The fact has already been mentioned that the lease of the Southern Pacific system to the Central Pacific never included what was known as the Northern Division, running from San Francisco through Gilroy to Tres Pinos and from Carnadero to Soledad. Its officers reported directly to the executive officials of the Southern Pacific Company, and not to Mr. Towne. The difference in treatment of this part of the line was striking. The Northern Division lay west of the Coast Range, and was separated to some extent from the lines of the San Joaquin Valley; yet it gave the main system entrance to the important city of San Francisco, and should have been operated in close harmony with its connections at San José. One suspects that Mr. Huntington desired to separate the Central Pacific and the Southern Pacific in the public mind in order that he might more successfully oppose Mr. Scott’s Texas and Pacific plans at Washington. “I think it unfortunate,” he wrote in 1875, “that he [Stanford] should so closely connect the Central Pacific with the Southern Pacific, as that is the only weapon our enemies have to fight us with in Congress.”[201] “I think it important,” he said in another letter about the same time, “that the Southern Pacific should be disconnected from the Central as much as it well can be. And ... I think it should have a superintendent that does not connect with the Central Pacific, although I think it would be difficult to get a man as good as Towne.”[202] Opinions like these were likely to perpetuate distinctions between the Central Pacific and the Southern Pacific railroads which could not be explained on other grounds. Arrangement Reversed A second stage in the connection between the Central Pacific and the Southern Pacific companies began in 1885 when a lease of the Central Pacific to the Southern Pacific took the place of the earlier arrangement in which the Central Pacific was the lessee. It appears that Timothy Hopkins, treasurer of the Central Pacific and director of the Southern Pacific Railroad of California, received a telegram from Mr. Stanford in the summer of 1884, asking him to come to New York. When Hopkins arrived he found Stanford, Huntington, and Crocker, and it was explained to him that the meeting was desired in order to go over the affairs of the associates generally, and in particular to take up the question of the organization of a new company for the purpose of holding and operating the railroad companies that were owned by the associates and controlled by them, both those under the management of the Central Pacific and those east of El Paso in Texas and Louisiana.[203] The meeting was recognized as important and minutes were kept, which have been preserved.