The Story of Lodi’s Auspicious Start
Handpainted postcard circa 1910, featuring the Lodi Arch from LHS Member private archive
Our little corner of San Joaquin County is 157 years old today!! On August 25, 1869 just a little over a year from when the Central Pacific Railroad started laying tracks south of Sacramento, Lodi was born.
In the beginning, three surveys were made. The first through Woodbridge, which was a thriving community hell-bent on establishing a new county with itself as the county seat thanks to Jeremiah Woods, who would be tragically stabbed to death in what is now The Exchange 1874, unable to finalize his grand plans for the area. A few years after his death, Woodbridge landowners would be so sure the railroad would choose their site for the new tracks that they wouldn’t try too hard to sweeten the deal. Without the cunning leadership of Jeremiah Woods, Woodbridge was easily undercut by the offer of Lodi land and property. While Woodbridge also had a flooding problem (and the flood of the 1860s was still fresh in everyone’s mind), it is thought by some historians that Lodi may never have existed if Jeremiah Woods had lived to seal the deal himself.
The other two surveys were to the east, the second being 3 miles from Woodbridge, which would become the budding town of Mokelumne Station for only 5 years before it was changed to Lodi. An enterprising group of local land owners enticed the railroad with the promise of 160 acres, ownership of every odd lot, and 12 acres in the center of town. Engineers had also identified Mokelmune as the most direct route and best river crossing. By early August of 1869, the railroad had already began taking passengers from Sacramento to Stockton. The inaugural trip is said to have taken two hours longer because hundreds of passengers got off in Mokelumne Station/Lodi thinking they had arrived in Stockton. On August 25, 1869 papers for the new town were officially filed and Lodi was on its way!
As a new stop along the trip from Sacramento to Stockton, Lodi was booming. By November of 1869 the railroad had extended all the way to Oakland. By 1870 there were 56 homes and Lodi’s first hotel (Spencer House) was being built on Sacramento & Pine. Mokelumne Station was a raucous place along the railroad and the booze, cards, and illicit activities were booming too. Many fought official incorporation, which happened for Lodi in 1906, with its stricter laws and other government influences that might hamper their good time. The Lodi of 1869 was a stark contrast to how many of us think of Lodi’s beginnings today!
In 1873, a naming committee was established to sort out our identity crisis with two neighboring towns sporting similar names (Mokelumne Hill & Mokelumne City) which had begun making mail deliveries quite a mess. There are three stories of Lodi’s naming and age-old debates on which is true. One story features a brave race horse (who had been retired for 12 years when Lodi got its name), another that we were named for a town of the same name in Illinois, and perhaps the likeliest story that the feat of building up the land and bridges around Lodi had been akin to Napoleon’s fight in the Battle of Lodi. Two naming committee members were known to have a Napoleon obsession and according to historian Christi Kennedy, that claim was published in the Cyclone in 1885 and never refuted in subsequent articles. The truth of Lodi’s naming may never be known for certain, but we continue to enjoy the mystery of not knowing for sure!
We hope you’ve had a happy Founder’s Day and have enjoyed learning about how Lodi got its start! Happy 157 years!
Want to read more Lodi history stories? Click Here to visit The Lodi Historian archive.
This article was written without the use of artificial intelligence.
