The Topolobampo Collection contains Albert Kimsey Owen's business records and promotional materials related to the colony and railroad enterprise established on Topolobampo Bay, Sinaloa, Mexico between 1872 and 1910. Materials include business correspondence, writings by Owen, legal documents, descriptions of corporate entities, promotional materials, images of the colony, maps, and plans of Pacific City. Prominent correspondents include C.B. Hoffman, John W. Lovell, J.H. Rice, and Arthur E. Stilwell. Corporations represented in the collection include the Credit Foncier Company; the Texas, Topolobampo and Pacific Railroad and Telegraph Company; the Mexican Western Railroad; and the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railway Company. Materials that describe day-to-day life in the colony are not represented in the collection.

Albert Kimsey Owen was born in Chester, Pennsylvania, on May 17, 1847. In 1863, Owen moved to Fort Craig, New Mexico, and by 1870 he was working as a surveyor in Chester. In the spring of 1872, he was hired by William S. Rosecrans and William J. Palmer to survey the west coast of Mexico for an extension of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad; it was then that he first reconnoitered the bay of Topolobampo, Sinaloa, Mexico.

2.3 Linear feet (4 archive boxes and 8 oversize folders)

Digital copies of this material are intended to support research, teaching, and private study. This work may be used without prior permission. The original manuscripts for this collection are held by Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego Library.