The Pacific Railroad Rediscovered

Abstract

T HE most celebrated symbol of American mastery over space was at one time the Pacific Railroad (Fig. 1). Its single track, eighteen hundred miles long, consisted of Union Pacific rails built westward from Omaha and Central Pacific rails built eastward from Sacramento, joining at Promontory, Utah Territory. Here, in May, 1869, the famous last spike ceremony was held. Later, as the route was relocated at several points, as the track was doubled and improved, and as original structures were replaced, the Pacific Railroad lost its initial appearance; and with the construction of other railroads across the American West it even lost the distinction of its name. However, almost one hundred years after Congress passed a bill authorizing construction of the Pacific Railroad the present author is pleased to report the uncovering, at the American Geographical Society, of a photographic record of the railroad, principally in the form of wet-plate negatives.' This is the largest known collection of negatives presenting an organized coverage of the construction and early operation of the railroad and of the country through which it passed. The Pacific Railroad photographic collection, although not closely examined until recently, came to the American Geographical Society in 1940 and 1941. At that time all its contents were attributed to a nineteenthcentury New Yorker named Stephen J. Sedgwick, about whom little was known.2 Study of the collection and inquiry into Sedgwick's life have clarified his role, which was that of a lecturer who went west in 1869 and 1870 to gather illustrative material.3 He served in those years as a member of a Union Pacific photographic corps whose combined work, it now appears, is represented by the Society's store of pictures.