THE  WORLD'S   GREATEST  WONDERWHY?
5
The first efforts to properly utilize, improve and develop these conditions were made by the Southern Pacific Railroad. It came when railroads were a quien sabe proposition. It required money, and oodles of it. If it had died, no one would have chipped in a cent for a decent funeral. A few tears would have been shed, the siroccos of the desert would have borne away the dissolving members of the corpseand the vision of Elysian   Fields   in   Southern   California
formation set forth in the publications of the Salt Lake Line make them indispensable to the seeker for knowledge about the great new West.
The Salt Lake was the last of the three steam railroads to be constructed. Comparisons are always odious, and it would be worse than folly to compare the benefits to this city of the individual members of this trinity. Each has exploited an entirely different field, and the field of each was a part of the back coun-
San   Diego  sits  beside
would also have dissolved, perhaps forever. But the Southern Pacific lived, and after a while was joined by the Santa Fe, the road of the Grand Canon, the most awe-inspiring phenomenon in Naturethat chasm which the Almighty, to whom a thousand years is a" a day, had.been hewing out during the endless ages of eternityand later, the road of the Great Salt Lake, also one of Nature's noblest   conceptions.
These three railroads were portions of transcontinental systems. The Pacific Electric Railway Sj'stem has co-operated with the transcontinental railroads in facilitating local development.
The science of railroad literature in this country has been evolved to the highest degree of excellence by the transcontinental railroads, of which the three mentioned constitute the far western links. The readers of this little booklet will be well repaid if they will secure the literature of these railroads. Nothing ever written by Stoddard of the attractions of Europe exceeds in fascination the word painting and pictorial illustrations in the library of information presented to the American people by the Southern Pacificso aptly termed "The Road of a Thousand Wonders."
The Santa Fe Railway, starting from its eastern terminus and following the route of the old Santa Fe trail for almost its entire length, then continuing its way through picturesque New Mexico and Arizona, past the canon of the Colorado, which it has depicted with pen arid brush in most startling and impressive method, has supplemented in equal degree the literature of the "Road of a Thousand Wonders." The literary excellence, artistic merit, and practical in-
try of this city. Each has worked in that section of the United States formerly laid down on the map as the Great American Desert.
Where will the hero worshipper find more fitting pictures to hang in the galleries of his mind than in the men who founded the transcontinental railroads? Take that "Colossus of Roads," James J. Hill, of the Great Northern; that pioneer giant, Henry Villard, of the Northern Pacific; Oakes Ames and Sidney Dillon and their co-workers, of the Union  Pa-
its Harbor of the Sun.
cific.    But with these we are not immediately concerned.
Take the four humble hardware merchants of Sacramento, who founded the Central Pacific, the initial link of the Southern Pacific. Charles Crocker, Le-land Stanford, Mark Hopkins, and Collis P. Huntington, with a capital of probably not over $50,000, all acquired by thrift in