The Big Four

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Big Four was the name popularly given to the chief entrepreneurs in the building of the Central Pacific Railroad, the western portion of the First Transcontinental Railroad in the United States. However, the four of them preferred to be known as "The Associates". The whole group was extremely interested in money and it is believed that they cheated the government out of over a million dollars in bonds.

• Leland Stanford - President
• Collis P. Huntington - Vice President
• Mark Hopkins - Treasurer
• Charles Crocker - Construction supervisor and president of Charles Crocker & Co., a CP subsidiary.

[edit] In popular culture

Ambrose Bierce included characters based on the Big Four in his work Black Beetles in Amber as Sootymug (Hopkins), Happy Hunty (Huntington), Cowboy Charley (Crocker) and Leland, The Kid (Stanford).^[1]

[edit] References

• Ambrose, Stephen E. (2000). Nothing Like It In The World; The men who built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-84609-8. 

1. ^ Bierce, Ambrose. Black Beetles in Amber. Retrieved on 2006-05-17.

[edit] External links

• The Story of the Central Pacific. The Rise of the Big Four: Huntington, Stanford, Crocker, and Hopkins. By WF Bailey The PACIFIC MONTHLY January, 1908.

v • d • e Central Pacific Railroad · The Big Four Charles Crocker · Mark Hopkins · Collis P. Huntington · Leland Stanford