Away from the Associates, Stanford came into his own in Palo Alto. Never all that interested in railroads (or really anything in particular), he finally found something worth his time: horses. The nouveau riche hobby of breeding racehorses captured his attention in a way that other business didn’t. What with the care Stanford lavished on Leland Jr. and the trotters, his partners among the Associates despaired of getting him to fulfill even his official duties, never mind add any value to their common enterprise. By that time he had plenty of cash secured, and the Stanfords invested it in land and luxuries. The ranch became the Palo Alto Stock Farm, a place where Stanford could see to the rearing and training of his horses (as well as his son). He poured money into the farm, hiring dozens of workers to equip the stables, including his elite chief trainer, Charles Marvin. The project grew massive, and he kept acquiring land to expand his now beloved Palo Alto tract. By the end of the 1880s, the stock farm boasted nearly 800 horses and a staff of 150 spread over 11,000 acres, the largest and finest institution of its kind in the world. Shipping horses back and forth to the West Coast from the farms of Kentucky and the markets of New York might have been a prohibitive expense for most, but not for Stanford the railroad man. He had a custom railcar built for his fine equine cargo.

The “13 million horses × $100” calculation is the kind of disruption math that twenty-first-century start-ups use to persuade venture capitalists to sink millions into protean projects