With a peak population of nearly 1,000 residents, Terrace was the largest town along the Promontory Branch of the Central Pacific Railroad, a stretch of the first transcontinental railroad that was active from 1869 to 1904, when the Lucin Cutoff made the tracks obsolete. The communities and railway sidings along the railway were eventually abandoned, and the tracks were pulled up for use as scrap metal during World War II. Ruins of a railroad roundhouse are visible.