Chapter 6
ALAMEDA & SAN JOAQUIN RAILROAD
Page 2
M. J. Keller, president of the Oakland Board of Trade, made an
inspection of the Livermore and San Joaquin valleys in September
1895 for the purpose of gaining some idea of the most feasible route
for a projected railroad in Alameda and San Joaquin counties. In a
letter received from him at the Board of Trade office, he asserted
that every part of the route could be made to pay, the letter
concluding:
“We continued our journey toward the San Joaquin
Valley and traveled down some eight miles along the bed of the
Buenos Ayres Creek. Here we encountered surveying parties of the
Alameda and San Joaquin Railroad Company, who told us they were
finishing the surveys up to the mines from Stockton.
Now it
seems that a party of eastern capitalists is going to build a
railroad from Merced to Yosemite. They and the Corral Hollow people
suggest that a line be commenced at Oakland to connect with the
mine's road and continue to Merced, thus securing the coal traffic
and part of the San Joaquin business by a connection with the Valley
road and diverting the Yosemite travel this way. At first thought
this seems feasible and it may be so in reality. Another party
claims that this might be a good start for an overland road, say by
the line of the old surveys of the United States Central Railway,
which proposed to build to Grand Junction, Colorado, with a line of
550 miles. This suggestion offers a third possible line for overland
connections; the other two, as you know, being to Rogers,
California, and to Butte, Montana.
In favor of the United
States Central line it is claimed that it would afford the very
shortest route and best grades from East to West; that it would
parallel no other line and that it would have a paying business
along the entire route.
As for the line from Oakland to
Merced, there are three routes from which to select. If to Stockton,
first an easier grade could be had than that to Corral Hollow, and
many miles shorter than any present line. Every mile would be
productive. From the mines two routes are available, viz.: by
continuing along the Buenos Ayres Creek and northeast, or by
striking almost due east from the mines through a pass in the hills
toward Merced. Each would have its special advantages. The Stockton
line might be a continuation of the Valley road, the line via the
creek would tap the mines and a good section of the San Joaquin
Valley. The short line would be economical in cost, distance and
time, besides tapping the mines and traversing other profitable
territory.”
M. J. Keller.
Rumors then began circulating in
November 1895 that a syndicate was in the process of formation in
San Francisco for the purpose of further developing the region in
the vicinity of Corral Hollow. The prospective syndicate, it was
stated, would have a capital of $10,000,000 and had already
negotiated for 5000 acres of land only a comparative stone's throw
from the coal mines of the San Francisco and San Joaquin Coal
Company. It was said that John Rosenfeld, the metropolitan coal
dealer, was at the head of the movement.
With this land
purchased, it was stated that a railroad would be built direct to
Oakland for the transportation of the coal. The opening up of the
vast beds of coal at Corral Hollow by the corporation of which John
Treadwell and John W. Coleman were prominent members had created
much excitement among the big handlers of coal. A large amount of
the coal used in San Francisco had previously been imported from the
north and from Australia and sold at good figures.
A coal
such as the Corral Hollow mines would furnish, sent down at the low
figures to be made by the company, meant much to these large
dealers. It would mean more to those engaged in the sale of steam
coal. That being the case it was apparent that an action on the part
of such a syndicate was plausible. Such was at least the opinion of
some prominent local citizens, and they attached ex-Surveyor General
Willey's name to the enterprise.
Work continued on the
Alameda and San Joaquin railroad, or as it was commonly known, the
Corral Hollow road, at a good pace though and by December 1895 six
miles of line had been completed out from Stockton and track was
being laid at the rate of a mile a day. The road had all been graded
to the mouth of the Corral Hollow canyon, through which for a
distance of six miles there was some heavy grading, but it was
expected that the road would be completed to the coal mines and be
ready for operation by the first of March 1896.
The first
construction train over the road pulled out from Stockton at 2
o'clock on the 3rd of December 1895, and consisted of two cars of
rails, three of ties, and two flats devoted to invited guests, some
200 in number, among them the mayor and city council of Stockton.
The train remained two hours, during which time a large force of men
were at work and over a quarter of a mile of track was laid. The
road was now within eight miles of the San Joaquin River which would
be reached in a little over a week. A temporary trestle-work bridge
crossed the river, but would soon be replaced by a steel drawbridge.
The work on the road was of the highest standard and intended for
permanent business. The ties were close, and the rails 56-pound
Bessemer steel.
Come April 1896 there was a movement on foot
to secure the consent of the property owners in blocks G, L and P,
and west of Center street in Stockton, to bring suit against the
Valley Railway and the Alameda and San Joaquin Railroad Company for
damages sustained by reason of the high embankments which had been
thrown up directly in front of their lots.
Just who was
behind this movement was not definitely known, but there were rumors
to the effect that the Southern Pacific was back of the plan. This
belief had been caused by the efforts of the law firm of Dudley &
Buck, who were the legal representatives of the Southern Pacific
Company in Stockton, to get the property-owners to come to some sort
of an agreement whereby they may be empowered to bring such suit.
