Description
By John R. Signor
From the first stirring of a Los Angeles & San Pedro Railroad locomotive in January 1869, to the merger with Union Pacific on September 11, 1996, Southern Pacific’s Los Angeles Division in all of its manifestations was an engine of growth and prosperity in Southern California. It employed many thousands over the years in its offices, shops and trains. It brought settlers west, established towns, brought war workers in and sent the troops home.
Much has been written about the Southern Pacific and its subsidiaries in the Southland. This volume was conceived to augment these works by tracing the long and involved operating history of the Southern Pacific as it first helped to create Southern California, then later adapted to cope with its explosive growth. Accompanying the text are over 1,000 photographs—most never published, including 456 in color—timetables and other ephemera, and 76 maps, many of which are rendered in the author’s unique “bird’s eye view” style.
With Los Angeles as a destination of significance from the beginning, the author has been able to draw from a wealth of historic material on the subject, preserved by the railway itself, official repositories, interested employees and other individuals which includes photographs, first hand experiences and the day-to-day paperwork that documented how SP operated in Southern California. Southern Pacific’s Los Angeles Division is sure to find a place on the book shelves of those interested in the SP, or the history of Southern California as a whole.
584 pages, 8½ x 11 library bound with dust jacket, 1,043 photos, 76 maps, Bibliography and Index.
