150 years ago, a trip to Santa Cruz from San Francisco would have meant rattling around in a horse-drawn carriage for four days. The long, expensive journey meant only upper-class people could afford to go. All that changed when a guy named James Graham Fair got the audacious idea to build a railroad through the Santa Cruz Mountains. Fair, or "Slippery Jim" as he was known in business circles, made his fortune mining silver in Nevada. But he saw railroad barons like Leland Stanford getting rich in the railroad business and he wanted a piece of the action. Read more through the 🔗 in our bio. ✍️: Peter Arcuni 📸: Derek Whaley, The Bancroft Library, Wikimedia