3 ms·

Trivia: notice how it lists Sacramento but nothing closer to the Bay Area. Old Sac was the terminus of the entire railroad as a connection with the Sacramento R

by Lammy 3y ago

Trivia: notice how it lists Sacramento but nothing closer to the Bay Area. Old Sac was the terminus of the entire railroad as a connection with the Sacramento River waterway https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=38.5839%2C%20-121.5056#map=16/38.5839/-121.5058 https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=38.5839%2C%20-121...

Miserlou57 3y ago
Shameless plug- Check out the Niles Canyon Railway (NCRy.org). It’s a volunteer organization that runs vintage trains (including steam engines) on the original connector route that was completed later in the year to finally connect the bay with Sacramento.
SllX 3y ago
That does make more sense but my first guess was because Sacramento is the capital and close enough to San Francisco. I’m not sure that the Bay Area was particularly well defined yet either. Interestingly while I was checking the incorporation dates of Oakland and Brooklyn (now part of Oakland) I saw that 1868 is the year that Central Pacific Railroad settled on Oakland as the West Coast terminus of the first transcontinental railroad and bought the San Francisco & Oakland Railroad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_and_Oakland_Railroad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_and_Oakland_Rail...).
- lolinder 3y ago
  > my first guess was because Sacramento is the capital and close enough to San Francisco That didn't stop them from independently listing Dayton, Cincinnati, and Columbus Ohio, all with different times (even though Dayton and Cincinnati are only 1 minute apart).
  - SllX 3y ago
    If what the parent said was correct, then it wasn't merely because Sacramento was the capital, so my first guess would be wrong under that criteria. And it makes sense they would list so many Ohio cities if major railroad hubs was the criteria. Ohio was practically the hub of the nation with major railroads running through all the cities you listed plus riverboats. California at this point was comparatively speaking still pretty much a backwater, even post-Gold Rush, and wasn't politically nor industrially significant before at least the first transcontinental railroad. No one in Congress had even worked particularly hard for the California EC votes until the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
zamfi 3y ago
Sacramento is also the only city on this list that one would consider the “west” in the US today—next closest are St Paul, MN and Galveston, TX.
- Kon-Peki 3y ago
  I've been reading a book that was highly recommended here on HN a few months ago: "Nature's Metropolis", and just finished a chapter that explains this. Back in 1868, there were essentially just two rail networks in the US - the eastern half and the western half. They met in Chicago. The operational model was very different, and the presence of Great Lakes shipping (with low summertime shipping rates) kept either side from trying to expand to be truly nationwide. In essence, a timetable relative to Washington D.C. showed Sacramento just as an example. No railroad went from D.C. to anywhere west of Chicago. Not only did you change trains, you changed railroad companies.

by Lammy 3y ago

Miserlou57 3y ago

Shameless plug- Check out the Niles Canyon Railway (NCRy.org). It’s a volunteer organization that runs vintage trains (including steam engines) on the original connector route that was completed later in the year to finally connect the bay with Sacramento.

SllX 3y ago

That does make more sense but my first guess was because Sacramento is the capital and close enough to San Francisco. I’m not sure that the Bay Area was particularly well defined yet either. Interestingly while I was checking the incorporation dates of Oakland and Brooklyn (now part of Oakland) I saw that 1868 is the year that Central Pacific Railroad settled on Oakland as the West Coast terminus of the first transcontinental railroad and bought the San Francisco & Oakland Railroad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_and_Oakland_Railroad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_and_Oakland_Rail...).

lolinder 3y ago
> my first guess was because Sacramento is the capital and close enough to San Francisco That didn't stop them from independently listing Dayton, Cincinnati, and Columbus Ohio, all with different times (even though Dayton and Cincinnati are only 1 minute apart).
- SllX 3y ago
  If what the parent said was correct, then it wasn't merely because Sacramento was the capital, so my first guess would be wrong under that criteria. And it makes sense they would list so many Ohio cities if major railroad hubs was the criteria. Ohio was practically the hub of the nation with major railroads running through all the cities you listed plus riverboats. California at this point was comparatively speaking still pretty much a backwater, even post-Gold Rush, and wasn't politically nor industrially significant before at least the first transcontinental railroad. No one in Congress had even worked particularly hard for the California EC votes until the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

zamfi 3y ago

Sacramento is also the only city on this list that one would consider the “west” in the US today—next closest are St Paul, MN and Galveston, TX.

Kon-Peki 3y ago
I've been reading a book that was highly recommended here on HN a few months ago: "Nature's Metropolis", and just finished a chapter that explains this. Back in 1868, there were essentially just two rail networks in the US - the eastern half and the western half. They met in Chicago. The operational model was very different, and the presence of Great Lakes shipping (with low summertime shipping rates) kept either side from trying to expand to be truly nationwide. In essence, a timetable relative to Washington D.C. showed Sacramento just as an example. No railroad went from D.C. to anywhere west of Chicago. Not only did you change trains, you changed railroad companies.