Southern Pacific Railroad Yards
Sparks, Washoe County, Nevada
Marker Inscription
Southern Pacific Railroad Yards. Soon after 1900, laborers reworked some 373 miles of the original Central Pacific (now the Southern Pacific) line between Reno and Ogden, Utah. The effort involved shortening the line in some places. One such change took Wadsworth (Nevada), a division terminal, off the main line. During the summer of 1904, the terminal was moved to this location, which became the town of Sparks.The railroad dismantled a huge forty-stall locomotive roundhouse in 1959. The machine and erecting shops are still standing.Had it not been for the railroad yards being moved here, the City of Sparks would not exist.
Erected by Stan Aaronson, Bsa
The Story
Soon after 1900, crews reworked some 373 miles of the old Central Pacific line between Reno and Ogden, straightening the route and, in the process, bumping the division terminal off the main line at Wadsworth. In the summer of 1904 the railroad moved that terminal here, and the town of Sparks was born around its yards and a forty-stall roundhouse. The city owes its very existence to that relocation.
Why it matters
Sparks is a classic 'railroad town,' a place summoned into being purely by the operational needs of a transcontinental railroad—a common origin story across the West.
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