The Associates: Four Capitalists Who Created California
Mar 22nd, 2008 by Dave
Fantastic book about the history of four men, known either as Robber Barons or Great Philanthropists, depending who is writing the history; men who made California what it is today by building the transcontinental railroad that became the foundation for the greatest transportation empire in the world. I’d read brief snippets about the four before, but pretty much all I’d read was their history after the completion of the railroad; had no idea of what the men went through to get the railroad built; or that it might not have been built until much later without the tireless efforts of Theodore Judah who came up with the route through the Sierras, and the route through Congress.
The legacy of the four, Collis Huntington, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins and Charles Crocker - lives on in modern California - Huntington Beach (named after Collis’ nephew Henry who inherited his fortune), Stanford University, the Mark Hopkins hotel in San Francisco, and until the mid ’80s - Crocker Bank. The book details the early struggles to get the railroad funded and then built, and then various later battles sucessively with Jay Gould, then William Randolph Hearst and his hired pen, Ambrose Bierce.
