Railroads around the Mojave National Preserve
Gordon Chappell, Regional Historian, Pacific West Region, National Park Service.A historical overview detailing the development and significance of various railroads around the Mojave National Preserve, including the Southern Pacific, Santa Fe, Salt Lake Route, and Tonopah & Tidewater.
Introduction
No one knows when civilization began, but sometime around fifteen or twenty or thirty thousand years ago mankind first discovered he didn’t have to live in caves, ...The Southern Pacific & Santa Fe
It is a common urge when business entrepreneurs make a pile of money off of some investment that want to replicate that feat by doing the same thing or a similar thing again, and so ...Three Santa Fe subsidiaries
What began as one morphed into three railways north from Goffs which all became wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Santa Fe System. The first of these was the ...The Salt Lake Route
Another railroad destined to operated through the heart of what now is Mojave National Preserve, from northeast to southwest, would operate under three different names: San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad from ...The Tonopah & Tidewater Railroad
Another desert railroad flanked the western boundary of Mojave National Preserve and cut across a part of its northwest corner. That was the Tonopah & Tidewater Railroad, a ...The smallest railways
Completion of the Tonopah & Tidewater in 1907 led to construction of two tiny little railways connected with its line. ...Rails around Mojave National Preserve
Thus historically Mojave National Preserved had railroads along its southern and western edges and penetrating its very heart. Two of them were components of transcontinental railroad systems, ...Bibliography
