Paul Shoup (January 8, 1874 – July 30, 1946)[1][2] was an American businessman, president and later vice-chairman of the Southern Pacific Railroad in the 1920s and 1930s,[6][7] a founding board member of the Stanford University School of Business,[11] and founder of the community of Los Altos, California.

While he wrote for various magazines during his early life, as a contributing writer to the New York Sun, Overland Monthly, Black Cat, Illustrated Monthly, and Sunset Magazine,[16] he turned from it after high school to start a career in the railroad industry by becoming a clerk in the mechanical department of the Santa Fe Railroad in San Bernardino.

In between shifts, he tutored individuals in mathematics, and learned telegraphy and stenography, and he continued to write, submitting short pieces to eastern magazines.

It is there that he supposedly began creating promotional materials for local fruit and agricultural products that were distributed by Southern Pacific on the east coast.

[20] His involvement in politics continued as well, including a strong supportive role in the presidential campaign of Republican Alfred Landon against Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935.

He became a founding member of the San Jose Chamber of Commerce and worked to promote the Santa Clara Valley as an ideal place to live and establish business interests.

[9] Only months after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, the Interurban Electrical Railroad purchased a 160-acre tract of ranch land in the Santa Clara Valley owned by Sarah Winchester.

In 1906, Paul Shoup was named Assistant General Manager of Southern Pacific’s local municipal and interurban lines.

They incorporated as the Altos Land Company for the purposes of developing the area as a residential community marketed to executives and businessmen working in San Francisco.

Beginning in 1907, Paul and several business associates formed the Altos Land Company to develop the former Winchester and Merriman ranches[24] as a residential enclave along the Southern Pacific Railroad’s Los Gatos cutoff, then under construction.