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Rh CENTRAL PACIFIC RAILROAD

. . . By an amendatory act, passed by Congress April 4, 1864, the Central Pacific was made a body corporate, with authority to own such portion of the road as it might construct east of the eastern boundary of the State of California. The company possesses ample chartered powers, both from the States of California and Nevada and from the federal government.

For that portion of its line between Sacramento and the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, a distance of 7.18 miles, the government subsidy is at the rate of $16,000 per mile, in its 6 per cent, bonds. For the succeeding 150 miles through the Sierra Nevada, at the rate of $48,000 per mile; and $32,000 per mile for such other portion of the line constructed west of the Rocky Mountains. The government subsidy is a second mortgage upon the road, the company being especially authorized by an act of Congress to issue its own bonds equal in amount to the government aid, as a first mortgage on the road. In addition to pecuniary aid, Congress granted ten alternate sections of public lands on each side of the line of the road — or 12,800 acres per mile.

(Poor's Manual of the Railroads of the United States, 1872-73, pp. 529-30)-