|
||
|
|
|
|
Planning A Prospective Route For The Last Leg of the Transcontinental Railroad
Signed By The Chief Engineer of the San Francisco & Southern Pacific Railroad
This map is a remarkable artifact of the planning for the initial planning for the final stretch of the Transcontinental Railroad, from Sacramento to San Francisco Bay. The map pre-dates the completion of the route by about 3 years. Signed by William P. Mason, the hand written annotations on the map show two early prospective routes from Sacramento to San Francisco, one entirely by land through San Jose and a second to Benicia, then by water to San Francisco across the bay by ferry.
The first railroad that actually put steel down all the way from the Sacramento River to the shores of San Francisco Bay was the California Pacific Railroad. The route went from West Sacramento (then the town of Washington) ➜ Davis ➜ Dixon ➜ Elmira ➜ Suisun ➜ Vallejo Wharf, on the north-east arm of San Francisco Bay. Track-laying reached Vallejo, and the last spike was driven on 11 November 1868, creating a continuous 90-mile rail link; a company ferry (New World) made the final water hop from the Vallejo wharf to San Francisco. Regular train and boat connections began in January 1869, six months before the Golden-Spike ceremony in Utah.
No earlier line had reached any point on the Bay. The long-projected Sacramento–Benicia schemes stalled for lack of capital, and the Central/Western Pacific route over Altamont Pass did not deliver its first Sacramento-to-Bay train to Alameda until 6 September 1869.
William P. Mason's Map
Issued during the early planning stages of the Union Pacific Railroad, this vibrant map captures the San Francisco Bay Area and its surrounding counties just as the first railroads were beginning to be planned in the region. Extending from the Pacific coastline to the Central Valley, the map encompasses a 70-mile radius from San Francisco, covering Sonoma, Napa, Marin, Contra Costa, Alameda, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, and portions of Monterey and Placer Counties.
Counties are individually shaded in pastel tints and overprinted with clear, finely engraved topographic detail—rivers, mountains, roads, and towns. Railroads dominate the visual hierarchy, with finished lines shown in solid black, proposed lines in dashed strokes, and wagon roads in lighter fine rule. A note at the bottom explains the symbology and includes a bar scale calibrated to 16 miles per inch.
The two prospective routes are shown in an early hand, almost certainly the hand of William P. Mason or prepared at his request. The two routes shown are:
-
The Western Pacific Railroad, extending from San Jose to Sacramento.
-
A red manuscript line marks the Central Pacific Railroad, extending from Sacramento to Benicia, and then by water to San Francisco. Two prospective routs are shown, one with a detour to Bridgeport. Annotations in the same hand label this route “Central P. R. R. 55 Miles”—a key milestone achieved in late 1866 that helps date this impression.
Neither of these two lines would be realized. Instead, as noted above, the town of Vallejo would become the terminus for the Union Pacific in November 1868.
Beneath the neatline appears the printed retail imprint of A. Gensoul’s Pacific Map Depot, located at 511 Montgomery Street, San Francisco. An impressive ink inscription below reads:
W[illiam] P. Mason
Chief Eng. S. F. & C. P. R. R. Co.
and Stockton & Copperopolis R. R.
This signature ties the map directly to William P. Mason, a civil engineer active in railroad development across the Central Valley. Mason served as chief engineer for both the San Francisco & Central Pacific Railroad—a short-lived attempt to unify Bay Area and transcontinental routes—and the Stockton & Copperopolis Railroad, chartered in 1866 to tap the copper and gold districts of Calaveras County.
As a document, it captures a brief but pivotal moment in the infrastructural transformation of California—after the initial gold rush boom, but before the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, at a time when the final route from Sacramento to San Francisco Bay was still uncertain.
Rarity
The map itself is quite scarce. There are no other known surviving examples with the Gensoul imprint added.
