The 'Iron Horse' Comes to San Juan

Throughout most of the 19th century, San Juan Capistrano remained a quiet, little town, fairly isolated, even from Los Angeles and San Diego. This began to change in 1887, when the California Central Railroad began constructing a route from Santa Ana to Oceanside. The tracks were the final piece of California’s coastal rail network and would usher in a world of change for San Juan Capistrano. The railroad in general became the symbol of the technological feats produced by the 19th-century industrial age. In 1869, upon the completion of the first transcontinental railroad, travel and transport from coast to coast was reduced to just eight days. The far more dangerous cross-continent voyages on overland stagecoaches, taking weeks to complete, suddenly became a thing of the past. Every small town the railroad passed through became drastically altered, and San Juan Capistrano was no different. Vast new markets became accessible to San Juan farmers and ranchers. No longer were they forced to slowly move their products by wagon to buyers in the north or south, or only use trading ships to get the goods delivered to far-off markets. The railroad made its products available to virtually anywhere in the United States...more