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Rare map of the Southern Pacific Railroad, exhibiting its progress toward the completion of the second transcontinental link.
A group of businessmen in San Francisco, California, led by Timothy Phelps, founded the Southern Pacific Railroad, with the intent of building a rail connection between San Francisco and San Diego, California. In 1868, A group of men known as the Big Four purchase the Southern Pacific. The Big Four were Charles Crocker, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins and Collis Huntington. In 1870, the operations of the Southern Pacific and Central Pacfic Railroads were merged. By 1881, the railroad had reached El Paso from the west, as illustrated by this map.
In 1883, the company would complete the southern section of the second transcontinental railroad line, as the Southern Pacific tracks from Los Angeles meet the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway at the Pecos River. The golden spike is driven by Col. Tom Pierce, the GH&SA president, atop the Pecos River High Bridge. The line now extends to San Antonio and Houston along the so-called Sunset Route.
The present map is very rare. We were only able to locate the example in the California State Library.
G. W. & C. B. Colton was a prominent family firm of mapmakers who were leaders in the American map trade in the nineteenth century. The business was founded by Joseph Hutchins Colton (1800-1893) who bought copyrights to existing maps and oversaw their production. By the 1850s, their output had expanded to include original maps, guidebooks, atlases, and railroad maps. Joseph was succeeded by his sons, George Woolworth (1827-1901) and Charles B. Colton (1831-1916). The firm was renamed G. W. & C. B. Colton as a result. George is thought responsible for their best-known work, the General Atlas, originally published under that title in 1857. In 1898, the brothers merged their business and the firm became Colton, Ohman, & Co., which operated until 1901, when August R. Ohman took on the business alone and dropped the Colton name.
![Colton's United States Shewing Military Stations, Forts &c. . . . 1861 [Shows Slave, Free and Border States -- Printed For British Market]](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/103234.jpg)
