On December 2, 1865, the Southern Pacific Railroad of California was incorporated in San Francisco. The company’s first formal project was the construction of a rail line from San Francisco to San Diego. Timothy Phelps served as the first president of the Southern Pacific until 1868 when the company was purchased the Big Four (Collis Huntington, Charles Crocker, Leland Stanford, and Mark Hopkins) of the Central Pacific. The Central Pacific-Southern Pacific Railroad played a key role in not only the development of railroad lines in California, but also across the United States, the obvious being the first Transcontinental Railroad completed on May 10, 1869. By 1877, the Southern Pacific controlled 85 percent of railroad traffic in California and it had grown over the years as one of the major freight companies in the United States. In 1996, the Southern Pacific merged with the Union Pacific. In honor of today, Howard went off the rails with this photo engraving that we have in our pr...