South Pacific Coast Railroad
In 1876, in partnership with several others, Fair established the narrow-gauge South Pacific Coast Railroad. From its beginning near present-day Newark, the line extended down the east side of San Francisco Bay, through San Jose and Los Gatos and southward over the Santa Cruz Mountains over a route that entailed a 6,200-foot tunnel, another 5,000-foot tunnel and six shorter ones. Some six hundred Chinese workers were employed in clearing, grading, laying track and tunneling. In that last activity, thirty-one workers lost their lives, primarily from explosions of underground natural gas. At its southern end, the tracks connected with the already-operational Santa Cruz & Felton Railroad in Felton. The line over the mountains was completed in May of 1880.
The South Pacific Coast Railroad was immediately successful and soon profitable but in 1886, for unexplained reasons, Fair sold his interest in the railroad to the Southern Pacific, which later converted it to standard gauge and operated it until 1940, when the over-the-mountains portion of the line was abandoned.
Read more about this topic: James Graham Fair
Famous quotes containing the words south, pacific, coast and/or railroad:
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—Anna Quindlen (20th century)
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—William James (1842–1910)
“Frequently also some fair-weather finery ripped off a vessel by a storm near the coast was nailed up against an outhouse. I saw fastened to a shed near the lighthouse a long new sign with the words “ANGLO SAXON” on it in large gilt letters, as if it were a useless part which the ship could afford to lose, or which the sailors had discharged at the same time with the pilot. But it interested somewhat as if it had been a part of the Argo, clipped off in passing through the Symplegades.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Though the railroad and the telegraph have been established on the shores of Maine, the Indian still looks out from her interior mountains over all these to the sea.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)