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

by Walter R. Borneman

  It was. Nickerson authorized Strong to build south from the Santa Fe main line at La Junta in whatever manner Strong thought best. Rather than starting at La Junta, Strong chose to secure the entire route into New Mexico by immediately undertaking the first flurry of construction in the section of Raton Pass that would admit only one set of tracks. Thus began one of the most oft-repeated episodes of the western railroad wars—a story in which it has always been difficult to sort fact from fiction.

  Upon receiving the go-ahead, Strong immediately ordered construction engineer A. A. Robinson to take a grading crew and seize what Ray Morley had determined to be the key stretch of the Raton route. Robinson was in Pueblo at the time, and he sent a telegram in cipher to El Moro ordering Morley to assemble a Santa Fe work crew in secret. Ironically, Robinson then took the Denver and Rio Grande train from Pueblo to El Moro, arriving there shortly after midnight in the wee hours of February 27.

  On the same train was the chief engineer of the Denver and Rio Grande, J. A. McMurtrie. Reports vary as to whether the two men were aware of each other’s presence on the train and who went to sleep upon arriving in El Moro and who didn’t. McMurtrie is thought to have slept for several hours, while Robinson reportedly secured a horse and immediately rode through the night to Uncle Dick Wootton’s place on the northern slope of the pass.

  Richens Lacy “Uncle Dick” Wootton was one of those truly legendary characters. Call him Indian fighter, scout, trader, rancher, self-promoter, moonshiner—he was at least a little of each. Wootton had earned his familiar sobriquet of Uncle Dick by arriving in the fledgling town of Denver at Christmas 1858, promptly breaking open two barrels of “Taos Lightning” whiskey, and offering the welcome refreshment to any and all takers free of charge. By evening, he was everyone’s favorite uncle.

  In 1865 Wootton secured charters from the territorial legislatures of both Colorado and New Mexico for a toll road from Trinidad to Red River, New Mexico, via Raton Pass. (The latter half toward Red River was certainly not a railroad route, but it was one way to get travelers to the Rio Grande above Taos and Santa Fe.) By some accounts, the Santa Fe tried to buy Wootton’s toll road, but Uncle Dick turned them down. In exchange for a right-of-way, he simply asked the railroad to give him and his wife free passes and a lifetime credit of $50 per month at the general store in Trinidad.

  Arriving at Wootton’s place after his nighttime ride, Robinson met Morley, and with Uncle Dick along, the men organized the gang of workers who had gathered on Robinson’s orders. By five o’clock in the bitter cold of the dark, wintry morning, they began to pick at rocks and to shovel dirt by lantern light “at three of the most difficult points in the pass.”

  Rio Grande engineer McMurtrie, whether he had slept or not, assembled a similar work gang in El Moro and headed south toward the slopes of Raton at an equally early hour. By some accounts, his party arrived on the scene not more than thirty minutes after Robinson’s crew had begun to scrape away at the mountainside. How many threats were exchanged between the rival groups—apparently there were armed men on both sides—varies with the telling, but the fact remained that there was only enough room in the canyon for one railroad grade, and the Santa Fe men were in possession of it. If the Rio Grande was going to dislodge them, McMurtrie’s workers would have to resort to force.

  Some secondary accounts report that veteran Dodge City marshal Bat Masterson was in the employ of the Santa Fe and soon arrived on the pass with a gang of gunslingers to support the Santa Fe position. This seems unlikely and a confusion with Masterson’s later role in the Royal Gorge war. Bat’s brother, Ed, was killed that April in Dodge City, and Bat was present there. Masterson was certainly a Santa Fe ally, but his reported appearance at Raton may have been confused with only boastful threats of his pending arrival that Santa Fe men may have made to bolster their position.

  With the numbers in each party about equal, a tense standoff continued until the Denver and Rio Grande crew finally withdrew, hurling a few last threats over their shoulders. McMurtrie had them make a halfhearted effort to excavate in nearby Chicken Creek (present-day Gallinas Creek) before deciding that it was not a suitable alternative.

