Rival Rails: The Race to Build America's Greatest Transcontinental Railroad

by Walter R. Borneman

  There was one railroad, of course, with no intention of bending to such bravado.

  13

  Transcontinental at Last

  The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe was one of the few western railroads with transcontinental ambitions that did not have the word Pacific in its name. That certainly did not mean, however, that the railroad’s transcontinental plans were any less determined or that they stopped in the middle of New Mexico. By 1881, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe was advancing on the Pacific Ocean by three different fronts.

  Admittedly, William Barstow Strong and the Santa Fe received little more than a handshake from Collis P. Huntington and the Southern Pacific at Deming, but Strong and his board of directors seem to have sensed well in advance that might be the case. They undertook the construction south from Albuquerque in part to protect the Santa Fe’s southern flanks and to keep Jay Gould and/or Huntington from building north from El Paso.

  The Santa Fe’s second Pacific front was via the Sonora Railway to Guaymas, Mexico. But even though the Santa Fe built its own New Mexico and Arizona Railroad from Benson, Arizona, south to join the Sonora Railway at the Mexican border at Nogales, this route, too, was dependent on the dictates of the Southern Pacific because of the 174-mile joint trackage agreement between Deming and Benson.

  What the Santa Fe needed—and what Strong had been patiently acquiring by bits and pieces—was a transcontinental route between the Mississippi and the Pacific completely under its own control. A key component was to come from assorted railroad ventures that traced their roots back to the fervent expansionism of Thomas Hart Benton.

  Even before the Pacific Railroad surveys of 1853, Senator Benton had long championed a railway between St. Louis and San Francisco. What might lie in between was, Benton once told Congress, “a matter of detail.” The most important thing to him was to set the termini of the route irrevocably in the two cities that hugged the 38th parallel. To that end, the Pacific Railroad Company of Missouri was incorporated in 1849, to build west from St. Louis.

  It didn’t get very far, and the trials and tragedies of John C. Frémont and John Gunnison while filling in the “detail” along the 38th parallel soon had Missourians pondering the more southerly 35th parallel route instead. St. Louis would still be the eastern terminal, but a south-west branch of the Pacific Railroad Company was projected to cut diagonally across the state to Springfield, which had long touted itself the logical railroad gateway to the 35th parallel route.

  Amidst the land grant giveaway in the aftermath of the Civil War, Springfield got its opportunity. Benton was dead by then, but Frémont acquired control of the south-west branch—renamed the Southwest Pacific Railroad—and used the line’s goal of Springfield to promote the new Atlantic and Pacific Railroad as the logical extension westward from there.1

  With a lengthy list of incorporators that included J. Edgar Thomson and Thomas A. Scott, the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad Company was formed by an act of Congress on July 27, 1866. It was to run generally west from Springfield to a point on the Canadian River, then to Albuquerque, the headwaters of the Little Colorado River, and on to the Colorado River, “at such point as may be selected by said company for crossing; thence by the most practicable and eligible route to the Pacific.”

  There was no promise of the lucrative bond subsidies that had benefited the Union Pacific, but the Atlantic and Pacific land grant was generous—every alternate section to the extent of twenty alternate sections per mile on each side of the railroad line through the territories and ten alternate sections per mile on each side through any state. The Atlantic and Pacific was required to begin construction within two years, complete at least fifty miles per year, and finish its main line by July 4, 1878.

  But there was one section in the enabling legislation that bespoke the hand of Collis P. Huntington. Despite authorizing the Atlantic and Pacific to proceed “by the most practicable and eligible route to the Pacific,” section 18 provided that Huntington’s Southern Pacific Railroad was “authorized to connect with the said Atlantic and Pacific Railroad … at such point, near the boundary line of the State of California, as they shall deem most suitable for a railroad line to San Francisco.”2

  Whether this provision merely afforded the Southern Pacific the opportunity to connect with the Atlantic and Pacific at the Colorado River or prohibited the Atlantic and Pacific from building beyond it into California would soon be a matter of heated debate.

