Western Pacific Railroad

Ghost Corp Apparel — resurrecting iconic corporate ghosts.

The Western Pacific Railroad Company was the successor to the Western Pacific Railway, whose 1903 founding launched an audacious challenge to Southern Pacific’s grip on northern California rail traffic. Its Feather River Route reached Oakland in 1909, offering a lower-gradient crossing of the Sierra Nevada and a very serious alternative to the established railroad giant.

After the original railway entered receivership, its assets were sold to The Western Pacific Railroad Company on July 14, 1916. Corporate offices were long based in San Francisco—first at the Mills Building and later at 526 Mission Street—while the railroad’s tracks stitched together California, Nevada, and Utah. Tiny headquarters, enormous ambitions: classic railroad math.

From 1949 through 1970, WP handled the Oakland–Salt Lake City leg of the California Zephyr alongside the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy and Denver & Rio Grande Western. The train’s polished cars and Feather River scenery made it a mid-century rail icon, even when glamour and passenger-train economics were not exactly sharing the same timetable.

In 1979, management restored the railroad to independent ownership after acquiring its operating assets from Western Pacific Industries. Union Pacific acquired Western Pacific on December 22, 1982; its separate corporate existence effectively ended in January 1983.

Our Western Pacific Railroad collection celebrates the silver-and-orange challenger, the canyon-running Feather River Route, and a railroad that refused to let the bigger guy have all the mountain passes.