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 pie continued to hope and to plan for a transcontinental line. The Panama Railway, completed in the early Fifties, although calculated to aid in the development of California, proved inadequate from many points of view, partly because of the length, tediousness and expensiveness of the route. For the improvement of the mail service the "Pony Express "had been organized, which connected with the telegraph line of the Missouri frontier and made the cities of Denver, Salt Lake and San Francisco. This was followed by the Overland Stage Line, covering similar routes. The stage company built several excellent roads over the Sierras and these became serviceable for freighting goods into Nevada, Utah, Idaho, and other mining regions.

But all of this development was merely prophetic of the railway, and in 1861 the Central Pacific Railroad Company was organized by Stanford, Huntington, Hopkins, and Judah. The company at the outset intended to build from Sacramento through the Sierras. Finally, through a successful appeal to Congress, they were granted terms similar to those of the Union Pacific Company, and were encouraged to build eastward until they should meet the construction parties of the Union Pacific.

A railroad building. Congress, ^n fact, by its overliberal subsidies in land and bonds, had provided the incentive for a construction contest such as the world had not yet seen. Each of the two roads, one starting from Sacramento, the other from Omaha,