California Southern Railroad facts for kids
The California Southern Railroad was a special railway company in Southern California. It was like a younger sibling company to the bigger Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (often called Santa Fe). The California Southern was started on July 10, 1880. Its main goal was to build a train track connecting Barstow to San Diego, California.
Building the railway started in 1881 in National City, which is just south of San Diego. The tracks went north to Oceanside. From there, the line turned northeast through Temecula Canyon. It then continued to cities like Lake Elsinore, Perris, and Riverside. It connected with the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP) in Colton. There was a big argument, sometimes called a "frog war," because the Southern Pacific didn't want the California Southern to cross its tracks. A court had to step in and allow the California Southern to build its crossing.
After this, construction kept going north through Cajon Pass. It reached cities like Victorville and Barstow. The entire line was finished on November 9, 1885. This railway became the western part of Santa Fe's long transcontinental railroad route to Chicago. Even today, parts of this original railway are still used. They are some of the busiest routes for both freight (cargo) and passenger trains in the United States.
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Building the Railway
The California Southern company was formed on July 10, 1880. Its purpose was to link San Diego with the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad. This other railway was supposed to meet them at a certain point. Important people like Frank Kimball, a big landowner from San Diego, and leaders from the Santa Fe railway, such as Thomas Nickerson, helped start the company. They wanted to finish the connection by January 1, 1884. However, there were problems building the Atlantic and Pacific line, so the deadline had to be changed.
The California Southern started building its tracks from National City, south of San Diego. The route they built, which is still partly used today, connected many towns. These included National City, San Diego, Fallbrook, Temecula, Lake Elsinore, Perris, Riverside, San Bernardino, Colton, Cajon, Victorville, and Barstow.
In Barstow, which was then called Waterman, the California Southern was meant to connect with another Santa Fe company, the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad. The Atlantic and Pacific was created in 1866 to build a railway from Springfield, Missouri, west to the Pacific Ocean. However, the Southern Pacific Railroad built its own tracks eastward from Mojave through Barstow to Needles, California. They finished this connection across the Colorado River on August 3, 1883. The Santa Fe later took over this part of the railway.
Starting in San Diego
Construction for the California Southern began in National City. This land was bought by Frank Kimball. The railway's main train yards and repair shops for locomotives were located here. Before the connection to Barstow was made, all the tools and equipment for the railway arrived here by ship. They sailed all the way around Cape Horn from the eastern United States. Wooden ties (the wooden beams under the tracks) also arrived by ship from Oregon. By March 1881, surveys and construction between National City and San Diego were well underway. The railway reached Fallbrook and opened for use between Fallbrook and San Diego in January 1882.
In 1881 and 1882, the California Southern received ten shipments of locomotives by sea at National City. The last three of these, delivered in November 1882, were the very last locomotives ever brought to the United States Pacific coast by sailing around Cape Horn.
Challenges in Temecula Canyon
To connect to the Atlantic and Pacific line as quickly as possible, the California Southern decided to build through Fallbrook and Temecula. This route avoided Los Angeles, which was a smaller town back then. However, the railway engineers did not fully understand the "dry washes" of Southern California. Local people warned the railway that these dry riverbeds could quickly become powerful, rushing rivers during storms. But the railway built through the canyon anyway.
Even with the warnings, track work in the canyon went very fast. They finished the line to Fallbrook on January 2, 1882, and then to Temecula on March 27, 1882.
In February 1884, a big storm hit the canyon. The train was delayed, and huge rocks fell onto the tracks. On February 3, trains could not get through. A few days later, communication wires were also down. A local person named Charlie Howell bravely ran along the tracks to stop a train from Colton to San Diego, preventing a disaster. Starting on February 16, 1884, a series of terrible washouts (when water washes away the ground under the tracks) happened in Temecula Canyon. This was only six months after trains first ran the full route between San Diego and San Bernardino. The storms brought more than 40 inches (1000 mm) of rain in just four weeks. Two-thirds of the main track through the canyon were washed away. Some ties were found floating as far as 80 miles (130 km) away in the ocean.
Temporary repairs were made after the first storms. But later that month, more rain and flooding washed out the entire route through the canyon again. Repairs were estimated to cost almost $320,000, which was a huge amount of money back then and too much to recover.
Because of these problems, the railway eventually built a new route to avoid the canyon. This new line, called the Surf Line, was completed on August 12, 1888. The old line through Temecula Canyon became a less important side track. By 1900, the Santa Fe railway had stopped using it. Finally, in 1928, the Railroad Canyon Dam was built. This dam created a lake (now called Canyon Lake) that covered the section of track between Elsinore and Perris.
The Standoff at Colton
Building the California Southern was often stopped by the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP), which was a rival company. One time, the California Southern planned to build a crossing over the SP tracks in Colton. This was a big deal because it would end Southern Pacific's control over railways in Southern California.
The Colton Crossing was the site of a famous "frog war" in American railroad history. In the summer of 1882, tensions were very high. When the California Southern crews reached Colton to build their crossing, the Southern Pacific tried to stop them. The SP parked a locomotive and a gondola (an open-top train car) on their tracks at the crossing spot. They even slowly moved the train back and forth to block the work. The SP also hired armed men, including the famous Virgil Earp, to guard their tracks. Before any violence could happen, the Governor of California, Robert Waterman, stepped in. He ordered the local Sheriff to make sure the court order was followed. The court had said the California Southern could build its crossing. Governor Waterman personally told Earp and the crowd to obey the court. Earp backed down and told the SP engineer to move the locomotive. The crossing was built, which finally ended the Southern Pacific's railway control in Southern California.
