Theodore D. Judah grew up in Troy, New York and attended the Rensselaer Academy, now the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He soon went to work on a new railroad going from Troy to Schenectady. More railroad projects followed across the Northeast. Railroad construction was big business in the middle of the 1800s. In 1854, while working on the construction of a part of the Erie Canal, he was offered the job of Chief Engineer of the Sacramento Valley Railroad in California. Judah and his wife sailed to Nicaragua, crossed to the Pacific and caught a Pacific Mail Steamship to San Francisco. He got to Sacramento in the middle of May and started planning the railroad.
Construction of the first 22 mile section of track began the next February, starting from Front and ‘L’ Street in today’s ‘Old Sacramento' and arrived a year later at the gold town of Negro Bar, soon to become a part of Folsom, California. It took building three trestles and a 600-foot cut along the American river at Negro Bar to complete the job, but the SVRR was now the first railroad west of the Mississippi. The railroad was originally intended to continue to Placerville, north to Marysville and across the bay to San Francisco but only the Placerville line was ever completed and that not for many years.
Because Judah’s dream from the outset was a railroad across the Sierra Nevada and on to connect with America’s east many called him Crazy Judah. But in 1859 he was sent to Washington by the Pacific Railroad Convention to gain support for the project. Congress, distracted by the trouble of pre-Civil War America, failed to act. Back in California he combed the Sierra until he located a suitable route across the mountains then found the financial backing he needed. He returned to Washington and helped write the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862. This time Congress acted. Construction of the Central Pacific Railroad officially began on January 8, 1863, but disagreements quickly arose between Judah and his backers, now known as the Big Four. Judah wanted quality construction. The investors wanted speed. In October he left for the east, hoping to find more investors to buy out the Big Four, but while crossing Panama Judah came down with Yellow Fever. He died soon after arriving in New York, only 37 old.
Comments