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Inventory of the SP de México Collection
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Title: SP de México Collection
Extent: 23 boxes and one large bound minute book
Repository: The
Huntington Library
San Marino, California 91108
Language:
English.
This collection was acquired between November 1987 and August 1989 from the corporate
headquarters of the Southern Pacific in San Francisco. The line itself began as the
Sonora Railway in 1882, first owned and operated by the Atcheson, Topeka & Santa Fe.
It ran from Nogales, Arizona down to the port of Guaymas, 423 kilometers southeast of
Nogales. The Southern Pacific acquired the line through a reciprocal trade with the
AT&SF in 1898, and incorporated the line as a separate corporate entity, the SP de
México, in June 1909. The line was gradually extended south from Nogales and north
from Guadalajara. When the Mexican Revolution erupted late in 1910, construction of the
line was essentially halted until 1923. In 1927 the line was finally connected from
Guadalajara to the U.S./Mexican border. It operated in Mexico until 1951, when the
Mexican government purchased the line from the Southern Pacific.
Collection is open to qualified researches by prior application through the Reader
Services Department. For more information please go to following
URL.
In order to quote from, publish, or reproduce any of the manuscripts or visual materials,
researchers must obtain formal permission from the office of the Library Director. In
most instances, permission is given by the Huntington as owner of the physical property
rights only, and researchers must also obtain permission from the holder of the literary
rights In some instances, the Huntington owns the literary rights, as well as the
physical property rights. Researchers may contact the appropriate curator for further
information.
[Identification of item], SP de México Collection, The Huntington Library, San
Marino, California.
The collection consists of 23 boxes and one large bound minute book. These materials
-consisting primarily of correspondence but also including maps, news clippings,
photographs, and blueprints -are arranged and bound by topic according to the Southern
Pacific's internal organizational schema. There are 160 individual bound items in these
23 boxes. Each grouping is in reverse chronological order as it was originally filed by
SP de México administrators.
This finding aid exists in digital form as well as in this printed form. For textual
information about the railroad, see the following items in the Library: the dissertation
by Dan Lewis entitled "The Empire Strikes Out: Mexican Nationbuilding and the Ferrocarril
Sud-Pacífico de México, 1880-1951" (University of California, Riverside,
1997), and the work by John Kirchner and John Signor,
The West Coast Route: The
Southern Pacific of Mexico
(Golden West Books, 1986).