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

by Walter R. Borneman

  2. Anderson, William J. Palmer, pp. 75–76, 86–87; Grodinsky, Transcontinental Railway Strategy, pp. 90–91; Klein, Union Pacific: Birth, pp. 349, 395–96, specifically, “crumbling beneath the pressures,” p. 395; for an expression of Palmer’s land speculation, see Palmer Collection, Box 9, FF 716 (Palmer to Queen Palmer, October 12, 1874), in which he acknowledges, “There will probably be the same sort of fight [at El Moro] that we had with Colorado City.”

  3. Wilkins, Colorado Railroads, pp. 11–21. The Kansas Pacific, via its Arkansas Valley Railroad subsidiary, built from Kit Carson 56 miles south to Las Animas on the Arkansas River in 1873 before funds dried up. The Kansas Pacific managed another 24 miles up the Arkansas River in 1875, most of it close alongside the Santa Fe’s tracks. It halted construction at the mouth of Timpas Creek, just west of La Junta, stopped operating trains on its Arkansas Valley line in 1877, and started dismantling the track the following year. This 80-mile section was the first major abandonment in Colorado and would remain the state’s largest for more than forty years.

  4. Waters, Steel Trails, p. 114 (Nickerson), p. 54 (Strong). Strong was to have his own right-hand man in these endeavors. A. A. Robinson, seven years younger than Strong, was another son of Vermont. He moved to Wisconsin after his father’s death and clerked in his stepfather’s store. When his stepfather became ill and closed the store, Robinson supported the family by farming, saving enough to enroll at the University of Michigan. He received an undergraduate degree in 1869 and a master of science in 1871. By then, Robinson was on the payroll of the Santa Fe and on his way to becoming its chief engineer. Little did Robinson know that during his long tenure with the railroad, he would supervise the construction of an incredible 5,000 miles of track (pp. 45–46).

  5. “cocky and resolute” and “believed in a future life”: George S. Van Law, Four Years on Santa Fe Railroad Surveys, 1878 to 1882, p. 1, unpublished manuscript, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad Collection, Box 1, File Folder (FF) 1A, Stephen H. Hart Library, Colorado Historical Society, Denver (hereinafter Santa Fe Collection); An Act Granting to Railroads the Right of Way Through the Public Lands of the United States, U.S. Statutes at Large, 18, Pt. 3, 43rd Cong., 2nd sess., chap. 152, pp. 482–83; “It is understood”: William A. Bell Collection, Box 6, File Folder (FF) “Telegrams from Dr. Bell’s Files, 1875–1876” (Palmer to Bell, cable to London, March 25, 1876), Stephen H. Hart Library, Colorado Historical Society, Denver (hereinafter Bell Collection).

  6. Norman Cleaveland (with George Fitzpatrick), The Morleys—Young Upstarts on the Southwest Frontier (Albuquerque: Calvin Horn Publisher, 1971), pp. 40–41, 49–50, 57, 63, 68, 160–61; “he was no” and “he asked no,” p. 214.

  7. “Of course we have no” and “it is predicted”: Colorado Weekly Chieftain (Pueblo), February 21, 1878; “The air is full” and “as railroad companies do not”: ibid., February 28, 1878.

  8. Waters, Steel Trails, pp. 54, 98–100; Bryant, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, pp. 43–45; for a local account and “at three of the most,” see Colorado Weekly Chieftain, March 7, 1878. Confusion over Bat Masterson’s role at Raton Pass may stem from the fact that he later served as city marshal of Trinidad. Whatever deficiencies Palmer found with Trinchera Pass were refuted a scant ten years later when the Denver, Texas and Fort Worth Railroad built a standard gauge line across it in the process of completing Denver’s first continuous rail link to the Gulf of Mexico.

  9. Bryant, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, pp. 45–46; Robert M. Ormes, Railroads and the Rockies: A Record of Lines in and near Colorado (Denver: Sage Books, 1963), p. 78; Denver Daily Tribune, December 1, 1878. The tunnel’s final dimensions were 2,011 feet long, 14.5 feet wide, and 19 feet high.

  10. “ ‘devote all of their resources”: Colorado Weekly Chieftain, March 7, 1878; “to play a game”: Robert G. Athearn, Rebel of the Rockies: The Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1962), p. 56; advice on impasse in McMurtrie to Palmer, April 14, 1878, and “cutthroat policy,” McMurtrie to Palmer, April 1, 1881, McMurtrie Letter Book, quoted in Athearn, Rebel of the Rockies, p. 56.

  CHAPTER 10: BATTLE ROYAL FOR THE GORGE

  1. As early as 1878, the U.S. Supreme Court used the name “Royal Gorge” in the case of Denver and Rio Grande Railway Co. v. C. T. Alling, et al. It is the common usage today and distinguishes the steepest 8-mile section of gorge from the longer Arkansas River canyon, of which it is a part.

