Brian Westgate Wrote:
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> Central Pacific seems to have always been an
> important part of the Southern Pacific, but it's
> original route was probably more important to the
> Union Pacific than to SP. Why didn't UP buy the
> CP's half of the Overland Route when Mr. Harriman
> was forced to sell SP?

Answer: They tried, and hard.

After Harriman gained control of the UP, what he really wanted was only the CP, specifically because "completed" the UP; however, the SP would not part with it, forcing Harriman to do the next best thing, namely to buy the SP. Huntington's death is what allowed Harriman (acting through UP) to purchase a controlling stake in the SP when Huntington's block of SP stock became available on the markets in March 1901. The Justice Department filed suit against UP's control of the SP under the Sherman anti-trust act on 1 February 1908; Harriman himself died on 9 September 1909; and it was not until 12 December 1912, more than three years after Harriman died, that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled UP's control of the SP violated the Act and ordered UP to divest itself of its SP shares. UP sold them off in 1913.

However, the story did not end there, as on 11 February 1914 the Justice Department filed a suit under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to force a divorce of SP's control of the CP. I think I've read UP egged this action on and presented a lot of the evidence in favor of splitting CP from SP, which- had it happened- likely would have allowed UP to snap up CP, assuming that would not have attracted negative attention from the Justice Department as well. This case lasted nine years, as it was not until 6 February 1923 that the Supreme Court ruled the SP-CP combination was in the public interest. Thus, UP had to wait until 1997 to finally achieve Harriman's original dream.

The end result of all this was SP lost a good two and a half decades in the early part of the 1900s, from which it was never really able to recover. Harriman initiated a lot of desperately needed projects to improve the SP system during his period of control, but only finished a few of them, and the uncertainty during the period of litigation lasting from 1908 to 1923 effectively prevented SP from making any significant capital improvements to its system...and once they got clear of the litigation they only had six years of smooth sailing before the Depression and then the war got in the way of everything. Had the government either let the UP-SP combination stand in 1912, and especially if the government had not contested the SP-CP combination from 1914-1923, SP would have had that much more time to improve its properties and systems when they could still do it, and the subsequent western railroad map probably would have looked significantly different than it does today. However, SP lost that time, it is what it is, and in many ways the legacies of that time period are with us today.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV