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.
REPRESENTATIVE MEN OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC RAILROAD: l.—E. B. Crocker. 2.—C. P. Huntington. 3.—Leland Stanford. 4.—Charles Crocker. 5.—Mark Hopkins. From 1878 "The Pacific tourist"
The Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) was a rail company chartered by U.S. Congress in 1862 to build a railroad eastwards from Sacramento, California, to complete most of the western part of the "First transcontinental railroad" in North America. Incorporated in 1861, CPRR ceased independent operations in 1875 when the railroad was leased to the Southern Pacific Railroad. Its assets were formally merged into Southern Pacific in 1959.
Gold Spike at the California State Railroad Museum, Sacramento, California. The museum also has a wall-sized painting of the Gold Spike ceremony which includes images of Charles Marsh and Leland Stanford (who were the only two Central Pacific directors to attend the Gold Spike ceremony at Promontory Summit, Utah).
The Truckee River at Verdi, Nevada, c. 1868–75. When the Central Pacific Railroad reached its site in 1868, Charles Crocker pulled a slip of paper from a hat and read the name of Giuseppe Verdi; so, the town was named after the Italian opera composer.
Advertisement for CPRR First Mortgage Bonds (1867)
CPRR #113 Falcon, a Danforth 4-4-0, at Argenta, Nevada, March 1, 1869 (photo: J.B. Silvis)