San Diego County Biographies
 
THOMAS S. SEDGWICK

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a member of the American society of civil engineers, to whose professional labor 
San Diego is much indebted for her prominence as a railroad terminus on the 
Pacific coast, was born in Zanesville, Ohio, and is a descendant from a 
professional family, his father, grandfather and a great grandfather, as well as 
several others of their family, having been noted clergymen and teachers.
        Colonel Sedgwick began his professional experience in 1852, and was 
engaged on several railroads previous to the war of the Rebellion. He enlisted 
in the One Hundred and Thirteenth Ohio Infantry, and was made Adjutant, and 
afterward appointed Captain and detailed as topographical engineer to the staff 
of the Army of the Cumberland, where he served until July, 1864, participating 
in the campaign from Murfreesboro to Winchester, and was on duty at the battle 
of Mission Ridge, and laid out and superintended the construction of defensive 
works at Chattanooga and Bridgeport, Tennessee, whence he was appointed 
Lieutenant-Colonel of the One Hundred and Fourteenth Colored Infantry, and 
participated (in command of his regiment) in the capture of Richmond, Virginia, 
April, 1865. He went with the Twenty-fifty Corps, General Godfrey Weitzel 
commanding, to Texas, in 1865, and served there until May, 1867, commanding a 
part of the Texas frontier for nearly one year.
        In 1867 Colonel Sedgwick was connected with the survey of the Kansas 
Pacific Railroad from near Fort Riley, Kansas, over the Santa F� trail, now 
known as the great Santa F� route, through Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico and 
Northern Arizona and Southern California to San Bernardino and Los Angeles, 
California, where he met General W. S. Rosecrans, his former army commander, 
with whose staff he had served in the Army of the Cumberland. He had studied the 
question of transcontinental railroads, and convinced Colonel Sedgwick of the 
advantages of San Diego as the best available Pacific terminus. After returning 
to the East, Colonel Sedgwick, in an able paper advocated the route via the Gila 
river, and direct to San Diego, so strongly as to displease the managers of the 
Kansas Pacific plans, who were seeking Government aid to construct their road to 
San Francisco. They failed, and afterward two of their most prominent men 
acknowledged that had they adopted Colonel Sedgwick's plans, they would probably 
have succeeded, and been able to reach San Diego within a few years. They 
afterward combined with the Texas Pacific Company. In 1868 Colonel Sedgwick 
became interested with General Rosecrans in the road from San Diego to Yuma; and 
in the absence of General Rosecrans, as Minister to Mexico, he combined with the 
Memphis & El Paso Railroad of Texas, which was under the leadership of General 
Fr�mont, who was seeking Government aid and right of way across New Mexico and 
Arizona. As a result of this combination the Memphis & El Paso Company sent 
Colonel Sedgwick out to California, in 1869, to make a survey and location of 
the road from San Diego to Fort Yuma, by the direct route, which was done, 
demonstrating the practicability and feasibility of the route. During the time 
occupied by this survey work, Colonel Sedgwick wrote many vigorous articles for 
the San Diego Union, descriptive of the route and the many advantages of San 
Diego as preeminently the best Pacific terminus for a southern transcontinental 
railroad. It attracted the attention of Eastern capitalists, who were 
instrumental in finally establishing a railroad terminus on the Bay of San 
Diego.
        Colonel Sedgwick retains the maps of his surveys, and believes that the 
direct route to Fort Yuma will yet be constructed, and although at the age when 
most men are willing to lay aside their life-work, he looks as if he could take 
an active part in its accomplishment.
 
SOURCE:  An Illustrated History of Southern California:  Embracing the Counties 
of San Diego, San Bernardino, Los Angeles and Orange, and the Peninsula of Lower 
California� Chicago:  The Lewis Publishing Company, 1890.  p.-  154-155