  2. “I will run a line” and “to look at that pass”: Palmer Collection, Box 4, FF 461 (Greenwood to Palmer, February 8, 1869).

  3. “Our experience” and “a fearful gorge”: Palmer Collection, Box 9, FF 708 (Palmer to Queen Palmer, August 24, 1871).

  4. Anderson, William J. Palmer, pp. 69–70, 134–36. The Denver and Rio Grande had already employed a two-step financing approach with Pueblo County. In step one, the county voted $100,000 in bonds if the railroad would build its depot within a mile of the courthouse in Pueblo. In step two, another $50,000 in bonds carried the tracks into the downtown area.

  5. Anderson, William J. Palmer, pp. 87–88.

  6. Anderson, William J. Palmer, pp. 88–90, specifically, “low gradient per mile” and “Manitou frequenters,” p. 89, and “It is the shortest,” p. 90.

  7. “Harrison goes east”: Anderson, William J. Palmer, p. 91; “All my movements”: McMurtrie to Palmer, April 14, 1878, McMurtrie Letter Book, quoted in Athearn, Rebel of the Rockies, pp. 56–57; “see to it that”: Waters, Steel Trails, p. 106.

  8. This account of the first day’s activities of the Royal Gorge war is based on articles in the Colorado Weekly Chieftain, April 25, 1878. The principal one was entitled “Catching Weasels Asleep. Or How Morley Outflanked McMurtrie. Bronchos vs. Iron Horses.” The Pueblo paper was generally opposed to the Rio Grande, and its stories had a strong Santa Fe slant. The Chieftain’s Cañon City correspondent, B. F. Rockafellow, was a resident of Cañon City and one of the organizers of the Cañon City and San Juan Railway. While Anderson did not document his source, he wrote in William J. Palmer (p. 95) that Rockafellow later admitted that he embellished the more colorful articles “to tickle the public fancy.” Morley’s grandson recounted the horsemanship quote in Cleaveland, The Morleys, p. 172. Sheridan’s dash refers to the general’s wild, twenty-mile ride from a leisurely staff breakfast in Winchester, Virginia, to stem a Union rout at the 1864 Battle of Cedar Creek; Thomas Buchanan Read wrote a poem about the event, “Sheridan’s Ride,” that was a staple of recitation for northern schoolchildren after the war.

  9. Anderson, William J. Palmer, pp. 93–95.

  10. Cleaveland, The Morleys, pp. 175–76. (Ray Morley to Ada Morley, May 6, 1878). Unfortunately, Ray Morley’s personal diaries and many business papers and family letters were destroyed in the great Berkeley fire of 1923 while in possession of one of his daughters. Since he was well known as a careful observer and unbiased reporter, it would be of great historical value to have his additional insights.

  11. “very abusive and making” and “which fractured his skull”: Colorado Weekly Chieftain, May 9, 1878; “Mr. James Gallagher”: Colorado Weekly Chieftain, May 16, 1878.

  12. Colorado Weekly Chieftain, May 9, 1878.

  13. Colorado Weekly Chieftain, May 16, 1878.

  14. Anderson, William Jackson Palmer, p. 101.

  15. Cornelius W. Hauck and Robert W. Richardson, eds., “The Santa Fe’s D&RG War No. 2,” Colorado Rail Annual (Golden, Colo.: Colorado Railroad Museum, 1965), 4–5. Three years later, the Denver and Rio Grande constructed a narrow gauge line up Grape Creek to reach Westcliffe and access promising silver camps in the Wet Mountain Valley. The line washed out in 1889 and was not rebuilt. Instead, in 1901 the Rio Grande completed a standard gauge line to Westcliffe from Texas Creek. It was abandoned in 1937.

  16. Colorado Weekly Chieftain, June 13, 1878.

  17. “Indenture between the Denver & Rio Grande Railway Company and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad Compa
ny, October 1878,” Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad Collection, Box 30, File Folder (FF) 1284, Stephen H. Hart Library, Colorado Historical Society, Denver (hereinafter Denver and Rio Grande Collection); bond prices reported in Waters, Steel Trails, p. 122.

  18. “The arrogant demand” and “If they were to” and “we may want to take”: Denver and Rio Grande Collection, Box 23, FF 1083 (Palmer to Dodge, December 4, 1878); for one expression of Palmer worrying about the Santa Fe’s compliance with the lease and required audit of funds, see ibid. (Palmer to Strong, January 19, 1879).

