The genius of the story is John Downey, former governor and organizer of the land company which established modern Downey where it is today.
But the farmers of Los Nietos (as the area was then called) were not enough alone to attract the railroad, nor was the pueblo of Los Angeles. It took some mighty lobbying to get the rail magnates of the north to see the value that lay inherent in Southern California.
Topography was against them. Los Angeles and the rich farmlands of the San Gabriel Valley lay surrounded by mountains that required expensive tunneling before rails could be pushed through.
The first plan envisioned by the big four of the Central Pacific-Leland Stanford, Colis P. Huntington, Mark Hopkins and Charles Crocker-was for a Southern Pacific Rail line to run south through the San Joaquin Valley but then shoot eastward across the Colorado River somewhere near Needles.
This was subsequently modified southward to Yuma, but still did not contemplate piercing the ring of mountains surrounding the Los Angeles Basin or the San Gabriel Valley.
The southland needed a lure. That lure turned out to be the little Los Angeles and San Pedro Railroad Company formed by Downey and business partners Phineas Banning and others. They put up half the capital and convinced Angelinos to raise the other half through a bond issue. Some 20 miles of track was laid from Los Angeles to the wharves of San Pedro.
Farmers complained when it was completed in 1869, claiming the small engine set their fields afire, but the rails proved a valuable lure in the end.
The Southern Pacific of the big four WAS coming south, but slowly, and not far enough south to suit Downey and Banning.
And the big four had a nasty habit of running rails where it was cheap and easiest. They bypassed Visalia by seven miles!
Visalia had refused to offer the rail company a subsidy. Downey and Banning had got the message.
A "Committee of Thirty" was formed in Los Angeles to negotiate the subsidy, which was to amount to 5 percent of the county’s assessed valuation-a part of which was to be the tiny railroad.
Downey found negotiations rough. Stanford at first felt the only thing Los Angeles had to offer was cattle, and he felt they could be driven to San Bernardino and picked up at a rail head there.
But the plum was the little rail link to the port. Downey knew that if it was given to the railroads the big four would control all freight-rates, both by land and sea.
He was willing to do this. And the offer proved effective.
For the $602,000 in stock in the little railroad plus other bonds, the Southern Pacific agreed to lay (within 15 months) 25 miles of rails from Los Angeles north toward the San Fernando Mission, and another 25 miles of track east from Los Angeles toward San Bernardino. This as a good faith gesture that the main rail link would come all the way south.
Another bidder, Tom Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad, made a last minute effort to build a link south from L.A. to San Diego under the title of the Texas Pacific. Local farmers in Los Nietos actually favored the latter proposal, but the majority of L.A. finally voted (on Nov. 5, 1872) for the builder with the proven track (pun intended) record.
Stanford kept his promise. Although the farmers of Los Nietos had largely opposed him, he began the rail link to Anaheim from the Florence Station in Los Angeles on June 28, 1873. He was a good businessman and realized there was money to be made hauling the rich Los Nietos (Downey) crops to market.
It should be said that Downey got the rails to run right through the middle of his own real estate holdings here, avoiding the two established communities of Gallatin to the north and the College Settlement to the south. The rails came through where they are today, and thus established a new center of a new city which eventually included the older areas.