 to bind the West Coast to the Union with iron rails, and at the same time, the secession of the Southern states simplified the discussion of the railroad’s route. While a general path had already been found for a Pacific railroad on a central route—bypassing the Sierra either to the north or south—the discovery of The Comstock Lode justified the development of a route directly through the central Sierra Nevada. The combination of federal incentives to build the Pacific railroad and the heavy Comstock commerce resulted in the Central Pacific Railroad.
There is no doubt that the Central Pacific fulfilled the aspirations held for it by early Nevadans. However, the railroad proved to be much more. As an inducement to build the Pacific railroad, the federal government granted to the company every other section of land for 20 miles on each side of the track. Altogether, the Central Pacific received about 7 million acres.
It was expected that the sale of this land—made valuable by the access the railroad provided—would reimburse the company for the expense of building the road. However, little of the land in Nevada and Utah proved attractive to settlers, and by 1880 the Central Pacific had sold just 295,886 acres. At an average sale price of $3.77 per acre, this yielded barely enough to pay for 18 miles of railroad at the average cost of $64,000 per mile. Nevertheless, most of the unsold railroad land was subsequently leased by the company for livestock grazing and mining, enlarging both of those industries. Moreover, until about 1900, property taxes paid by the Central Pacific on its land and railroad provided more than 60 percent of the income of the state’s rural counties. To this day, roughly half of the taxable land in Nevada was originally part of that land grant. Ultimately, placing that land in private hands benefitted the state of Nevada far more than it did the railroad company. Furthermore, in accepting that land, the Central Pacific agreed to carry mail and government freight at about half the regular rate. When the reduced-rate requirement was finally eliminated in December 1945, the government calculated that the railroad had saved it more than $900 million in transportation charges.
Thus, while the train on the state’s seal represented merely a dream at the time the seal was adopted, it became a symbol for the industry, which made Nevada a success. It was perhaps in his understanding of this significance that Nevada historian James W. Hulse wrote, “Nevada owes more to its railroads than it does to its mines.”