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

by Walter R. Borneman

  5. Maury Klein, The Life and Legend of E. H. Harriman (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), p. 220.

  6. Athearn, Rebel of the Rockies, pp. 197, 199–200; Spencer Crump, “Western Pacific: The Railroad That Was Built Too Late,” Railway History Quarterly 1, no. 1 (January 1963): 3, 20; Klein, Harriman, pp. 321–22.

  7. Crump, “Western Pacific,” pp. 20, 26, 30; “The policies, ambitions”: Wall Street Journal, April 14, 1906; “still had light”: Klein, Harriman, p. 322. The Western Pacific’s other problem was competition from the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad. A promoter named R. C. Kerens cobbled together 28 miles of line between Los Angeles and the port at San Pedro and spent the better part of the 1890s trying to interest the Union Pacific in acquiring it as the western terminus of a beeline route from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles. The Union Pacific gave Kerens’s proposal a low priority, largely because any entrance into Los Angeles would have faced the wrath of the Southern Pacific.

  In the spring of 1899, Kerens sent yet another proposal to the Union Pacific, but this time he was a buyer. Instead of promoting the sale of his Los Angeles Terminal Railway, Kerens sought to buy or lease the assortment of Union Pacific–controlled lines running south from Ogden. This got the Union Pacific’s immediate attention. “I infer from his conversation,” a sharp lieutenant telegraphed Harriman, “that W. A. Clark of Montana is behind him.”

  There was good reason for Harriman to be alarmed. William Andrews Clark was the proverbial loose cannon, an eccentric with enough money to do just about anything he set his mind to do. Born on a Pennsylvania farm in 1839, Clark taught school for a few years in Missouri and ended up in the rough-and-tumble gold camps of Montana’s first mining rush. He struggled as a merchant, moved into banking, and then, in 1872, got in on the ground floor of a little place called Butte. The mineral there proved to be copper, and a mine and a smelter later, W. A. Clark was one of the copper kings of Montana.

  Whether Clark sought a distraction in the deserts of Nevada or his sharp nose for the next deal led him there is debatable. Regardless, W. A. Clark was indeed the man backing R. C. Kerens in his Los Angeles–to–Salt Lake plans, and Huntington’s death suddenly made the venture all the more feasible. In March 1901, Clark incorporated the San Pedro, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake Railroad and acquired the Los Angeles Terminal Railway as his western anchor.

  The key to the middle portion of the route lay in control of the canyon of Meadow Valley Wash, a 110-mile slot extending southward from Caliente on the Nevada-Utah border to an expanse of desert that would soon become the railroad town of Las Vegas. While Harriman rushed Union Pacific–backed construction crews south from Ogden, Clark’s men blocked the northern end of the Meadow Valley Canyon with a barricade and feverishly graded as many miles as possible at the other end. Clark was eventually able to enjoin Harriman from doing any work in the canyon, but both he and Harriman soon decided that it was time to talk things out.

  After much posturing, Harriman concluded that what Clark really wanted was the glory of being involved with a major railroad construction. For Harriman, who was at the height of his Union Pacific–Southern Pacific empire, glory for others was a relatively cheap commodity as long as he held ultimate control. In fact, given his other designs on the West, Harriman didn’t mind that Clark boasted publicly that he was to be a sole owner of the Los Angeles–Salt Lake line and planned to link the road with George Gould’s system. Clark’s bravado was a great smoke screen. Behind the scenes, Harriman was secure in an agreement to own one-half of both the San Pedro, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake and its construction company. As one of Harriman’s advisors put it privately, “Mr. Clark is very sensitive on the point of his road being built as a San Pedro proposition. We are less tenacious about sentimental considerations but are looking to the final result.”

  The road secured trackage rights from the Santa Fe over Cajon Pass and rapidly filled in the gap from Barstow through Meadow Valley Wash, a stretch that required numerous tunnels. The new beeline was opened for business in May 1905 and immediately became a critical western artery because it had much the same characteristics as the Santa Fe’s 35th parallel main line: relatively gentle grades, generally less snow, and a direct route. It became the Union Pacific’s route of choice into Southern California. In 1916 “San Pedro” was dropped from its name because Los Angeles had effectively expanded to annex that onetime little port, and the road became simply the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad. Clark finally sold his half interest in the line to the Union Pacific in 1921, four years before he died. (Klein, Harriman, pp. 243–49; for Clark’s background, see Michael P. Malone, The Battle for Butte: Mining and Politics on the Northern Frontier, 1864–1906 [Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981], pp. 13–15, 126–27; Kennan, Harriman, vol. 1, pp. 344–46.)

  8. Athearn, Rebel of the Rockies, pp. 201, “As to the D. and R. G.” 210–11, 285, 295; Fisher, Builder of the West, pp. 312–18.