  The Denver and Rio Grande had lost its long-planned route to Santa Fe. But one more question must be asked of Palmer’s tactics. Having been blocked at Raton Pass, why didn’t he build across the Raton Mountains via Trinchera Pass, some 35 miles to the east? Given its railhead at El Moro, the Rio Grande was poised to skirt Fishers Peak in that direction, and quick construction might have leapfrogged the Santa Fe as it wrestled with the upper slopes of Raton. Dr. Bell and others had viewed Trinchera Pass favorably on the 1867 Kansas Pacific survey, although Palmer never seemed enamored with it.

  Most likely, once the Rio Grande arrived at El Moro, Palmer saw Trinchera Pass as too great a detour east on the line toward Santa Fe and assumed that he would be able to reach the New Mexico capital by extending the La Veta Pass line down the upper Rio Grande. Of even greater concern, perhaps, was the fact that the increasing lure of the Leadville and San Juan mining trade focused his attention in that direction rather than eastward around Raton.8

  Having won the field, the Santa Fe set about building its line across Raton Pass. Construction started in earnest from La Junta, and when the first Santa Fe train chugged into Trinidad on September 1, 1878, the town that had been spurned by the Denver and Rio Grande celebrated with great enthusiasm. More than a century later, Trinidad remains bound to the Santa Fe.

  The arrival of the Santa Fe main line in Trinidad brought heavier equipment for the difficult work higher on Raton Pass. A. A. Robinson laid out the grade up the canyon of Raton Creek and then just at the Colorado–New Mexico line—a stone’s throw from Uncle Dick Wootton’s place—he called for a tunnel to burrow under the crest of the pass. Traffic could either wait for its completion or a temporary track would have to be built.

  The urgency the Santa Fe felt in building into New Mexico dictated that while work went forward on the tunnel, Robinson lay out an ingenious ladder of switchbacks that permitted trains to stair-step their way over the pass. Coming upgrade from Trinidad, the main line passed a siding and then entered a deep cut leading to where crews were excavating the tunnel. Then a switch was thrown behind the train, and it backed up a switchback until it had passed over another switch and onto the leg of a Y. This switch was thrown, and the train moved forward to a second Y where another change in direction left it backing up around a curve and over the summit.

  On the New Mexico side of the pass, with the train still backing but now going downgrade, it came to another Y and backed in. When that switch was thrown, the locomotive steamed forward and downhill to the second Y on the New Mexico side. It pulled to the end of that leg. Then once that switch was thrown, the train backed down the remaining grade and around a curve and over a switch onto the main line, where it would emerge from the southern end of the proposed tunnel.

  This laddered run-around—a “shoo-fly,” as railroaders call it—above the Raton Tunnel site hardly made for an express run, but it did permit passengers and freight to ride rails all the way from Kansas City to the advancing railhead in New Mexico. More important, it allowed men and materiel to push the railhead forward while the tunnel was still under construction.

  With grades of 6 percent, it also required the Santa Fe to expand its motive power. The lighter American-type locomotives that had served the road well across the plains of Kansas lacked the power to move heavy cars over this mountainous terrain. To meet the demand, the Baldwin Locomotive Works built consolidation-type locomotives. The first model bore the number 204, but in consideration of the locale in which it was to serve, the name “Uncle Dick” was soon emblazoned on its cab in honor of Raton Pass’s most famous resident.

  The Uncle Dick was the largest locomotive yet built by Baldwin. It had a wheel configuration of 2-8-0—a set of two pilot wheels, four sets of two drivers, and no trailer wheels under the cab. (By comparison, the American
types had 4-4-0 wheel configurations, providing only four driving wheels.) But there was one other special adaptation. While the total wheelbase of the drivers was fourteen feet, nine inches, the first and third sets were equipped with tires instead of flanges so that the rigid wheelbase between the second and fourth sets was less than ten feet. This meant that the locomotive could more readily follow the tighter curves on the line.

  Not only was the beefier Uncle Dick more than equal in pulling capacity to two standard road engines, but also its operating costs were only a little more than that of one American-type locomotive. These innovations and their resulting efficiencies cemented a long relationship between the Baldwin Locomotive Works and the Santa Fe, and in time, Baldwin built more than one thousand steam locomotives for the railroad.

