Los Angeles Pasadena and Glendale Railway stock certificate c1889 (California) 

Short-lived California RR in LA metro area. Beautiful steam train vignette.  Unissued and not cancelled. Circa 1889 from incorporation. Dated 188_ on the cert. Approximately 10.5 x 6.5 inches. 

The Los Angeles, Pasadena & Glendale Railway Company was incorporated March 30, 1889, under the general laws of California. It constructed 6.4 miles of standard-gauge railroad between Los Angeles and Pasadena, and 1.8 miles of narrow-gauge line between Glendale and Verdugo Park.

This line was known informally as the “Cross Road” because that was the surname of its prime mover, John Cross (1842-1911), a native of Michigan who was a captain in a Missouri cavalry unit the United States Army during the Civil War. Cross became a street railroad developer in Little Rock, Arkansas and Lexington, Kentucky. Lured to Los Angeles as so many were, he came to the city in 1883 and built a home, Palm Place. Locally, he worked on a street railway in Santa Barbara and local lines such as the Los Angeles and Glendale Railroad (1887) and the Los Angeles Terminal Railroad (1890).

Joining him in the Los Angeles, Pasadena and Glendale project was his nephew, Albert Cross, among other investors and the company formed on March 30, 1889. The company then moved to build two lines, the main one into Pasadena up the Arroyo Seco, basically along where the Metro Gold Line runs today, and totaling 6.4 miles of standard-gauge tract and the second a 1.8-mile addition from Glendale, where the Los Angeles and Glendale terminated in March 1888, to Verdugo Park.

There were several legal challenges to the firm as it worked quickly to secure rights-of-way, especially for the Pasadena line. The newly incorporated town of South Pasadena, for example, included residents and property owners, including the well-known Benjamin S. Eaton and his son, who sued over the plans of the line as it was to run right through town. Despite these obstacles, the company persevered and was able to complete its lines, with the one to Pasadena opening in mid-March 1890.

Cross, however, decided to affect a consolidation within nine months of opening and the Los Angeles and Glendale and Los Angeles, Pasadena and Glendale companies merged with the new Los Angeles Terminal Railway later in 1890.

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