  19. Equipment purchase in Hauck and Richardson, “The Santa Fe’s D&RG War No. 2,” p. 7; “where in the whole universe”: DeArment, Bat Masterson, pp. 149–51.

  20. “Come on, now”: Colorado Weekly Chieftain, June 19, 1879; “certain Dodge City folks”: DeArment, Bat Masterson, pp. 151–53. The Chieftain account does not mention Masterson by name, once again suggesting that his role in these railroad wars grew with his later reputation.

  21. “while he figured a way”: Maury Klein, The Life and Legend of Jay Gould (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), p. 228; see also p. 243 for the threat to parallel the Santa Fe in Kansas; Gould’s Rio Grande stock purchase at Denver and Rio Grande Collection, Box 22, FF 1033 (Gould et al., agreement, September 8, 1879).

  22. Anderson, William J. Palmer, pp. 107–116. The court cases involved the Santa Fe’s Pueblo and Arkansas Valley subsidiary, which had absorbed the Cañon City and San Juan.

  23. Gould letter and “who happened to be”: Bell Collection, Box 1, FF 22 (Gould to Nickerson, December 17, 1879); Palmer Collection, Box 5, FF 320 (agreement between Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad Company, et al., and the Denver & Rio Grande Railway Company, March 27, 1880); commission appraisal in Anderson, William J. Palmer, p. 113; Gould’s Rio Grande stock quotes in Klein, Jay Gould, p. 243. Palmer responded to Bell’s meeting with Gould, “Any peace that stops A.T. & S.F. at South Pueblo and gives us Leadville & San Juan, and prevents coal and coke competition to westward, will put D&RG on stock dividend paying basis.…” Bell Collection, Box 1, FF 22 (Palmer to Bell, December 18, 1879).

  24. Robert A. Le Massena, “The Royal Gorge,” Denver Westerners Monthly Roundup 21, no. 11 (November 1965): 7, 14–16, specifically, “no one in his right” and “the public press insisted,” p. 15, and “I was chief engineer,” p. 16.

  25. Report of the Board of Directors to the Stockholders of the Denver and Rio Grande Railway Company, 1880, pp. 12–13, Denver and Rio Grande Collection, Box 15, FF 506. Palmer’s fight with the Santa Fe primed him for his next battle: a race against John Evans’s Denver, South Park and Pacific for Colorado’s Western Slope and a transcontinental connection with the Central Pacific at Ogden. As Evans learned during the Denver Pacific fight and Palmer experienced firsthand during the Royal Gorge war, railroading, like politics, sometimes made for strange bedfellows. This was particularly true when one of the parties in the room was Jay Gould after he’d bought into both the Rio Grande and the South Park.

  As Gould negotiated with the Santa Fe to resolve the Royal Gorge war, he forced a joint operating agreement on Palmer and Evans. Once released from the gorge, the Denver and Rio Grande would build to Leadville, but the South Park was to have equal trackage rights on the last 30 miles from Buena Vista north. In exchange, the South Park would give the Rio Grande the same trackage rights along its planned line from Buena Vista west across the Continental Divide and into the Gunnison country.

  But with the Royal Gorge battle resolved, Palmer began counting shares and reasserting himself as the decision maker of the Denver and Rio Grande. When Gould got wind of this, he wrote Evans in frustration: “As I understood the contract, the D&RG were not to build an independent line into the Gunnison country [because] such a line would sooner or later get the two companies into a collision.” Gould reminded Evans that the joint operating agreement contemplated that the two roads be consolidated and he urged Evans, “the sooner this is done the better” (Evans Collection, Box 7, FF 82 [Gould to Evans, July 5, 1880]).

  A review of the agreement showed that while the Rio Grande had in fact been granted rights over a South Park line to Gunnison, there was no prohibition on the Rio Grande building its own line despite the general understanding that it would not. Whether this contractual lapse was Gould’s fault or that of his attorneys made little difference as Palmer champed at the bit to head west independent of the South Park. The general knew that if he did so, it would mean a rate war with the South Park and quite probably the wrath of the Union Pacific system over which Gould held considerable sway. But if Palmer could acquire controlling interest in the South Park, the move would rid the Rio Grande of Union Pacific influence in the central Rockies.

  So, Evans—at Gould’s urging—and Palmer—for his own interests—sat down to haggle. Reportedly, Palmer first offered Evans a straight stock trade: one share of Rio Grande stock for one share of South Park. Having achieved somewhat of a rebirth thanks to Gould’s investment, Rio Grande stock was then trading between $60 and $70 a share. South Park stock was not on the market because after Gould bought about 25 percent, Evans and his Denver cronies shrewdly put their remaining shares into a trust, with instructions that it be voted or sold as a block. They did not intend to be minority shareholders; it was all or nothing.