  The mercurial Frémont was soon off to other ventures, but by June 1871, the Atlantic and Pacific had consolidated with the Southwest Pacific as planned. It completed its line across Missouri through Springfield to the state line and continued into Indian Territory and a junction with the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad (the Katy) at Vinita, Indian Territory.

  Much as Tom Scott did to court San Diegans on behalf of the Texas and Pacific, a Missouri delegation traveled to San Francisco in 1872 to win friends and connections at the contemplated western end of the line. But Californians were of divided loyalties. Some favored Scott’s Texas and Pacific enterprise; others wanted a line totally under Californian control; and, of course, the Big Four muddied the waters by opposing any railroad that might someday compete with the recently finished Central Pacific or the expanding Southern Pacific.

  Meanwhile, the Atlantic and Pacific leased the original Pacific Railroad of Missouri that had finally made it from St. Louis to Kansas City, albeit by floating a staggering debt. This orphan of Benton’s Pacific dreams would someday emerge as Jay Gould’s vaunted Missouri Pacific, but in the mid-1870s, it floundered, and it took the Atlantic and Pacific down with it.

  The Atlantic and Pacific went into receivership on November 3, 1875, but its directors and major shareholders quickly devised what became the ultimate coup. They formed a new corporation that would bid at foreclosure for the Atlantic and Pacific’s franchise and land grant, while being free from the Atlantic and Pacific’s debts.

  On September 8, 1876, the Atlantic and Pacific went on the auction block on the east steps of the courthouse in St. Louis. Two days earlier, the soon-to-be Missouri Pacific had sold for $3 million. But this time the insiders were in control. When the auctioneer dropped his gavel, the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad—with its land grants potentially worth millions and millions of dollars—was sold for the paltry sum of $450,000 to the new corporation. “The new company is to be called the St. Louis & San Francisco Railway Company,” the Railroad Gazette reported wryly, “because, perhaps, it has no terminus in either city.”3

  But the reality was that the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway now owned the Atlantic and Pacific franchise outright, and the parent company made plans to strike westward from its railhead at Vinita. When continuing uncertainty over its right-of-way and land grants across Indian reservations delayed that construction, the St. Louis and San Francisco bypassed Indian Territory and built westward into Kansas instead. Given its ultimate goal, the railroad replaced the old Atlantic and Pacific trademark of “the Vinita Route” with a new moniker. Henceforth, the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway would be known as “the Frisco Line.”

  The Frisco’s immediate destination was Wichita, Kansas. While bypassed by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe main line, Wichita had taken upon itself to build a 20-mile spur and ensure its future as a cattle town and commercial hub. Looking to become a rail center as well, Wichita encouraged the Frisco’s advance by floating a county bond issue. But by the time the Frisco laid tracks into town, the Santa Fe main line stretched westward to Albuquerque. One look at the map told the story.

  If the Frisco continued westward and paralleled the Santa Fe across southern Kansas, there would be fierce competition between the two roads. Regardless of how the Frisco’s claims in Indian Territory were resolved, they were likely to be of dubious value. (Oil discoveries would change that, but not until much later.)

  For its part, the Santa Fe was concerned about another competitor shadowing it across Kansas. It had
long contended with just such competition from the Kansas Pacific north of its line. Rather than competing with each other across the plains, perhaps there was a way that the Frisco and the Santa Fe might work together and put their resources into finishing the 35th parallel route west from Albuquerque instead of knocking heads in Kansas.

  It helped matters that the leaders of both railroads moved in the same circles of Boston capitalists. Thomas Nickerson and his protégé William Barstow Strong were already showing themselves to be patient plodders focused on long-term results. The reborn Atlantic and Pacific land grant was certainly of interest, but so too was another route by which to challenge Collis P. Huntington’s stranglehold on California.

  Finally, both the Frisco and the Santa Fe were watching the increasingly large shadow that Jay Gould cast over all railroad ventures. Concerned about their own independence or Gould’s role in a competitor, the Frisco and the Santa Fe had additional reasons to be allies rather than foes.

