A detailed account of the later financial operations of the Union Pacific divides the company’s recent development into three parts:[533] First, the regaining of control of the principal auxiliary systems and branch lines which the receivership had temporarily separated from the parent stem; second, the purchase of large amounts of stock in the Southern Pacific and the attempt to share in the control of the Burlington, which latter involved the purchase of Northern Pacific stock and the formation of the Northern Securities Company; and third, the sale of the stock acquired in the fight over the Burlington, and the subsequent purchase of Alton, Atchison, Baltimore & Ohio, Illinois Central, and other stocks. The repurchase of auxiliary lines has just been alluded to; and into the history of the Burlington struggle there is no need to go at length. On June 30, 1900, the Union Pacific, Oregon Short Line, and Oregon Railroad & Navigation Companies operated 5427.89 miles of line. The system stretched from Kansas City and Council Bluffs to Ogden, and reached the Pacific coast in the Northwest at Portland. It had no rails of its own in California, but was dependent on the Southern Pacific tracks for connections both at Ogden and at Portland. The Southern Pacific extended from New Orleans through Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona to California, and thence up the coast to Sacramento. At Sacramento it divided; one line continued north to Portland, and one turned northeast through Nevada to Ogden, Utah. Now, in 1901 it so happened that the Southern Pacific was for sale. Crocker, Stanford, and Huntington, who had controlled it, were dead, and their successors were not eager to retain the railroad as an independent line. Mr. Harriman seized the opportunity. In 1901 he bought for the Union Pacific 750,000 shares out of a little less than 2,000,000, and the following year he increased his holdings to 900,000. The Union Pacific financed the purchase by the issue of collateral bonds. The acquisition was of vast importance. Not only did it afford a direct connection between Ogden and the coast, but it eliminated one of the Union Pacific’s four great competitors in transcontinental business, and made Mr. Harriman the dominant figure in the Southwest.