by Ann Parker
If you take this leisurely drive up the Arkansas Valley, you’ll see signs for some of the places mentioned in Iron Ties, including Granite, Twin Lakes, and Malta. But if you look for Disappointment Gulch, you will look in vain. The terrain that inspired my fictional gulch is right around Granite—an area of craggy outcroppings with the tracks running along the base, separating ridge from river. But no real gulch that matched this geology existed closer to Leadville, hence my disappointment (and poetic license).
As for the rest of this note, I’ll give you fair warning: Spoilers lie ahead.
Iron Ties is based on two historical events: the coming of the Denver and Rio Grande railroad to Leadville in the summer of 1880 and the arrival of Civil War general Ulysses S. Grant on the first D&RG train to Leadville, on July 22, 1880. It seems that not all were happy with the arrival of the D&RG and/or Grant. George Elder, a young Leadville lawyer, wrote home in July 1879, “The AT&St Fe RR [Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe] would have reached Leadville by the Middle of September if it had not been for the interference of the D & R G RR, the latter road has been playing the part of the ‘Dog in the Manger’. There is a strong feeling growing against the D & R G RR and its whole course has been a matter of condemnation for months back.” The D&RG spent years tussling (in the courts, in the newspapers, and on the ground) with the Santa Fe railroad over right-of-way to Leadville. Fractious encounters with the Denver, South Park, and Pacific also occurred in the mid-1880s.
And then, there was the announcement of Grant’s visit, with a plea in one of the local papers for Leadvillites to “set aside politics and welcome our guest.” In 1880, the Civil War was not that far removed…a mere 15 years. Thinking on this, I remembered veterans of the Vietnam War discussing how a smell, a sudden sound, a dream, could bring the war flooding back as if it were yesterday. Might this not also be true for those who fought in the Civil War? And what would it mean to those veterans—Union and Confederate—to know that one of the pre-eminent generals from the North would be coming to town?
Little did I know that my decision to plunge into matters of railroads and the Civil War would nearly drown me in mountains of research and reference materials. Many excellent books exist about both topics; I’ll mention a few here. Eric T. Dean, Jr.,’s Shook Over Hell: Post-Traumatic Stress, Vietnam, and the Civil War provides a thorough look at the psychological after-effects of the Civil War. Tony Horwitz’s Confederates in the Attic is an interesting “journey” through the current-day South and demonstrates how the Civil War still echoes in the present. From Herman Hattaway’s Shades of Blue and Gray, and James M. McPherson’s The Most Fearful Ordeal, I moved to Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels and Bell I. Wiley’s The Life of Johnny Reb and the Life of Billy Yank, and thence to James G. Hollandsworth, Jr.’s The Louisiana Native Guards and more…and more….I finally had to remind myself that I was NOT writing a Civil War epic, and move on.
To better understand what happened in Missouri during and after the Civil War and the War’s (and the railroads’) effects upon those who suffered through those hard times, I found T. J. Stiles’ Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War and Edward E. Leslie’s The Devil Knows How to Ride: The True Story of William Clarke Quantrill and His Confederate Raiders very useful.
Roy Marcot’s Civil War Chief of Sharpshooters Hiram Berdan: Military Commander and Firearms Inventor introduced me to Berdan’s Sharpshooters, and the slim volume The Confederate Whitworth Sharpshooters by John Anderson Morrow provided insight, as did many other books and people. As an aside, R. L. Wilson’s Silk and Steel was quite enlightening and might provide food for thought for anyone who believes the “weaker sex” and firearms don’t mix. For information on the D&RG and the building and running of railroads in general, I relied heavily on Robert Athearn’s The Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, Stephen E. Ambrose’s Nothing Like It in the World, David Hayward Bain’s Empire Express, and Margaret Coel’s Goin’ Railroading.
Now, to the generals. There is plenty written about Ulysses S. Grant, but what about General William Jackson Palmer? Who was this man, who was raised a Philadelphia Quaker, became a Civil War general, and founded the Rio Grande as well as the city of Colorado Springs in Colorado? The readable A Builder of the West by John Fisher gave me the clues I needed. Every life has its shadows, and all I needed was something dark enough to hold a bit of mystery. I found it in an account of an incident that took place at the end of the War, with a young unnamed boy—all of 15—who took a potshot at General Palmer and missed.
Other “real-life” people who walk through these pages include D&RG chief engineer J. A. McMurtrie, and Marshal Cy Ayres. Their treatment in Iron Ties is purely fictional. (Although I have to say that what bits I found about McMurtrie indicated that he was a fellow not to be trifled with.)
As for the rest of the story, I took a broad paintbrush to some of the events and situations of the times. There was indeed a big mining strike in May and early June 1880. After the D&RG determined a location for their depot and freight yards, the good Sisters of Charity did indeed receive threats from “lot jumpers” anxious to move in on the lot housing St. Vincent’s Hospital and make a killing. And some property owners north of Capitol Hill dug in their heels and refused to sell to the Rio Grande. Laying of track through town stopped, and Grant detrained not at the depot as hoped and planned, but at the foot of Third Street. Leadville did have a thriving charcoal business that suffered due to the coming of the railroads (albeit much later in time than indicated here), and certain transportation businesses—stage lines and haul companies—took hits from the railroad’s coming as well.
These were exciting times in Leadville’s history, with more excitement yet to come, so stay tuned.
Glossary
blasting cap: A small tube filled with detonating substances; used to detonate high explosives.
card shark: A professional cheater at cards.
cardsharp: One who habitually cheats at cards.
eminent domain: A term applied in law to the sovereign right of a state to appropriate private property to public uses, whether the owner consents or not. (From Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911)
fishplate: Metal plate bolted along sides of two rails or beams.
gandy dancer: A laborer in a railroad section gang.
giant powder: Dynamite composed of nitroglycerin and kieselguhr (a siliceous earth used to absorb the nitroglycerin).
percussion cap: A thin metal cap containing an explosive substance, such as fulminate of mercury, that explodes on being struck.
road agent: A highwayman in the mountain districts of North America. (And my favorite definition:) The name applied in the mountains to a ruffian who has given up honest work in the store, in the mine, in the ranch, for the perils and profits of the highway. (From Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1898)
rolling stock: The wheeled vehicles owned and used by a railroad or motor carrier.
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