  Meanwhile, work continued on the tunnel. Railroad tunnel work was no job for the faint of heart. One journalist, afforded a tour of the Raton construction operation, reported climbing through a narrow opening at the south portal. Far into the darkness, he could see dimly twinkling candlelight and hear the steady clank of sledgehammers striking drills. Working in unison, the sledge men had to trust their partners as they each swung away in a regular rhythm. But the true hero was the holder of the drill. With each clang of a striking blow, the holder turned the drill a few degrees and trusted that the hammer to follow would be square and not come crashing down on his hands.

  Once the drillers had done their work, dynamite was stuck in the holes and exploded to break down the rock face one foot at a time. Then the resulting debris was cleared, and another round of drilling began. On the north end, the rock in the Raton Tunnel was loose and crumbly, and the passage required substantial timbering, but on the south end, the bore was blasted through rock so solid that it needed no timbers. After the tunnel was opened to through traffic on September 7, 1879, the temporary system of switchbacks was abandoned.9

  Regular operations over Raton Pass brought the Santa Fe squarely into the realm of mountain railroading. Gone were the easy grades of the plains. At high altitude, on steep hills and tight curves, in frequently harsh weather, everything was more difficult to do on mountain railroads. Brakes were just one example.

  The locomotive was the beating heart of a train, but brakes were the circulatory system that allowed it to function. In the very early days of railroads, stopping a light train of one or two cars on a moderate grade was usually a matter of slowing down and then reversing the locomotive. As trains added more cars and heavier loads, individual cars were outfitted with brake wheels at one end. When these wheels were tightened, the connecting rigging clamped brake shoes against the running wheels and created enough friction to slow their revolutions, thus slowing the train.

  Operating these brake wheels gave rise to the most dangerous job in railroading. At a whistle signal from the engineer, nimble brakemen ran atop the cars—jumping from one swaying car to another—and frantically set the brakes. Because it was frequently difficult to turn the brake wheel, even strong-armed brakemen carried a baseball bat–sized club of wood to give them more leverage. Hence, the term “club down the brakes.” When the train was past the downgrade, this process was reversed to release the brakes.

  Railroad braking began to change in the 1870s when George Westinghouse patented the air brake. Operated from an air compressor on the locomotive, air pressure, rather than brawny arms, applied the force to press the brake shoes against the wheels. Initially, this was a straight-air system; that meant that if a coupling anywhere along the train became loose or blew out, the brake system for the entire train ceased to function. This either sent brakemen back atop the cars hurriedly setting brakes by hand or caused a runaway.

  Westinghouse soon solved these straight-air problems by creating an automatic brake system. Each car was equipped with an air cylinder, and when the lines were full of air, the brakes were released; when air was bled off, the brakes engaged. Thus, should cars separate, the locomotive compressor lose pressure, or something else malfunction to reduce air pressure, the brakes would set automatically and in theory stop the train. But automatic air was not standard on the Santa Fe across Raton until 1885, and in the meantime, there were many instances of horrendous runaway wrecks.

  Helper engines were the other mainstay and frequently the unsung heroes of mountain railroading. More correctly, the men who labored through heat and cold, wind and water, and a host of mechanical challenges to operate the helpers were the heroes. Depending on the route and their tonnage, trains were assigned helper engines to boost them over a divide. Once atop the hill, the helpers were disconnected and either dispatched back to their starting point or sent down the other side in front of the train to where they were needed next. Often a heavy freight would have the regular engine and a helper pulling in double-header fashion, with another helper or two pushing at the rear of the train. Sometimes longer trains were divided into sections for the pull over a pass.

  All signals passed between the engineers of the helpers by whistle, and it took a great deal of coordination for three or four locomotives to move in tandem. More than one conductor and rear brakeman became nervous when watching a pounding helper locomotive pushing with all its might against their wooden caboose. The best they could hope was that the lead engines were indeed pulling upgrade and not suddenly backing down.

