Lost Sacramentos: Railroads of a Missing Metropolis

Sacramento is famous as the western terminus of the Pacific Railway. But the Central Pacific’s transformation of this city was not the first time that a network of rails branched out from a bustling shops complex.

The Sacramento Historical Society welcomes local historian Andrew McLeod to discuss a lost transportation network that would have supported a different web of communities and fostered a very different set of connections between Sacramento and its

hinterlands, less lopsided and prone to flooding.

Sacramento’s industrial transformation began in the decade before the transcontinental line. In 1856, the Sacramento Valley Railroad began scheduled service from the Sacramento City embarcadero to Folsom. And that was just the beginning. As Theodore Judah’s most famous rails pressed eastward, tracks were already radiating from his first big project, the SVRR. Extensions included a direct line from Folsom to Roseville, an alternate river connection at Freeport, and branches reaching towards…