Representatives of Messrs. Dudley & Buck, according to the
statements made by property owners on Harrison Street, visited them
and asked them to authorize such a suit, to be brought. The
stipulation was that the other owners of property in the district
affected would join in the suit. No agreement had yet been reached
with the property owners on the blocks in question, and the efforts
of the representatives of the Southern Pacific Company did not
result in any action being brought.
The largest real estate
transaction reported for a long time in Stockton was consummated on
June 5, 1896, when $42,500 was paid to the Farmers' Union and
Milling Company for 6.34 acres of waterfront property on the south
side of Stockton Channel. The purchaser was the Alameda and San
Joaquin Railroad Company. A portion of the property would be used to
accommodate the coalbunkers of the new railway, and the rest of the
land to be used for some purpose not yet disclosed, but it was
believed that a freight depot may be built there. The company
already owned a splendid site in another part of town for a
passenger depot station.
It was announced on January 9, 1897
that the Corral Hollow coal mines, with all the railroad property
and other appurtenances, had been sold, or contracted to be sold to
the London Exploration Company, an immensely rich concern, which
owned mines in all quarters of the globe. The report had the price
to be paid at $5,000,000.
Among representatives in the
country of the London company at the time were Henry Butters and
Captain Thomas Mein, two returned "Africanders." They were the
parties who turned the attention of the exploration company to the
Pacific coast.
Butters and Captain Mein had investigated the
Corral Hollow property, and Captain Mein reported that there were
unlimited quantities of good coal, and that on account of the
accessibility of the market, as well as by reason of the railroad
already constructed to Stockton, the property was very valuable.
Thereupon, it was said, a contract was made to sell the whole
property, including not only the railroad already built, but certain
rights of way for the railroad to Oakland and property for terminals
already acquired in Oakland, the contract for the erection of a
great electric power plant near the mines and everything else which
had been acquired by Treadwell’s and their associates in the Corral
Hollow enterprise.
John Treadwell, managing director of the
Alameda and San Joaquin Railroad as well as the Corral Hollow mines,
quickly made an emphatic denial later that evening of the report
that all the property of the company, both mines and railroad, had
been sold to the London Exploration Company. He said the report sent
out from Oakland was a fake, without a solitary fact.
"We
shall have coal in these bunkers by the 1st of February, a week from
next Monday," remarked Hiram Barber, manager of the Alameda and San
Joaquin Railroad, on January 22, 1897, at the big structure just
completed, near the foot of Weber Avenue in Stockton, California, in
which the coal from Corral Hollow mines was to be stored while
awaiting shipment. The bunkers were ready for use, although there
was still a little finishing-up work to be done. Mr. Barber believed
that house coal would be sold to dealers here at such a price that
they could afford to sell it to the consumer for $5 a ton. Steam
coal would be sold much cheaper than Mount Diablo coal, when the
relative heat-giving qualities of the two were considered, though
not any cheaper in volume.
The company, according to the
agent, had twenty coal cars for use between Stockton and the mines,
each provided with apparatus for dumping the coal, and in addition
it had eighty flat cars with four-foot high side boards. The cars of
the latter type were to be used in distributing the output of the
mines to the various towns throughout the valley, while the former
cars were for use exclusively in handling coal between the bunkers.
Each car had a capacity to hold thirty tons.
On February 20,
1897 the San Francisco and San Joaquin Coal Company was deeded to
the California Safe Deposit and Trust Company and placed on record
at Stockton. It included all of the lands, coal deposits and plant
of the coal company, as well as the entire stock of the Alameda and
San Joaquin Railroad, running from the mines at Corral Hollow to
Stockton, owned by the coal company.
President R. D. Fry and
D. A. Bender, assistant general manager of the Alameda and San
Joaquin Railroad, appeared before the State Board of Equalization on
July 22, 1897. The Assessor of San Joaquin County placed a valuation
of $4000 a mile upon the road, but the officials stated that the
enterprise was not a paying investment as yet. They had not appeared
in the light of asking charity, as the future prospects of the road
were excellent, but as it was as yet a non-producer they thought
that an assessment of $3000 per mile would be fair both to the state
and themselves. This would give a valuation for assessment of
$105,000. They also stated that the company had issued $500,000
worth of bonds, of which few had been placed.
Disaster struck
on the night of September 15, 1902 when the Stockton briquette
plant, for the making of fuel from coal dust, was destroyed by fire.
The loss, which was more than $100,000, was fully covered by
insurance and would be rebuilt at once, together with the coal
bunkers. James Treadwell, president of the Alameda and San Joaquin
Railroad Company, to which corporation the plant belonged,
telegraphed H. H. Griffiths, the local representative of the
company, to put a force of men to work clearing away the debris as
soon as the insurance adjusters had finished.
Although it had
been rumored for some that an extension of the Tesla broad gauge
road from Tesla, thirty miles south of Stockton, to Oakland, where
the Alameda and San Joaquin Railroad Company would connect with a
bay ferry service was planned it seemed assured when rails were
purchased for the extension in October 1902.
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