The allure of gold and the power of steam combined to transform mid-nineteenth-century San Francisco. Steamers such as the one below (Northern Pacific Navigation Company, 1852), essential to gold rush transportation, commerce, and communication, plied the Bay.

And steam locomotives helped tame San Francisco’s rugged landscape. Built in Boston and brought around Cape Horn to San Francisco in 1855, the Elephant, with its four-foot drivers, was put to early use in the grading of San Francisco’s sandy hills. Ultimately re-christened Pioneer, it was the first locomotive used on a California railroad.