The Iron Horse Arrives in America’s Finest City

November 17, 1885. It was a date that would change San Diego forever. As the first through train from Chicago pulled into National City via the newly completed Santa Fe railroad line, few could have imagined the profound transformation about to unfold. After decades of broken promises and dashed dreams, San Diego finally had what it had desperately sought: a direct rail connection to the East.

The story of San Diego’s railroad ambitions stretches back to the Mexican War era, when military necessity first sparked calls for a transcontinental connection. But it wasn’t until the 1880s that these dreams became reality—and when they did, they reshaped not just the city’s skyline, but its very soul.

Before the Rails: A City in Waiting

In 1880, San Diego was still a sleepy frontier town. Frank Kimball estimated there were just 11 Americans in Old Town, an “old Indian, Spanish, Mexican, negro village,” and only a handful more within hundreds of miles. The arrival of transcontinental rail service seemed like a distant fantasy, especially after the failed attempts of the Texas and Pacific Railway in the 1870s.

But San Diego’s boosters never gave up. Led by entrepreneurs like Frank Kimball, they courted railroad companies with the fervor of suitors, offering land grants, cash subsidies, and whatever else it took to secure their city’s future. In Boston, Kimball conferred with Thomas Nickerson, president of the Santa Fe, and other officers and directors of the company on the advantage of terminating at San Diego.

The California Southern: Building the Dream

The breakthrough came with the formation of the California Southern Railroad, a subsidiary of the mighty Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. The California Southern Railroad was organized July 10, 1880, and chartered on October 23, 1880, to build a rail connection between what has become the city of Barstow and San Diego, California.

Construction began in National City in 1881, and it was no easy task. The route wound northward through Oceanside, then turned northeast through the treacherous Temecula Canyon, continuing through what would become Lake Elsinore, Perris, and Riverside before reaching the crucial junction at Colton.

At Colton, the railroad faced its greatest challenge—not geographical, but political. The Southern Pacific Railroad, jealous of its monopoly, refused to allow the California Southern to cross its tracks. A “frog” is a crossing contraption where two railroads meet. Without it, the newer railroad can’t operate because it can’t cross the existing track. What followed was the infamous “Frog War,” a standoff that involved “men carried picks, shovels, shotguns and revolvers. Virgil Earp paced the gangway between cab and tender with his face toward the San Bernardino mob and his six-shooter in hand.”

The Last Spike and First Celebration

The route over Cajon Pass was completed with a “last spike” on November 9, 1885, and the first train to use the pass carried a load of rails southward from Barstow on November 12 to be installed near Riverside. The first through train from Chicago via Santa Fe lines arrived in San Diego on November 17, 1885.

The town was gaily decorated and there was a parade with brass bands and marching units of the Grand Army of the Republic and the Knights of Pythias. There were many speeches and expressions of welcome to visiting railroad officers at a public gathering in a gymnasium which had been converted into Leach’s Opera House.

But perhaps the most telling moment came in the understated observation that followed: “Somehow, for all the bands and speeches, the great hour when San Diego at long last was connected by rail with the East seemed to be an anticlimax to the thirty years of struggle.”

The Great Boom Begins

What wasn’t anticlimactic was what came next. The completion of the railroad in 1885 triggered the famous “Great Boom” that would define Southern California for the next century. The completion of the railroad in 1885 ushered in a period of explosive growth in San Diego. All of southern California experienced an accelerated rise in population and real estate sales.

The boom was fueled by an unexpected development: a rate war between the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific. The Santa Fe Route led the way in passenger rate reductions by, within a period of five months, lowering the price of a ticket from Kansas City, Missouri to Los Angeles from $125 to $15, and, on March 6, 1887 to a single dollar. Suddenly, traveling to Southern California became affordable for ordinary Americans.

The impact on San Diego was immediate and dramatic. Los Angeles’s population quadrupled in the 1880s, and doubled again by 1900, when it had 100,000 residents. While San Diego didn’t grow quite as rapidly as Los Angeles, it too experienced unprecedented expansion.

Dreams Deferred: Los Angeles Takes the Prize

Despite San Diego’s early hopes, the railroad ultimately favored Los Angeles as its primary Pacific terminus. When the Santa Fe management moved the offices to Los Angeles and the shops from National City to San Bernardino, making San Diego’s bought and paid for railroad nothing but a branch line.

This shift reflected broader economic and political forces. San Diego, after all, is the only “good natural harbor” south of San Francisco, and “by all the rules, the great Southern gateway should be here,” but Los Angeles grabbed the prize through “fate, accident and politics.”

The Lasting Legacy

Though San Diego may not have become the major terminus its boosters envisioned, the railroad’s arrival still transformed the city fundamentally. The day of the stagecoach and the mule freight trains was vanishing. Business in San Diego increased, with the greater possibilities for trade between towns and regions, and the quiet years were over.

The railroad brought not just economic opportunity, but cultural transformation. It connected San Diego to national markets, national ideas, and national trends. The architectural styles that followed—from the Craftsman bungalows of the 1910s to the Spanish Revival mansions of the 1920s—all reflected this new connectivity to the broader American experience.

Today, as you walk through neighborhoods like Golden Hill, Mission Hills, or Old Town, you’re seeing the built environment that the railroad made possible. The Santa Fe may have arrived 140 years ago, but its impact on San Diego’s character remains visible on every street corner.

The iron horse didn’t just bring San Diego into the modern age—it made modern San Diego possible.