AND PACIFIC COAST

GUIDE. Bl

 

SIDNEY DILLON.

Among the men of progress in America

there will be found no name more dis-
tinctly representative or more thoroughly
in unison with the spirit of the age, than

that of Mr. Sidney Dillon, President of

the Union Pacific railroad. Born in North-
ampton, Montgomery county, New York,
on the 7th of May, 1812, at which place
his father was a well-to-do farmer, he
came of sterling stock—his grandfather
having been a Revolutionary soldier.
From early childhood his life has been
an active one, given almost wholly to the
advancement of the internal improvements
of his country. When a mere lad, he com-
menced his railroad life as an errand boy,
on the Mohawk & Hudson railroad—
the first railroad built in his native
2 ecuming from Albany to Schenec-
tady. (See NEX No. 7%.) He next
entered the service of the Rensselaer
& Saratoga—then we hear of him as over-
seer of a contract on the Boston & Provi-
dence, and several other roads. In 1888, he
took his first contract, and completed it with

a a ren acm

| profit in 1840, from which time his con-| career of Mr. Dillon teaches the lesson,
| tracts have been verynumerous. Among’! that, at the hands of a man thoroughly

these was “Clay Hill,” two miles from
West Troy, on the Troy & Schenectady
railroad. . Dillon next built twenty-
six miles of the Hartford & Springfield,
six miles of the Cheshier, and ten miles on
the Vermont & Massachusetts. Besides
the above, he has been engaged in the con-
struction of the Rutland & Burlington;
Central, of New Jersey; the Morris
canal; the Boston & New York Ceniral ;
the Philadelphia & Erie; the Erie &
Oleveland; the Morris & Essex; the
Boston, Hartford & Erie; the Iowa; the
New Orleans, Mobile & Chattanooga,
the Canada Southern; the Union Pa-
cific, and many others. The last great
work upon which Mr. Dillon has been en-
gaged is the “Fourth Avenue improve-
ment,” New York. The contract involves
$7,000,000, and is a work of great mag-
nitude. Suffice it to say, that he has been
engaged in over forty of the leading public
works of America, and that the contracts
with which he has been engaged have
amounted to over $100,000,000. The