Mark Hopkins

Mark Hopkins was a California capitalist who helped build the Central Pacific (later the Southern Pacific) Railroad and for whom San Francisco’s Mark Hopkins Hotel atop Nob Hill was named.

After his birth, his family settled in North Carolina. In 1845 he and his brother Moses left home for Kentucky and, when news of the Gold Rush reached them, moved on to California (May 1851). By the spring of 1852 Hopkins had given up unprofitable gold mining and started a grocery business in Placerville and, the next year, in Sacramento. In 1855 he joined with another Sacramento merchant, Collis P. Huntington, to form Huntington & Hopkins, which became one of the most prosperous mercantile houses in the state. In 1861 the two men were approached by an enterprising engineer, Theodore Dehone Judah, who envisaged a new transcontinental railroad; and in June a company called the Central Pacific Railroad was organized, with Hopkins, Huntington, and fellow merchants Leland Stanford and Charles Crocker as the major directors (the “Big Four”). In 1869 the main line was completed, meeting the Union Pacific at Promontory, Utah; feeder lines were soon added throughout California.

Hopkins’ three partners eventually moved to San Francisco, and he began building a spectacular mansion there (at the site of the present-day Mark Hopkins Hotel). He remained in Sacramento, however, and the house was not completed until after his death. He died about a week after seeking a health cure in the Arizona desert.

Mark Hopkins, the businessman, was apparently not related to Mark Hopkins, the educator, as sometimes reported. For many years, there was also much confusion of identity between him and another Mark Hopkins (1813–76/77), who was originally from New York state and lived and operated businesses in Sacramento during the same period.