  The 1879 annual report of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe told the results: “Another negotiation which required nearly six months to complete, secures your Company an interest in the valuable franchise of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad which gives your road right of way across Arizona and California to the Pacific Coast. Your Company, jointly with the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway Company, will build a new road from Albuquerque along the thirty-fifth parallel, which in due time will form part of a transcontinental line.”4

  Formally ratified on January 31, 1880, this Tripartite Agreement was in some respects more sweeping than the Treaty of Boston or even the agreements between Huntington and Gould in Texas. Its triple nature came from the fact that the Santa Fe and the Frisco formed a jointly owned subsidiary further preserving the fiction of the old Atlantic and Pacific. Its stock, directors, costs of construction, and profits were to be equally divided between the Santa Fe and the Frisco. This reborn Atlantic and Pacific Western Division was to build west from the Santa Fe line at Albuquerque, claiming as it went the original Atlantic and Pacific land grant.

  To fund this 600-mile expansion between Albuquerque and the Colorado River, the Santa Fe and the Frisco each agreed to raise $5 million secured by a first mortgage of 6 percent thirty-year bonds to be guaranteed by both companies. All business to and from the Western Division was to pass over the Santa Fe from Albuquerque to Wichita—later changed to Halstead, Kansas, on the Santa Fe’s main line. From that point east, all St. Louis business went via the Frisco and all Chicago-bound business continued over the Santa Fe to Kansas City.

  The two roads further agreed that the Frisco or its St. Louis, Wichita and Western subsidiary would not build west from Wichita and that neither party would build new competing lines except by mutual consent and with joint ownership and cost.

  Thomas Nickerson became president of the Atlantic and Pacific Western Division, while former Union general Edward F. Winslow became vice president to look after the Frisco’s interests. It seemed a neat solution to everyone, although Wichita and surrounding Sedgwick County, having enticed the Frisco with a bond issue, now complained, “As a county we agreed to pay our money for the benefits to be derived from a direct competition and not for an extra track of a monopoly.” Out of the ashes of previous 35th parallel failures, that is exactly what the Santa Fe was suddenly in the position to achieve.5

  Not everyone, however, was keen on the idea of the Santa Fe building along the 35th parallel. Shortly after the initial battles at Raton Pass and the Royal Gorge, William Barstow Strong dispatched the steady A. A. Robinson west from Albuquerque to take a look. Robinson was not walking into the unknown but rather following the footsteps of Lieutenant Amiel Whipple’s 1853 efforts and William Jackson Palmer’s 1867 survey on behalf of the Kansas Pacific. But he wasn’t impressed.

  Robinson argued against the 35th parallel route west from Albuquerque because he believed that the depths of the Grand Canyon to the north precluded any trade or connecting lines in that direction. (Clearly, Robinson was not thinking about the tourist trade.) He urged instead that all efforts be directed to driving south down the Rio Grande to the 32nd parallel. But by the time the Santa Fe reached Deming, Huntington and the Southern Pacific had preempted that route.

  Meanwhile, the Santa Fe surveyors who were momentarily cheered in Tucson in the summer of 1879 reported back that the territory between Albuquerque and Tucson was “hopeless” both for a suitable direct line and local traffic. That left Nickerson and Strong with Lieutenant Whipple’s preferred route along the 35th parallel. The fact that they seized on that route early in the game—regardless of Robinson’s negative report—and made the deal with the Frisco is evidence that they were looking at the big picture of railroading in the American Southwest. Rather than taking the 35th parallel as a last resort, securing it early left Nickerson and Strong looking like rather shrewd railroaders after Huntington and Gould combined against them in the south.6

  On paper, the railroad to be built west from Albuquerque would be known as the Atlantic and Pacific Western Division, but the men involved with its construction and later operation were definitely part of the greater Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe organization. Barely was the ink dry on the Tripartite Agreement than A. A. Robinson—his doubts about the route put aside but not dismissed—sent survey crews west from Albuquerque in the summer of 1880 to pound stakes along a final alignment between there and the Colorado River.

  George S. Van Law, a veteran of the Santa Fe’s Raton and Royal Gorge battles, was in the lead party. It quickly became clear to him these preparations were “for the construction of a first class transcontinental railroad to do big business.” Robinson’s work specifications were very strict and called for light gradients and easy curves that in many cases “eased off at both ends.”

