Title: Union Pacific Railroad collection

Dates: 1874-1996

Collection Number: MS 54

Creator/Collector:

Extent: 6 boxes

Repository: California State Railroad Museum Library and Archives

Abstract: Miscellaneous Union Pacific Railroad records.

Language of Material: English

This collection is open for research at our off-site storage facility with one week's notice. Contact Library & Archives staff to arrange for access.

Copyright has not been assigned to the California State Railroad Museum. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the District Collections Manager. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the CSRM as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the reader.

Union Pacific Railroad collection. California State Railroad Museum Library and Archives

Gifts of Hugh Campbell, 1990 (1874 payroll), Victor F. Baumbach, 1990 (engine crew registers), and Fred Neese, 1985 (audited vouchers).

The Union Pacific Railroad was incorporated on July 1, 1862 in the wake of the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862. Under the guidance of its dominant stockholder Dr. Thomas Clark Durant, the namesake of the city of Durant, Iowa, the first rails were laid in Omaha, Nebraska. They were part of the railroads that came together at Promontory Summit, Utah, in 1869 as the first transcontinental railroad in North America. Subsequently, UP took over the Utah Central extending south from Ogden, Utah, through Salt Lake City, and the Utah & Northern, extending from Ogden through Idaho into Montana, and it built or absorbed local lines that gave it access to Denver and to Portland, Oregon, and the Pacific Northwest. It acquired the Kansas Pacific (originally called the Union Pacific, Eastern Division, though in essence a separate railroad). It also owned narrow gauge trackage into the heart of the Colorado Rockies and a standard gauge line south from Denver across New Mexico into Texas. UP was entangled in the Crédit Mobilier scandal of 1872. Its early troubles led to bankruptcy during the 1870s, the result of which was reorganization of the Union Pacific Railroad as the Union Pacific Railway on January 24, 1880, with its dominant stockholder being Jay Gould. The new company also declared bankruptcy, in 1893, but emerged on July 1, 1897, reverting to the original name, Union Pacific Railroad. Such minor changes in corporate titles were a common result of reorganization after bankruptcy among American railroads. This period saw the UP sell off some of its holdings; the Union Pacific Railway, Central Branch became the Central Branch of the Missouri Pacific Railroad and the Southern Branch was acquired by the newly-incorporated Missouri Kansas Texas Railroad in 1870. However, the UP soon recovered, and was strong enough to take control of Southern Pacific Railroad (SP) in 1901 and then was ordered in 1913 by the U.S. Supreme Court to surrender control of the same. The Missouri Pacific and Missouri Kansas Texas both came back into the UP fold in the 1980s. In 1996, UP finally acquired SP in a transaction envisioned nearly a century earlier. [Wikipedia]

This collection is arranged into nine series: 1 PERSONNEL RECORDS 2 ENGINE CREW REGISTER 3 AUDITED VOUCHERS 4 FIREARMS RECORDS 5 MISCELLANEOUS FORMS 6 ACCIDENT REPORTS 7 CORRESPONDENCE 8 VALUATION RECORDS 9 LAND RECORDS Legal records for the Union Pacific's Salt Lake Route can be found in MS 695 Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad Collection.