  CHAPTER 22: TOP OF THE HEAP

  1. Maury Klein, Union Pacific: The Rebirth, 1894–1969 (New York: Doubleday, 1989), pp. 119; Bryant, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, pp. 184–85; tobacco story in Waters, Steel Trails, p. 348n.

  2. Klein, Harriman, pp. 318–19.

  3. Klein, Harriman, pp. 251–52; Klein, Union Pacific: The Rebirth, pp. 119, 144.

  4. “not adopted at first”: Palmer, Report of Surveys Across the Continent, p. 13; Bryant, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, pp. 194–99, 201; gradients in Waters, Steel Trails, p. 354. A 19-mile cutoff was also completed west of Belen to link directly with the route west from Albuquerque and speed east-west trains across the Rio Grande Valley with barely a pause.

  5. Virginia L. Grattan, Mary Colter: Builder upon the Red Earth (Grand Canyon, Ariz.: Grand Canyon Natural History Association, 1992), specifically, “a decorator who knew,” p. 8; “the first building,” p. 10; “to give up,” p. 25; “Her buildings,” p. 2.

  6. Scotty’s story should be taken with a grain of salt. This information is mostly from Dorothy Shally and William Bolton, Scotty’s Castle: Death Valley’s Fabulous Showplace (Yosemite, Calif.: Flying Spur Press, 1973), pp. 7–9.

  7. This synopsis and the quotes are from an undated, reproduced publication entitled “Record Breaking Run of the Scott Special,” which may have been produced by the Santa Fe in 1955 for the fiftieth anniversary of the run. Some references suggest that it was originally done shortly after the run. Another anniversary celebration was the reenactment of the Scott Special for a segment of the popular TV western of the 1950s and 1960s, Death Valley Days. Santa Fe locomotive 1010, which pulled the original train between Needles and Seligman, was fired up for the run. Today it is at the California State Railroad Museum.

  8. “loves a good time”: Shally and Bolton, Scotty’s Castle, p. 9; “Scott repays,” ibid., p. 8.

  9. Eleventh Annual Report of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company, 1906, p. 20.

  10. “virtual miracle”: Bryant, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, pp. 200–1; “blue chip”: ibid., p. 204.

  11. “ ‘the Pennsylvania of the West” and “The Pennsylvania policy”: Carl Snyder, American Railways as Investments (New York: Moody, 1907), p. 81.

  12. “the road had become”: “Fifty Years of Santa Fe History,” Santa Fe Magazine, January 1923, p. 43.

  CHAPTER 23: DUELING STREAMLINERS

  1. Duke, Santa Fe, Passenger and Freight Service, pp. 312–16.

  2. Duke, Santa Fe, Passenger and Freight Service, pp. 326–27.

  3. Donald J. Heimburger and Carl R. Byron, The American Streamliner: Prewar Years (Forest Park, Ill.: Heimburger House, 1996), pp. 24–27, 33–34. Later in 1934, this Pioneer Zephyr was put into regular service between Lincoln and Kansas City via Omaha. It ran until 1960, when it was given to Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.

  4. Heimburger and Byron, American Streamliner: Prewar Years, pp. 22–24, 88. The Union Pacific took delivery of its streamliner on February 25, 1934—ahead of th
e Zephyr by two months—and also sent it on a national tour, but the train did not enter regular service as the City of Salina between Kansas City and Salina, Kansas, until January 31, 1935. The San Francisco leg of the City streamliners was made possible by a partnership with the Southern Pacific west of Ogden, while the Union Pacific owed its competition in the Los Angeles market to the wholly owned Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad.

  5. Heimburger and Byron, American Streamliner: Prewar Years, pp. 73–80; Duke, Santa Fe, pp. 339–45; Bryant, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, p. 345. In an effort to make the entire Santa Fe system run faster, passenger and freight operations were put on a unified schedule. Rather than shuttle freights onto sidings to clear the main line for passenger trains, high-speed freights—which could indeed roll right along thanks to diesel motive power—were often run as second sections of passenger trains a few minutes behind.

  6. Bryant, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, pp. 344–45.

  7. Bryant, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, pp. 272–75, 278, 312, 315–16. The war also provided the Santa Fe with a long-sought entry into the sprawling harbor at Long Beach, California. When nearby aircraft plants and defense industries swelled that city’s population to 250,000, wartime traffic prompted the ICC to grant it equal access to the port along with the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific. By the time Santa Fe tracks were laid, the war was over, but the railroad was not about to give up any hard-won concessions. Similar wartime situations across the country strengthened the Santa Fe’s postwar profile.

  Other wartime improvements reduced operational bottlenecks, such as the 1890 crossing of the Colorado River near Needles. There, a new double-tracked, seven-pier, 1,500-foot span eliminated sharp approach curves, permitted higher speeds across the bridge, and reduced freight schedules by twenty minutes. A similar effort was begun at Cañon Diablo, although that new bridge was not completed until after the war.

