A visualization created by Peter Shannon, "Seeing Space in Terms of Track Length and Cost of Shipping," illustrates how these freight rates distorted space at the Spatial History Project website, Stanford Univ.
Some 6.3 times as much freight moved within California by rail as was shipped outside in 1873, in 1883 4.6 pounds of goods still moved within California for every pound shipped out.
Thirty-Fourth Annual Report of the Chamber of Commerce of San Francisco . . . (San Francisco: C. A. Murdock, 1884), 41-42, see Chart D below or in the appendix.
The eighteen items were grains, beans, borax, canned fruit, dried fruit, green fruit, hops, hides/pelts, lumber, leather, mustard seed, quicksilver, salmon, sugar, tea, wine/brandy, and wool.
For shipment of canned goods by clipper ship, Testimony of W. R. Wheeler, Report of the Industrial Commission on Transportation, vol. 9, 754. See Graphs A, B, and C below or in the appendix.
See Graphs D and H below or in the appendix.
Pacific Mail Mss., vol. 47, Outward SF, 1886, 233, 237.
See Chart F below or in the appendix.