Conquering Cajon Pass
The first building the California Southern used as a station in San Bernardino was a converted boxcar (a type of train car). As they built north from San Bernardino, the California Southern was able to use survey work that had already been done by another railway near Cajon.
The original slope of the railway line up the pass was a 2.2% slope between San Bernardino and Cajon. After Cajon, the slope became steeper, rising at 3% for another 6 miles (10 km) to the top of the pass. The route over Cajon Pass was finished with a "last spike" ceremony on November 9, 1885. The first train to use the pass carried rails south from Barstow on November 12 to be installed near Riverside. The very first train that traveled all the way from Chicago using Santa Fe lines arrived in San Diego on November 17, 1885.
Building the original route through Cajon Pass was managed by Jacob Nash Victor. By this time, he was the General Manager of the California Southern. He even operated the first train through the pass in 1885. He famously said, "No other railroad will ever have the nerve to build through these mountains. All who follow will prefer to rent trackage from us." For a while, Victor was right. The San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad (which later became part of Union Pacific Railroad) agreed to use the California Southern's tracks on April 26, 1905. This is called trackage rights. However, Victor was proven wrong eighty years later. In 1967, the Southern Pacific built its own new line, called the Palmdale Cutoff, at a slightly higher elevation through the pass. To honor his hard work through the pass, the city of Victorville was named after Jacob Nash Victor.
Joining Forces
To reach Los Angeles, the Santa Fe railway rented the right to use the Southern Pacific tracks from San Bernardino starting on November 29, 1885. This cost $1,200 per mile per year, which was very expensive. Naturally, the Santa Fe looked for ways to pay less. So, on November 20, 1886, the Santa Fe created a new company called the San Bernardino and Los Angeles Railway. This new company was meant to build a railway connection between these two cities. California Southern track crews did the construction work. The first train on this new line arrived in Los Angeles on May 31, 1887.
While this new line was being built, Santa Fe leaders worked to combine their many smaller railway companies in Southern California. This would help them save money. On April 23, the leaders of eight of these smaller railways (but not the California Southern) voted to combine. As a result, the California Central Railway was formed on May 20, 1887. After this, even though the California Southern was still a separate company, its repair shops in National City were made less important. The services they provided were moved to new shops built in San Bernardino. One of the first official lists of stations for the California Southern and California Central railways was published on July 13, 1887. It showed the California Southern was divided into two parts: the San Diego division (from National City to Colton) and the San Bernardino Division (from Colton through Cajon Pass to Barstow).
The Santa Fe railway went through a big financial change in 1889. The main investors from Boston, Massachusetts, were mostly replaced by new investors from New York and London at a meeting on May 9. These new investors did not like having so many smaller companies. They wanted to combine them even more. So, the California Southern, California Central, and Redondo Beach Railway companies were all combined into the Southern California Railway on November 7, 1889. The Santa Fe finally bought all the parts of the Southern California railway on January 17, 1906. This meant it was no longer a separate company but fully part of the Santa Fe railway.
Company Leaders
The people who were president of the California Southern Railroad were:
- Benjamin Kimball (1880)
- Thomas Nickerson (1880-1885)
- George B. Wilbur (1885-1887)
- George O. Manchester (1887-unknown)
What Remains Today
Much of the land and tracks used by the California Southern are still in use today. Some of the buildings built for the railway, or what's left of them, can still be seen. Some of these old buildings are even still used for their original purposes.
The two ends of the old railway are still very active as of 2013. The section between Barstow and Riverside through Cajon Pass, including the famous crossing in Colton, is one of the busiest freight train routes in the United States. You can see trains from BNSF Railway and Union Pacific Railroad there. Also, Amtrak's daily Southwest Chief passenger train uses this route. At Cajon, you can still see the concrete bases where the railway's station buildings and water tanks once stood. The Santa Fe railway changed the tracks in Cajon Pass several times over the years. They straightened curves, added a separate track for eastbound trains (known as Sullivan's Curve), and even lowered the highest point of the pass by 50 feet (15 m).
The maintenance shops in San Bernardino are still used by BNSF Railway, though not as much as they were in the past. The San Bernardino station that the California Southern opened was destroyed by fire on November 16, 1916. It was replaced in 1918 by the Santa Fe with the current building. This building now serves Metrolink commuter trains. South of Riverside, the tracks are still in place to Perris. This section has been fixed up and is now the Perris Valley Line. This is an extension of the Metrolink 91 Line service. The Orange Empire Railway Museum in Perris used to have a connection to the main railway line, but it was cut off during the repairs to the Perris Valley Line. The museum is working to get their connection back so they can run trains to downtown Perris again.
At the southern end, the section between San Diego and Oceanside is also very busy. It is used by Amtrak California's Pacific Surfliner trains and also by the San Diego Coaster commuter trains. This part of the Santa Fe's railway network is known as the Surf Line. As of January 2006, this line was the second busiest passenger train line in the United States.
Even though San Diego's Union Station replaced the original station in 1915, the California Southern's first station and office building in National City has been saved. It is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which means it's an important historical site.
