Amasa Leland Stanford (March 9, 1824 – June 21, 1893) was an American attorney, industrialist, philanthropist, and Republican Party politician from California.

[1] Stanford became a successful merchant and wholesaler after migrating to California in 1852 during the Gold Rush; he built a business empire.

Stanford was raised on family farms in the Lisha Kill and Roessleville (after 1836) areas of Watervliet.

[11] After being admitted to the bar in 1848, Stanford moved with many other settlers to Port Washington, Wisconsin, where he began a law practice with Wesley Pierce.

[11] In 1850, Stanford was nominated by the Whig Party as Washington County, Wisconsin district attorney.

In 1855, he returned to Albany to join his wife, but found the pace too slow after the excitement of developing California.

He was one of the four merchants known popularly as "The Big Four" (or among themselves as "the Associates"), who were the key investors in Chief Engineer Theodore Dehone Judah's plan for the Central Pacific Railroad.

Stanford in his honor, is preserved on static display at the California State Railroad Museum, in Sacramento.

As head of the railroad company that built the western portion of the "First Transcontinental Railroad" from Sacramento eastward over the Sierra Nevada mountains in California to Nevada and Utah, Stanford presided at the ceremonial driving of "Last Spike" in Promontory, Utah on May 10, 1869.

The grade of the CPRR met that of the Union Pacific Railroad, which had been built westward from its eastern terminus at Council Bluffs, Iowa/Omaha, Nebraska.

He owned two wineries, the Leland Stanford Winery in Alameda County founded in 1869, and run and later inherited by his brother Josiah, and the 55,000 acres (223 km2) Great Vina Ranch in Tehama County, containing what was then the largest vineyard in the world at 3,575 acres (14 km2) and given to Stanford University.

[21][page needed] Stanford was also interested in horses and owned the Gridley tract of 17,800 acres (72 km2) in Butte County.

[17][22] He bred Standardbred horses to be raced as trotters, including his chief sire, Electioneer (sired by Hambletonian)[23] and his winning offspring: Arion,[24] Sunol,[25] Palo Alto, and Chimes[26] (out of Stanford's best known dam Beautiful Bells[27]); and Thoroughbreds for flat racing.

In 1872, Stanford commissioned the photographer Eadweard Muybridge to undertake scientific studies of the gaits of horses at a trot and gallop at the Agricultural Park race track in Sacramento.

In 1856, he met with other Whig politicians in Sacramento on April 30 to organize the California Republican Party at its first state convention.

A large, slow-speaking man who always read from a prepared text, he impressed his listeners as being more sincere than a glib, extemporaneous speaker.

The gold strike in California had brought a large influx of newcomers into the territory, including Chinese immigrants, who faced persecution.

In a message to the legislature in January 1862, Governor Stanford said: To my mind it is clear, that the settlement among us of an inferior race is to be discouraged by every legitimate means.

There can be no doubt but that the presence among us of numbers of degraded and distinct people must exercise a deleterious influence upon the superior race, and to a certain extent, repel desirable immigration.

In Washington, DC, he had a residence on Farragut Square near the home of Baron Karl von Struve, Russian minister to the US.

The wealth of the Stanford family during the late 19th century is estimated at $50 million (equivalent to approximately $1,831,000,000 today).

[13] The couple did not have any children for years, until their only child, a son, Leland DeWitt Stanford, was born in 1868 when his father was forty-four.

[45] He was also a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows in California.The Stanfords retained ownership of their mansion in Sacramento, where their only son was born in 1868.

[46][47] Long-suffering from locomotor ataxia, Leland Stanford died of heart failure at home in Palo Alto, California, on June 21, 1893.