  Meanwhile, thanks to the rush to Leadville, the Denver, South Park and Pacific was having a banner year. Its Denver investors thought that its stock was worth at least par—$100 a share. Palmer countered with a $700,000 cash sweetener above the Rio Grande stock, but wanted nine-month terms. When Evans discussed this with Gould in his role as a South Park shareholder who would have to consent as to his quarter interest, Gould “offered to purchase the South Park himself at $90 per share, and, as an added inducement, offered to let Evans remain as president.” When Evans asked why he should still be president after the transaction, Gould tipped his hand. “I thought you might like to remain as president and be identified with the Union Pacific.” That, of course, was exactly what Palmer feared the most.

  Evans responded to Gould as he had to Palmer, holding out for par. Just to be certain that he fully understood Evans’s position, Gould asked Evans to make an all-cash proposal. “We will take cash par for our railroad stock,” the governor wired back on behalf of his Denver group. Done, answered Gould, “Your offer is accepted.”

  Evans and his associates reaped substantial profits, and Jay Gould became the sole owner of the Denver, South Park and Pacific. By one count, Evans’s personal take was almost $800,000. Gould made money too, because he sold his shares at par two months later to the Union Pacific, recovering what he had paid the Denver group and making more than a half million dollars on the quarter stake he had held previously. What Gould’s interest in the Rio Grande was at this time is uncertain, but it seems probable that by the 1881 annual meeting, Palmer had rounded up enough support to outvote him, and Gould subsequently sold his minority position. By then, the Denver and Rio Grande and the Denver, South Park and Pacific were racing each other for the Gunnison country.

  The Denver and Rio Grande chose to build over the comparatively gentle grades of 10,846-foot Marshall Pass. The South Park committed to Chalk Creek and crossing the divide via what would be called the Alpine Tunnel. The Rio Grande crested the summit of Marshall Pass and then laid tracks another 45 miles into Gunnison, reaching the town on August 6, 1881. Palmer did not pause to celebrate, but rapidly continued his main line westward toward Utah. The South Park finally arrived in Gunnison in September 1882. The Alpine Tunnel reserved a spot in railroad lore for the line, but it cost the railroad dearly in construction costs, in a year’s delay in reaching Gunnison, and in lives and materiel as the years went by. For the Denver, South Park and Pacific, Gunnison proved the end of the line—the demise of its transcontinental efforts.

  Various versions exist for Gould’s role in the Denver and Rio Grande, Palmer’s decision to build independently to the Gunnison countr
y, and Gould’s purchase of control of the South Park. The most reasoned and best researched may be Kelsey, Frontier Capitalist, pp. 187–93, 316–17n, which is based on correspondence between Gould and Evans; other interpretations, along with Gould’s profit on the South Park sale, can be found at Klein, Union Pacific, Birth, pp. 431–32, and Klein, Jay Gould, p. 257.

  CHAPTER 11: HANDSHAKE AT DEMING

  1. Evans, Huntington, vol. 1, p. 258.

  2. Myrick, Railroads of Arizona, Southern Roads, p. 32.

  3. Arizona Weekly Citizen, November 2, 1878; Myrick, Railroads of Arizona, Southern Roads, p. 33.

  4. “move dirt much more”: Arizona Sentinel, December 7, 1878; Myrick, Railroads of Arizona, Southern Roads, pp. 34–36.

  5. “It seemed like old times”: Huntington Papers, Series 1, Reel 16 (Crocker to Huntington, December 10, 1878); “I do not think”: ibid., Series 4, Reel 3 (Crocker to Huntington, February 7, 1879).

  6. Huntington Papers, Series 4, Reel 3 (Crocker to Huntington, February 7, 1879).

  7. Myrick, Railroads of Arizona, Southern Roads, p. 40; “There is hardly”: San Francisco Bulletin, April 1, 1879; auction results in Arizona Sentinel, May 17, 1879; “We had a sale”: Huntington Papers, Series 1, Reel 17 (Crocker to Huntington, May 17, 1879). Once down the east side of the Maricopas, the railroad began a long, continuous 5-mile curve of ten minutes (about one-sixth of 1 degree) and by some accounts the longest continuous railroad curve in the world.

  8. “My idea of stopping” and “the men could not work”: Huntington Papers, Series 1, Reel 17 (Crocker to Huntington, May 17, 1879); “been constantly working”: Arizona Sentinel, May 24, 1879; stockpiling ties in Myrick, Railroads of Arizona, Southern Roads, p. 42.

  9. Census figures from Myrick, Railroads of Arizona, Southern Roads, p. 46; “Hardly a stage”: Arizona Daily Star, July 9, 1879; “A good deal of the trouble”: Arizona Daily Star, July 20, 1879.