UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD extends from the Mis souri river at Council Bluffs, Omaha, St. Joseph, and Kansas City, via Denver, Cheyenne, Ogden and Salt Lake City, to Los Angeles, to Portland, Ore., and to Seattle on Puget sound (and in con nection with the Southern Pacific, to San Francisco and central and northern California). The railroad, a Utah corporation, operates 9,869 m. in 13 states. The main line between Council Bluffs, Ia., and Salt Lake City, Utah, 1,027 m., is double tracked, besides approximately 500 m. in other sections. The railroad owned as on Sept. 30, 1935, 1,451 locomotives, 1,055 passenger cars, 54,939 freight cars and a one-half interest in Pacific Fruit Express Company, which operates 36,476 refrigerator cars.
The original company was incorporated in 1862 under an act of Congress, approved by President Lincoln, providing for the con struction of railroads from the Missouri river to the Pacific as a war measure and for the preservation of the Union. Constructed
westwardly from Council Bluffs, and from Kansas City via Den ver, the connection of the line with that of the Central Pacific, constructed eastwardly from San Francisco bay, at a point 53 m. W. of Ogden, May 1869, completed the first transcontinental railroad.
Settlement of the territories traversed was slow, construction of other railroads throughout the west rapid, and the growth of unrestricted and destructive competition disastrous; in the busi ness depression of 1893 the company went into receivership and the Government and other mortgages were foreclosed. The prop erties were reorganized by E. H. Harriman and associates, the present company incorporated July 1, 1897, assumed operation Feb. 1898.
Dividends on common stock at io per cent or its equivalent were paid from 1908 to March 31, 1932, since which 6 per cent has been paid. (C. R. G.)