Louis McLane arrived in California with John Fremont (above) and his California Battalion. McLane served as Fremont’s artillery commander.

Part Four

On August 24, 1864, A.A. Cohen watched impatiently as the locomotive J.G. Kellogg crawled to a stop at his private railroad station near his estate just north of the town of Alameda. A year earlier Cohen had hired A. J. Stevens to build “Number Two” — so called because the J. G. Kellogg was the second locomotive built on the Pacific Coast — at the San Francisco & Alameda Railroad’s yards at the western end of the peninsula.

Once aboard Number Two’s lead passenger car, Cohen savored the trip across Alameda Township (as the founders of Alameda County had named the entire peninsula in September 1853.) The passenger cars filled to capacity as the train stopped at each of the four stations along the way: Park Street, Grand Street, Ninth Street and Woodstock.

Cohen had high hopes for Woodstock, the town he had created at the peninsula’s West End. “Just the place for San Franciscans to get away from the city and into the country,” he said to the passengers near him as the train pulled out of its final station.

Louis McLane served as Wells Fargo Bank’s general manager in the 1860s. He also held interests in land and sea transportation.

When the J.G. Kellogg reached the Pacific Avenue wharf, the passenger cars quickly emptied. Their inhabitants streamed toward the steamboat Sophie McLean for a ride to San Francisco.

Cohen had called on an old friend to supply transportation across the bay on this historic occasion. Louis McLane arrived in California in 1847 as commander of artillery for the California Battalion under John C. Fremont. Fremont appointed McLane one of the commissioners to sign the Articles of Capitulation between the United States and Mexican forces in California. In 1855 — the same time Cohen was involved in the Black Friday imbroglio at Adams & Co. —McLane was working as an agent for another San Francisco bank, the Wells Fargo Express Company. He later became the bank’s general manager.

McLane was interested in overland transportation, particularly in the California Stage Company, which he purchased in 1860. The line had begun running five years earlier as the Pioneer Stage Company from Sacramento to Hangtown (as Placerville was then known). McLane did not limit his transportation interests to the land; he also became involved with steamship travel. With the help of his father-in-law Samuel Hoffman, McLane built two steamships. He named one for his daughter-in-law (and Hoffman’s daughter) Sophie. Cohen convinced McLane to put this very steamboat into service after he learned McLane had withdrawn her from carrying passengers between San Francisco and San Jose.

This sketch shows the construction of a 4-4-0 locomotive similar to the J. G. Kellogg. The designation 4-4-0 is “Whyte Notation,” which classifies locomotives according to the number of their leading, driving and trailing wheels. This locomotive pictured here has four leading, four driving and no trailing wheels, thus the Whyte designation 4-4-0.

When they set foot on San Francisco’s soil at the Davis Street ferry landing, Cohen turned and waved to Captain Henry P. Hulbert and breathed an audible sigh of happy relief. Well-wishers thronged to congratulate Cohen; he had just turned William Worthington Chipman’s dream of seamless transportation from the Encinal de San Antonio to San Francisco into reality.

(No one could know that just over two months later the Sophie McLane would blow up at Suisun, killing Captain Hulbert, pilot George Folger, second engineer Charles Yates and deckhand William Lawler.)

At the same time passengers were disembarking from the Sophie McLane at San Francisco, men were busy building another railroad, one far more ambitious than Cohen could ever imagine. Five years after the ill-fated steamship’s trip across the bay, crews were laying tracks through today’s Niles Canyon on what the Society for Industrial Archeology’s Jay McCauley calls “the path of the final leg connecting the transcontinental railroad to the Pacific.”

The Western Pacific Railroad Company had already blazed the trail. According to the Pacific Locomotive Association, the WP formed in 1862 and started construction in San Jose with ambitious plans to reach Sacramento. Four years later the company had built just 20 miles of track from San Jose into “Alameda Creek (today’s Niles) Canyon.” Its first passenger excursion entered the canyon on Oct. 2. 1866. Disagreements between the railroad’s contractors and its financiers halted construction

“In September 1869, four months after the famous Golden Spike ceremony at Promontory Summit, Utah, the Central Pacific Railroad completed the track through the canyon,” the PMLA says.

By then the CPRR had acquired the Western Pacific and Cohen’s San Francisco & Alameda (SF&A) and used their tracks to connect the transcontinental railroad at Alameda Point. The PMLA says, “The CPRR built a freight terminal at the west end of the canyon and a town quickly sprang up around it. The town was named for Addison C. Niles, a prominent judge and former railroad attorney.”

Horsepower coaxes the front end of the locomotive Calistoga from the Vulcan Iron Works in San Francisco. A. J. Stevens, who built the J. G. Kellogg for A. A. Cohen, worked for Vulcan.

Once the Central Pacific Rail Road reached Vallejo Mills, the Associates — as the CPRR Big Four (Crocker, Huntington, Stanford and Hopkins) called themselves — had a pair of existing local rail lines to help them reach San Francisco. The San Francisco & Oakland Railroad ran from the town of San Antonio (near today’s 14th Avenue and East 12th Street in Oakland) to Gibbons Point on San Francisco Bay.

The Associates hoped to extend the SF&O’s wharf across the water to Goat Island (today’s Yerba Buena Island). They planned to use the island as a base for their ferry service. (Opponents dubbed the plan the “Goat Island Grab” and put an end to it.)

The CPRR also showed an interest in Cohen’s San Francisco & Alameda Railroad, which by 1869 stretched from Vallejo Mills through San Leandro and Hayward before it reached Alameda’s Pacific Avenue wharf. By the summer of 1869, the CPRR had added the SF&O and SF&A to its portfolio.

When the deal closed, A.A. Cohen became a very wealthy railroad attorney.

A stagecoach with guard riding “shotgun” stops along its route. Louis McLane, whose steamboat Sophie McLane plied San Francisco Bay in the early 1860s, also held interests in the California Stage Line.

In September 1869, the transcontinental railroad was set to arrive at San Francisco Bay. There was one problem; the SF&O wharf at Gibbons Point was not yet ready to accommodate the trains. Cohen was happy to learn that the very first train would arrive on “his” tracks.

Stay tuned.

Contact Dennis Evanosky at

Dennis Evanosky’s new book, Mountain View Cemetery, is due out soon. To order your copy today, call 263-1471.