  At the close of the war, there were 1,567 steam locomotives, 103 road diesels, and 144 diesel switchers on the Santa Fe roster. Five years later, even as the Santa Fe continued to rely on steam for a time, the trend was irreversible: 1,199 steam engines and 627 road diesels. By 1956, there were only 96 steam locomotives left in operating condition on the railroad that had used them to become a transcontinental lifeline.

  8. Frederic Wakeman, The Hucksters (New York: Rinehart, 1946), p. 275.

  9. Joseph Borkin, Robert R. Young: The Populist of Wall Street (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), p. 89.

  10. Athearn, Rebel of the Rockies, p. 335.

  11. Donald J. Heimburger and Carl R. Byron, The American Streamliner: Postwar Years (Forest Park, Ill.: Heimburger House, 2001), pp. 142–43, 150–51. The California Zephyr wasn’t as fast as the Union Pacific, but what it lacked in speed, it made up for in scenery. Eleven cars—all with the adjective Silver before their names—carried passengers through the most scenic sections of the Rockies and California’s Feather River Canyon during daylight hours. “promise yourself …” advertisements encouraged, “Next trip between Chicago and the Coast, it’s the California Zephyr for me!”

  12. Heimburger and Byron, American Streamliner: Postwar Years, pp. 89–90. The Union Pacific first teamed up with the Chicago and Northwestern and later the Milwaukee Railroad for service on the eastern leg of the trip between Omaha and Chicago.

  13. Heimburger and Byron, American Streamliner: Postwar Years, pp. 108, 114; “the top of the Super”: Bryant, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, p. 351; Robert Strein, John Vaughan, and C. Fenton Richards, Jr., Santa Fe: The Chief Way (Santa Fe: New Mexico Magazine, 2001), p. 1; for an example of the “Meeting of the Chiefs” advertisement, see Saturday Evening Post, December 17, 1949, and note that most other ads are black and white and less than a full page. And when it came to affordable luxury, El Capitan, while coach only, ran twelve to eighteen cars and carried about four hundred passengers between Chicago and Los Angeles. Round-trip fares in the 1950s were about $90. The Santa Fe billed this service as “America’s New Railroad” and had the perfect arrival solution. “When you get there,” read a tiny box in the advertisements, “… rent a car.”

  14. Bryant, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, pp. 276, 283, 296–97; Time, May 23, 1955, pp. 94–95. The converse of the Super C was the unit trains that the Santa Fe assembled to move single commodities on a slow but reliable schedule to serve one customer. Coal was the obvious example, but the Santa Fe also hauled unit trains of sulfur from the plains of Texas and potash from southeastern New Mexico.

  Bibliography

  BOOKS

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  Best, Gerald M. Mexican Narrow Gauge. Berkeley, Calif.: Howell-North Books, 1968.

  Black, Robert C., III. Railroad Pathfinder: The Life and Times of Edward L. Berthoud. Evergreen, Colo.: Cordillera Press, 1988.

  ———. The Railroads of the Confederacy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1952.

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  Borneman, Walter R. Marshall Pass: Denver and Rio Grande Gateway to the Gunnison Country. Colorado Springs, Colo.: Century One Press, 1980.

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  Chaffin, Tom. Pathfinder: John Charles Frémont and the Course of American Empire. New York: Hill and Wang, 2002.

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  Clark, Ira G. Then Came the Railroads: The Century from Steam to Diesel in the Southwest. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958.

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  Crampton, C. Gregory. Ghosts of Glen Canyon. Salt Lake City, Utah: Cricket Productions, 1986.

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  Devine, David. Slavery, Scandal, and Steel Rails: The 1854 Gadsden Purchase and the Building of the Second Transcontinental Railroad Across Arizona and New Mexico Twenty-five Years Later. New York: iUniverse, 2004.

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  Duke, Donald. Santa Fe … The Railroad Gateway to the American West, Vol. 1, Chicago-Los Angeles-San Diego. San Marino, Calif.: Golden West Books, 1995.

  ———. Santa Fe … The Railroad Gateway to the American West, Vol. 2, Passenger and Freight Service, et al. San Marino, Calif.: Golden West Books, 1997.

  Duke, Donald, and Stan Kistler. Santa Fe … Steel Rails Through California. San Marino, Calif.: Golden West Books, 1963.

  Evans, Cerinda W. Collis Potter Huntington. Newport News, Va.: Mariners’ Museum, 1954.

  Fisher, John S. A Builder of the West: The Life of General William Jackson Palmer. Caldwell, Idaho: The Caxton Printers, 1939.

  Fogelson, Robert M. The Fragmented Metropolis: Los Angeles, 1850–1930. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967.

  Glaab, Charles N. Kansas City and the Railroads. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1962.

  Goetzmann, William H. Army Exploration in the American West, 1803–1863. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979.

  Gordon, Sarah H. Passage to Union: How the Railroads Transformed American Life, 1829–1929. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996.