Lathrop: Where the Transcontinental Railroad Finished
Near Stockton, California
The transcontinental railroad was nearly complete in eighteen sixty-nine, but the final link connecting the East Coast to the San Francisco Bay had not been built. That link was a bridge across the San Joaquin River, completed in September of that year at what would become Lathrop. The town itself grew from a dispute: Leland Stanford's Central Pacific crew had been trying to negotiate a route through Stockton, but city officials could not agree on which street the tracks should follow.
Frustrated, Stanford's surveyors simply laid out an alternate route alongside a county road and named the new junction for his brother-in-law, Charles Lathrop. The Los Angeles railroad line branched from this same point on December thirty-first, eighteen sixty-nine, making Lathrop a division point for the entire Southern California connection.
