Named for the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway – the Santa Fe, for short. It was founded in 1859 as the Atchison and Topeka Railroad to serve those two Kansas cities. “Santa Fe” was added to the name in 1860 as an aspirational destination: the AT&SF never actually went there. (It did open a station in Albuquerque in 1880.) But we’re here to talk about Los Angeles. Amid much tension with its rival, Collis P. Huntington‘s Southern Pacific, the AT&SF officially reached the city in May 1887 at the peak of the railroad fare war that enticed thousands of Midwesterners to come to L.A., igniting the region’s second big real estate boom. Not coincidentally, May 1887 was when Santa Fe Avenue was named, while the railroad was building its “La Grande” station there (at 3rd Street). The AT&SF’s passenger service ultimately moved to Union Station in 1939 and the company itself folded in 1996. La Grande is long gone, but the Santa Fe’s freight depot is now home to the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc).
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