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Without a doubt the Northwestern Pacific Railroad was the most revolutionary project of its time in the State of California. Hydro-electric power had been pioneered in California using the Pelton wheels just two decades before. This built on the older gold rush hydraulic infrastructure which had already been built high in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Only in the decade before were the innovations made to move electricity more than 20 miles without significant loss. For the project electricity was conducted over 130 miles from the hydro-electric plants in Rome, Yuba, and Colgate on the Yuba River to the powerhouse in Mill Valley.

This was combined with the rail lines which had been built by the great industrialist Peter Donahue, founder of Union Iron Works. So the existing rail lines were simply being electrified, not built.

When the project opened on August 21, 1903 it was the first electric rail line in all of California and the among the first ten in the entire United States. Their pioneering use of an alternating current signal system was so brilliant that the standards set in Marin County were adopted by the New York Subway which opened a year later.

As someone who grew up in Marin County living along the right of way of the old line I've always had a strange sense of wistfulness about how everything used to be. That we have less rail infrastructure now than we did 100 years ago. Or that most people you talk to about it have no idea there even was a railway system in the first place. Also the other railways like the Mount Tamalpais railway or the Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railroad which was also electric and opened in December 1904. Marin County itself is named after Chief Marin, a native American who established the San Francisco Bay ferry system back in the 1830s before California was even part of the United States. For over 150 years we were state leaders in transportation innovation. Our only recent success is the SMART train. Please ride it.