Union Station, the last of the nation’s great train stations and a major entry point to Los Angeles, grew out of the railroads that transformed the city from an isolated town of 10,000 into a modern megalopolis. In 1869, the Golden Spike at Promontory, Utah, linked the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific into a transcontinental route, and that same year General Phineas Banning built the Los Angeles and San Pedro Railroad, the first railway south of the Tehachapi Mountains, covering 22 miles from San Pedro to downtown Los Angeles before it was turned over to Southern Pacific three years later. On Sept. 5, 1876, after a violent feud over land rights, Southern Pacific finally reached Los Angeles, and in the 1880s Santa Fe challenged Southern Pacific’s dominance, bringing a third line into the city, fare wars, and thousands of new settlers. After decades of conflict among the railroads and three appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court, the companies agreed to build a joint terminal, named Union Station to symbolize their reluctant cooperation. Opened on May 3, 1939, after six years of construction costing $11 million, the station drew a half-million people and soon handled 64 passenger trains a day. It served as a major stage for travel, celebrity arrivals, and the troop movements of World War II, then declined as airlines, automobiles, and trucking reduced rail traffic, until it was revived as a dining and shopping mall and as a transit hub where Amtrak, buses, the Red Line subway, Metrolink, van pools, taxis, and shuttles again bring commuters and tourists into Los Angeles.
