June 28, 1861 Central Pacific Railroad Company is founded by Theodore Judah and “The Big Four” – Collis P. Huntington, Mark Hopkins, Charles Crocker, and Leland Stanford July 1, 1862 President Lincoln signs the 1862 Pacific Railroad Act, promising 6,400 acres of land and $48,000 in government bonds for each mile of railroad built Theodore Judah (1826-1863): Railroad engineer from Ohio who became a vocal advocate for a transcontinental railroad. The notion of a transcontinental railroad ignited the imagination of many Americans decades earlier, garnering increasingly serious public support during the 1840s and 1850s. They financed a survey for the transcontinental route and won control. Collis Huntington had a preternatural sense for buying and selling. The Big Four were the men known in building the Central Pacific Railroad, the western portion of the First Transcontinental Railroad in the United States. Collis Potter Huntington (1821-1900), Railroad Magnate, Capitalist. He found success vending supplies to men chasing their fortunes in icy streams. The idea became embedded in the ongoing national debate about the young republic’s destiny. Huntington received a very limited formal education, a few months here and there. The Great Persuader. He came to California in 1849 at news of gold. -reorganized in April 1861 for more stockholders and elect officers. He performed early survey work through the Sierra Nevadas and convinced Sacramento businessmen Charles Crocker, Collis Huntington, Leland Stanford, and Mark Hopkins, Jr., to invest in the Central Pacific Railroad. His alma mater truly was the school… Collis P. Huntington was a hardware wholesaler known for his willingness to bury competition and for his shrewd business sense. In 1869, after Collis P. Huntington’s company finished the Central Pacific portion of the Transcontinental Railroad, he returned to New York City in hopes of gaining some much-needed rest, and to enjoy his accomplishment. 4 Sacramento dry goods merchants: Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins, Collis P. Huntington, and Leland Stanford. Collis P. Huntington (1821–1900) was one of the Central Pacific Railroad Company's four investor-cum-directors—the men known as the Associates—and was a remarkably adroit and determined businessman. -strengthening the Central Pacific. Both men were competing for government funds based on the miles of track laid. Central Pacific Railroad, American railroad company founded in 1861 by a group of California merchants known later as the “Big Four” (Collis P. Huntington, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker); they are best remembered for having built part of the first American transcontinental … Two young Virginia men, H. Chester Parsons and -Met Nov. 1860. When Huntington said he was considering Judah's railroad proposition, other Sacramento merchants followed: Huntington's business partner, Mark Became involved with Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins (called “The Big Four”), also called the “Huntington Group”. Of all the so-called robber barons of the Gilded Age, Collis P. Huntington reigned as the railroad king. He was born near Hartford, Connecticut, in 1821, the sixth of nine children in a humble household. And he made enemies of his rivals, especially Collis P. Huntington, who was head of the Central Pacific Railroad. Started life as a peddler. is the biography of a robber baron, the greatest railroad mogul of them all-Collis P. Huntington, the Sacramento, California, storekeeper who, along with Leland Stanford and Mark Hopkins, parlayed $1,500 into America's first continental railroad..