The locomotive was built in 1876 for the
Santa Cruz Railroad, which was built to transport passengers and goods from the town of
Santa Cruz, California to connect with the
Southern Pacific Railroad in Watsonville. The engine served on this railroad until 1883, when the railroad was bought by the Southern Pacific and converted to
Standard gauge. As converting the engines to the wider gauge would be costly and uneconomical, the railroad elected to sell off the inherited engines and use its own Standard gauge engines instead. As such, the Jupiter was sold to the Guatemala Central Railway, who dropped the engine's name but retained its number. In 1904, the
Jersey City, New Jersey-based
United Fruit Company consolidated the Guatemala Central, the
Guatemala Northern, Guatemala Western, and Ocos Railways into the Guatemala Railway, who renumbered the engine as no. 61. In 1912, the Guatemala Railway and the Salvador Central Railway were consolidated into the
International Railways of Central America.[3] The engine was renumbered 84 by the IRCA in 1928, and continued to transport fruit as well a small number of passengers along one of the railroad's branchlines in the northwestern part of the country until 1960.
In the 1960s, United Fruit was purchased by
New York entrepreneur and
DC Transit operator
O. Roy Chalk. For reasons unknown, Chalk selected the former Jupiter locomotive for display as part of a children's park he was developing in Washington D.C., and the engine was shipped to that city to be displayed. In D.C., the engine drew the attention of
Smithsonian Institution curator
John H. White, Jr., who had taken particular notice of the engine's year built. White convinced Chalk to donate the engine to the Smithsonian as part of their upcoming Bicentennial Exhibition of 1976. The engine was cosmetically restored to its as-delivered appearance, and placed on display in the Smithsonian's
Arts and Industries Building in 1976 for the exhibit, which was a recreation of the displays of the
Centennial Exposition of 1876.[4] The engine was displayed in this building until 1999, when it was relocated to the Smithsonian's
National Museum of American History on the opposite side of the
National Mall, initially placed beside
Southern Railway engine 1401. The engine was relocated again in 2004 (though it remained within the museum building) when the exhibits were reconfigured into the
America on the Move exhibition, which features the engine displayed as part of a diorama recreating its arrival in Santa Cruz in 1876.
^Best, Gerald M. “The Railroads of Guatemala and Salvador.” The Railway and Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin, no. 104, 1961, pp. 31–53. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43517987. Accessed 25 Feb. 2020.