from deep snows and avalanches. These eventually succeeded at keeping the tracks clear for all but a few days of the year. Both railroads soon instituted extensive upgrade projects to build better bridges, viaducts and dugways as well as install heavier duty rails, stronger ties, better road beds etc. The original track had often been laid as fast as possible with only secondary attention to maintenance and durability. The primary incentive had been getting the subsidies, which meant that upgrades of all kinds were routinely required in the following years. The cost of making these upgrades was relatively small, however, once the railroad was operating. Once the railroad was complete supplies could be moved from distant factories directly to the construction site by rail. The Union Pacific would not connect Omaha to Council Bluffs until completing the Union Pacific Missouri River Bridge in 1872. Several years after the end of the Civil War, the competing railroads coming from Missouri finally realized their initial strategic advantage and a building boom ensued. In July 1869, the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad finished the Hannibal Bridge in Kansas City which was the first bridge to cross the Missouri River. This in turn connected to Kansas Pacific trains going from Kansas City to Denver, which in turn had built the Denver Pacific Railway connecting to the Union Pacific. In August 1870, the Kansas Pacific drove the last spike connecting to the Denver Pacific line at Strasburg, Colorado and the first true Atlantic to Pacific United States railroad was completed. Kansas City's head start in connecting to a true transcontinental railroad contributed to it rather than Omaha becoming the dominant rail center west of Chicago. The Kansas Pacific became part of the Union Pacific in 1880. On June 4, 1876, an express train called the Transcontinental Express arrived in San Francisco via the first transcontinental railroad only 83 hours and 39 minutes after it had left New York City. Only ten years before, the same journey would have taken months over land or weeks on ship, possibly all the way around South America. The Central Pacific got a direct route to San Francisco when it was merged with the Southern Pacific Railroad to create the Southern Pacific Company in 1885. The Union Pacific initially took over the Southern Pacific in 1901 but was forced by the U.S. Supreme Court to divest it because of monopoly