History of the Union Pacific Railroad

The history of the Union Pacific Railroad stretches from 1862 to the present. For operations of the current corporation, see Union Pacific Railroad. It was created and funded by the federal government by laws passed in 1862 and 1864. It remained under partial federal control until the 1890s. The laws were passed as war measures to forge closer ties with California and Oregon, which otherwise took six months to reach. Management was noted for many feuds and high turnover. The UP main line started in Council Bluffs, Iowa and moved west to link up with the Central Pacific Railroad line, which was built eastward from San Francisco Bay.

Construction was delayed until the war ended in 1865. Some 300 miles of main line track were built in 1865-66 over the flat prairies. The Rocky Mountains posed a much more dramatic challenge, but the crews had learned to work at a much faster pace with 240 miles built in 1867, and 555 in 1868-69. The two lines were joined together in Utah on May 10, 1869, hence creating the first transcontinental railroad in North America. Interstate 80, built in the 1950s, paralleled the UP main line. In 1870 the fare in coach from Omaha to San Francisco was $33.20 (sleeper cars cost extra.). The train stopped for meals at lunch rooms along the way. Passenger traffic for the long trip was light at first—2000 a month in the 1870s, growing to 10,000 a month in the 1880s. Wall Street speculator Jay Gould (1836-1892) took control of the UP in 1874, as well as the smaller Kansas Pacific Railway based in Kansas City. He merged the two, giving UP new markets in the wheat and ranching regions of Kansas and eastern Colorado. Branches were opened to mining districts in Montana, Idaho, and Utah and (until 1893) to farmlands in Oregon. However the UP was unable to repay its old government loans despite severe austerity measures. Most of the wheat farmers joined the Populist movement in the 1890s, and engaged in heated anti-railroad rhetoric. The Populists were soon voted out and had no lasting impact on the UP. In the financial crisis of 1893, the UP, like 153 other American railroads, went bankrupt. The trains continued to operate, but the bondholders lost their investment. Empire builder E. H. Harriman (1848 – 1909) purchased the UP for a song. He upgraded its 3000 miles of trackage, modernized its equipment, and merged it with the Southern Pacific, which dominated California. The Supreme Court broke up that merger in 1910. From 1910 to 1980, there was little growth in the UP, which dominated the farming, ranching, mining and tourist trade in a region stretching from Omaha and Kansas City in the East, to Salt Lake City and Denver in the West. Economically, the UP provided transcontinental service, as well as shipping out wheat and other crops, cattle, and mining products, and bringing in consumer items and industrial goods from the East. There was little expansion 1910-1980 but after that the UP grew to over 32,000 miles of track by absorbing large lines like the Southern Pacific, the Missouri Pacific Railroad and the Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad as well as smaller ones.

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