(Amasa) Leland Stanford

Railroad builder and government official, born in Watervliet, New York, USA. He practised law in Wisconsin and then moved to California (1852) where he ran a general store. Successful in business, he became governor of California (1861–3) and, more importantly, a founder and president of the Central Pacific Railroad (1863–93). He openly used his political power and ties to assist development of the railroad. After the transcontinental linking with the Union Pacific Railroad (1869), he built up the Southern Pacific Railroad, eventually joining it with the Central Pacific to form the Southern Pacific Co, for which he served as president (1884–90). He made a fortune and, with his wife, founded and endowed Leland Stanford, Jr University (1885) in memory of their only son (who died in 1884 at age 15). He served in the US Senate (Republican, California, 1885–93), but had an undistinguished career as a senator primarily interested in keeping the government from interfering in his railroad operations.

Leland Stanford
Born	March 9, 1824 Watervliet, New York
Died	June 21, 1893 Palo Alto, California

Amasa Leland Stanford (March 9, 1824 – June 21, 1893) was an American business tycoon, politician and founder of Stanford University.

He was born in Watervliet, New York, one of eight children of Josiah and Elizabeth Phillips Stanford.

In 1852, having lost his law library and other property by fire, he moved to California during the California Gold Rush and began mining for gold at Michigan Bluff in Placer County, California. As head of the railroad company which built the first transcontinental railway line over the Sierra Nevada, Stanford hammered in the famous golden spike on May 10, 1869.

In 1872 Stanford commissioned Eadweard Muybridge to use newly invented photographic technology to establish whether a galloping horse ever has all four feet off the ground simultaneously.

Stanford served as president of Southern Pacific Railroad from 1885 to 1890, while continuing to serve as the head of the Central Pacific Railroad until his death in 1893. Stanford encouraged the California legislature to pass taxes and unfair regulations which specifically targeted Chinese.

Stanford, a member of the Republican Party, was politically active.

He also owned two wineries, the Leland Stanford Winery (founded in 1869) and run by his brother Josiah, and the great Vina farm of 55,000 acres (220 km²) in Tehama County, containing what was then the largest vineyard in the world at 13,400 acres (54 km²), the Gridley tract of 22,000 acres (90 km²) in Butte County and the Palo Alto Stock Farm, which was the home of his famous thoroughbred racers, Electioneer, Anon, Sunol, Palo Alto and Advertiser. The Stanfords also owned a stately mansion in Sacramento, California (this was the birthplace of their only son, and now a house museum used for California state social occasions), as well as a home in San Francisco's Nob Hill district. Their Sacramento home is now the Leland Stanford Mansion State Historic Park.

With his wife Jane, Stanford founded Leland Stanford Junior University as a memorial for their only child, Leland Stanford, Jr., who died as a teenager of typhoid while on a trip to Florence, Italy. About $20 million ($400 million in 2005 dollars) of the Stanford fortune originally went into the university, with the estimated total fortune approximately $50 million ($1 billion in 2005 dollars) as of the late 1880s.

Leland Stanford died at home in Palo Alto, California and is buried in the Stanford family mausoleum on the Stanford campus.