  But as Van Law and his party progressed west across northern Arizona, it also became clear that there was not much local business. Supposedly, they were following a semblance of an old trail, but Van Law found it a road “in name only.” He never saw a man or wagon on it in an entire summer of work that at times was quite demanding. When the supply wagons were close, life was good, but when they failed to keep up with the advance or arrive at an agreed-upon rendezvous, hunger became a familiar companion. Breakfast one morning for Van Law’s crew of nine consisted of two cans of tomatoes and one can of peaches. It was, he acknowledged, “a lot better than starving.”

  A few days later, after walking miles to start their work and running line for a half day, their lunch was only sugar and some bacon almost green with age and heat. But typical of the men who pushed these lines west, Van Law confessed, “we were a tough lot and nobody got sick.”7

  The Santa Fe was in a hurry, and construction crews quickly followed Van Law’s markers west from near Albuquerque. The chosen junction point was Isleta, some 12 miles south of town, where the Santa Fe line down the Rio Grande crossed the river from east to west. The dust from the construction of that bridge and the Santa Fe’s march toward Deming had settled only a few weeks. One would have been hard pressed to say which route was the main line. At the very least, the Santa Fe’s frenzied construction on two fronts at once bespoke Nickerson’s and Strong’s transcontinental plans.

  Certainly Robinson understood what was at stake. Not wanting a repeat of the conflict at Raton Pass, he sent a work crew 180 miles west of Albuquerque to seize and hold the staked right-of-way through Querino Canyon. Just west of the Arizona–New Mexico border, this 2-mile-long sandstone gap was wide enough for only a single set of tracks.

  Robinson’s caution was well founded, particularly after Charley Crocker himself showed up on Santa Fe turf in Albuquerque “on railroad business.” Figuring that Crocker and Huntington were quite capable of being even more aggressive than General Palmer had been at Raton and the Royal Gorge, Robinson next directed that ties and rails be hauled by wagon to Querino Canyon well in advance of the railhead. Two and one-half miles of track were laid in the canyon during the summer of
1880 to hold the right-of-way. This section stood as a rather forlorn outpost while the end of track advanced toward it over the next year. 8

  When the first 50 miles of track were completed west of Isleta, the Santa Fe–Frisco–owned Atlantic and Pacific Western Division applied for the land grants due under the original 1866 Atlantic and Pacific charter. The legislation had mandated that the line be completed within ten years. Now, two years past that deadline, there was growing sentiment in Congress against land grants from the public domain.

  But U.S. Attorney General Charles Devens, an appointee of President Hayes, ruled that the original act, while requiring completion in ten years, did not specifically provide for a forfeiture of the railroad’s rights to such lands. They could be earned, Devens decided, by construction any time unless Congress wanted to intervene, take possession of the road, and complete it as a federal project, which clearly it did not. So the Western Division received its first patents for land along the route.

  By February 1881, 100 miles of track had been laid west from Isleta, and 80 were in operation. Crews kept on through the cold of the high-desert winter and reached Fort Wingate, now Gallup, New Mexico. Lewis Kingman, who located the line, was in charge of construction.

  Most of Kingman’s crews were Irish. Tracklayers and graders were paid $2.25 per day, and spikers and iron layers earned $2.50 per day—the latter equivalent to about $54 in 2008 dollars. Kingman also hired local Apaches and Navajos and later Mojaves from California as shovelers and day laborers.

  Many of the Irish workers had built the Santa Fe or other roads across the plains, just as many of the Chinese working for Huntington in southern Arizona had labored through the Sierras. The simple economics of reaching the respective railheads dictated the labor pool—the Irish from the East and the Chinese from the West. Ethnic background meant little when it came to hoisting a fifty-two-pound rail, but that did not mean that there was no racism. “The directors of the 35th Parallel R.R.,” a local Arizona newspaper declared, “certainly deserve much credit for employing none but white labor in building their great transcontinental railway from the Atlantic to the Pacific.”