Big Four (Central Pacific Railroad)

), which formed the western portion through the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains of the First Transcontinental Railroad in the United States, built from the mid-continent at the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean during the middle and late 1860s.

[1] Composed of Leland Stanford (1824–1893), Collis Potter Huntington (1821–1900), Mark Hopkins Jr. (1813–1878), and Charles Crocker (1822–1888), the four themselves, however, personally preferred to be known as "The Associates.

"[2] They enriched themselves using tax money and land grants, while heavily influencing the state legislature from within the Republican Party (Stanford was governor of California when the first of the Pacific Railroad Acts was passed.

Ambrose Bierce lampooned the "Big Four" in his work "Black Beetles in Amber", a collection of satirical verses attacking various prominent Californians.

In "The Birth of the Rail", "road agents" (bandits) Happy Hunty (Huntington), Cowboy Charley (Crocker), and Leland The Kid (Stanford), joined by minor devil Sootymug (Hopkins), give up robbing stage coaches for the much greater loot of railroad operation.