1869 RARE 1st Known Timetable Map for San Francisco Transcontinental Rail Travel

Description: This is an exceedingly rare, original timetable and map, published in the late summer of 1869 by the Central Pacific Railroad. It was intended for use by transcontinental railroad passengers, the first of whom arrived in San Francisco on September 6th of that year. There are no earlier known timetables that list San Francisco as the final stop on the line.The timetable is dated August 1869. It includes a scheduled time for every stop, east- and westbound, between San Francisco and Promontory Point Utah, and from there to Omaha Nebraska. Transit times Eastbound from San Francisco to other major cities, including New York and Boston, are shown under the heading ‘September 1869’. The verso of the sheet contains an undated, lithographed “Map of the Central Pacific Railroad of California and its Connections.” The map shows railway lines between the California coast and Illinois, with stops included.This item is especially unique because it is very likely the first timetable/map to show San Francisco, rather than Sacramento, as the western terminus of the Central Pacific Railroad. When it was printed, presumably in August of 1869, the Central Pacific’s route between Sacramento CA and Promontory Point UT had been in use for several months. But the final stretch between Sacramento and the Bay Area did not open until September 6th, when the first passengers from the East Coast arrived in San Francisco. Those passengers could very well have been using this timetable. SIZE: 29” x 7.25”CONDITION: Condition is very good. The paper is not brittle, no pieces are missing, and the creases are not tearing or overly worn. On the timetable side, the two far right panels are slightly darker than the others, probably due to past light exposure. The darkening does not appear on the map side of the paper. There is a small (approx 6 mm) burn hole in one of the margins, and a similar sized ink blot just under the title in the third panel from the right. Also, the numbers 1, 2 and 3 are very faintly hand-written in pencil next to the train schedules on the left half of the image. The map on the verso is clean and unblemished except for the aforementioned 6mm burn hole and ink blot. RARITY: This item is both historically significant and extremely rare. Just two editions of the San Francisco timetable are known to have been printed in 1869: one for August/September, and one for October. A search of nationwide library databases yields only one original example of each edition. The University of California’s Bancroft rare book library owns August/September, and October is owned by Yale’s Beinecke Library. A handful of other examples are probably owned by private collectors, but they almost never come up for sale. Serious collectors and institutions will recognize that this is a unique opportunity to obtain an important artifact from US railroad history.

Price: 6250 USD

Location: Richmond, California

End Time: 2024-12-05T19:50:41.000Z

Shipping Cost: 50 USD