Cabinet secretaries, congressmen and other influential people. In September 1859, Judah was chosen to be the accredited lobbyist for the Pacific Railroad Convention, which indeed approved his plan to survey, finance and engineer the road. Judah returned to Washington in December 1859. He had a lobbying office in the United States Capitol, received an audience with President James Buchanan, and represented the Convention before Congress. Judah returned to California in 1860. He continued to search for a more practical route through the Sierra suitable for a railroad. In mid-1860, local miner Daniel Strong had surveyed a route over the Sierra for a wagon toll road, which he realized would also suit a railroad. He described his discovery in a letter to Judah. Also in 1860, Charles Marsh, a surveyor, civil engineer and water company owner, met with civil engineer Judah. Marsh, who had already surveyed a potential railroad route between Sacramento and Nevada City, California, a decade earlier, went with Judah into the Sierra Nevada Mountains. There they examined the Henness Pass Turnpike Company’s route (Marsh was a founding director of that company). They measured elevations and distances, and discussed the possibility of a transcontinental railroad. Both were convinced that it could be done. Judah, Marsh and Strong then met with merchants and businessmen to solicit investors in their proposed railroad. From January or February 1861 until July, Judah and Strong led a 10-person expedition to survey the route for the railroad over the Sierra Nevada through Clipper Gap and Emigrant Gap, over Donner Pass, and south to Truckee. They discovered a way across the Sierras that was gradual enough to be made suitable for a railroad, although it still needed a lot of work. The Big Four Four northern California businessmen formed the Central Pacific Railroad: Leland Stanford, (1824–1893), President; Collis Potter Huntington, (1821–1900), Vice President; Mark Hopkins, (1813–1878), Treasurer; Charles Crocker, (1822–1888), Construction Supervisor. All became substantially wealthy from their association with the railroad. Judah, Marsh, Strong, Stanford, Huntington, Hopkins and Crocker, along with James Bailey and Lucius Anson Booth, became the first board of directors of the Central Pacific Railroad. Thomas Durant Former ophthalmologist Dr. Thomas Clark "Doc" Durant was nominally only a vice president of Union Pacific, so he installed a series of respected men like John Adams Dix as president of the railroad. Durant and its financing arrangements were, unlike those of the CPRR, mired