Descriptive Summary
Access
Publication Rights
Preferred Citation
Acquisition Information
Biography/Administrative History
Scope and Content of Collection
Indexing Terms
Additional collection guides
Descriptive Summary
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
Sacramento, California 95814
Abstract: Miscellaneous Union Pacific Railroad records.
Language of Material: English
Access
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.
Publication Rights
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.
Preferred Citation
Union Pacific Railroad collection. California State Railroad Museum Library and Archives
Acquisition Information
Gifts of Hugh Campbell, 1990 (1874 payroll), Victor F. Baumbach, 1990 (engine crew registers), and Fred Neese, 1985 (audited
vouchers).
Biography/Administrative History
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]
Scope and Content of Collection
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.
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