Mt. Judah

Theodore Judah pursued what many considered an impossible goal: a transcontinental railroad crossing the Sierra. Critics believed the grades were too steep, locomotives could not climb the mountains, and starting the western portion in California, three thousand miles from needed materials and supplies that would have to be shipped around Cape Horn, made the plan unrealistic. Judah pressed ahead through planning, persuading investors, repeated survey trips, and convincing Congress. As chief engineer, he studied six possible routes and chose the route over Donner Summit, the least difficult option, though it still required fifteen tunnels through Sierra granite. Judah died of yellow fever in 1863, the year construction began, and did not live to see the railroad completed in 1869 on the route he had surveyed. The finished railroad allowed travelers to cross the country at twenty-two miles per hour, reducing the trip from four to five months by wagon train or twenty-five days by stagecoach to ten days. The mountain later called Mt. Judah was known as Emigrant Peak until the 1930's, when Johnny Ellis, who had subdivided land around Lake Mary and built three Model A powered rope tows for skiing, renamed it; his planned funicular was stopped by World War II.

California · United States