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The Union Pacific Railway Overland Route was a train route operated jointly by the Union Pacific Railroad and the Central Pacific Railroad/Southern Pacific Railroad, between Council Bluffs Iowa/ Omaha Nebraska, and San Francisco, over the grade of the First Transcontinental Railroad which had been opened on May 10, 1869. Passenger trains that operated over the line included the Overland Flyer, later renamed the Overland Limited, which also included a connection to Chicago. Although these passenger rail trains are no longer in operation, the Overland Route remains a common name for the line from California to Chicago, now owned entirely by the Union Pacific.

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The name harkens back to the Central Overland Route, a stagecoach line operated by the Overland Mail Company between Salt Lake City, Utah and Virginia City, Nevada from 1861 to 1866, when Wells Fargo & Company took over the stagecoach's operation. Wells Fargo ended this stagecoach service three years later.

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While the Council Bluffs/Omaha to San Francisco Pacific Railroad grade was opened in 1869, the name Overland was not formally adopted for any daily extra-fare train over the route until almost two decades later when the Union Pacific inaugurated service of its Overland Flyer on November 13, 1887, between Omaha and Ogden. The Union Pacific changed its designation to the Overland Limited on November 17, 1895, and service continued as a daily train under that name in one form or another for almost seven decades.

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The original 1,911 miles of the route from Omaha to San Francisco traversed some of the most desolate (as well as some of the most picturesque) lands of the western two-thirds of the North American continent. While the trip originally took early low fare emigrant trains a full week or more to complete, by 1906 the electric lighted all-Pullman Overland Limited covered the route in just 56 hours.

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For more information on Union Pacific Overland visit the Union Pacific Overland homepage.