, an Episcopal clergyman. After his family moved to Troy, New York, Judah attended the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, then called the Rensselaer Institute in 1837 for a term and developed at a young age a passion for engineering and railroads. At age 23, Judah married Anna Pierce (1828-1895) on May 10, 1849. Theirs was the first wedding in the then-new St James Episco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