  With the Santa Fe in command of Raton Pass, speculation was rampant about the railroad’s next move. The Colorado Weekly Chieftain of Pueblo reported quite assuredly that with the prize of Raton won, the Santa Fe would abandon its proposed line up the Arkansas River toward Leadville and “devote all of their resources and energies to the construction of their great transcontinental line.” Others thought that the Santa Fe was simply taking advantage of cheap Mexican labor “to play a game of bluff” at Raton and that the railroad’s true destination lay in the mountains of Colorado.

  For his part, Rio Grande engineer McMurtrie, who had seen the Santa Fe’s determination in action, never believed that Raton was a bluff. McMurtrie bluntly told Palmer that the Rio Grande should either find a way to skirt its impasse at Raton or build south immediately from its La Veta branch in the San Luis Valley. McMurtrie was convinced that the Santa Fe would be across Raton Pass and en route to El Paso within the year.

  In case McMurtrie was wrong and the Santa Fe was bluffing at Raton, Palmer incorporated a Colorado subsidiary to build from El Moro to the New Mexico line. But before any construction began, Palmer acknowledged that his little line had been both outfinanced and outfought. As McMurtrie later put it, there was no sense in pursuing a “cutthroat policy of building two roads into the same country when there was hardly business enough to support one.”10

  But the overriding reason that Palmer did not press the Raton fight is that having wrestled control of Raton Pass away from the Rio Grande, William Barstow Strong and the Santa Fe were now threatening to deliver Palmer’s road a death knell by going for its jugular. Strong was indeed determined to extend the Santa Fe toward transcontinental destinations, but he was not about to give up the mining country of Colorado that looked all the more promising in the wake of the rich silver strikes at Leadville. What that meant was that the Denver and Rio Grande and the Santa Fe would soon be locked in a battle royal.

  10

  Battle Royal for the Gorge

  The fight between the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe and the Denver and Rio Grande for Raton Pass was only a prelude to a much more heavily contested affair. Transcontinental stakes were rising, and enticing regional markets further fueled the competition. Once again, the rugged landscape of the American West would play a major role in how this battle was fought and won.

  For 55 miles above Cañon City, Colorado, the Arkansas River cuts a twisting canyon. The narrowest, deepest, and most spectacular section is the 8 miles immediately upstream from the mouth of Grape Creek, which empties into the Arkansas about a mile above Cañon City. Here the canyon walls rise more than 1,000 feet above the river and in places constri
ct it to a rocky defile less than 50 feet wide. While initially labeled the Grand Cañon of the Arkansas, this slender passage has long been called the Royal Gorge.1

  Explorer Zebulon Pike peered into the eastern end of the gorge late in 1806 and promptly detoured around it—only mistakenly to follow the Arkansas River back downstream to it a few weeks later. Subsequent travelers also avoided the gorge. In time a wagon road was built around it over Eight Mile Hill, so named because it was eight miles from Cañon City.

  But the direct route through the Royal Gorge held one undeniable attraction for a railroad. Yes, the gorge was narrow; yes, construction would be difficult. But the river through the gorge led 100-some miles upstream to the mines of Leadville on an uncannily constant water grade of about 1 percent. Even through the Royal Gorge itself, the river dropped less than 500 feet in 8 miles and permitted a 1.4 percent grade. Whether one was hauling ore out of the mountains or tons of supplies into them, such a modest gradient put smiles on the faces of construction engineers and locomotive engineers alike.

  And even if it didn’t, what other choices were there? North of the Royal Gorge, the grassy bowl of South Park was itself as high as Leadville. South of the gorge, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains formed a picket-fenced barrier until one reached La Veta Pass. The Denver and Rio Grande had managed to lay track across La Veta, but it was more than 100 miles south of the Arkansas Canyon and in the opposite direction from Leadville. All this fixed covetous eyes on the Royal Gorge.

  There is little argument that William Jackson Palmer had his eyes on the gorge first. As early as his 1867 survey for the Kansas Pacific, Palmer considered the gorge a possible avenue west. Two years later, while Palmer was still in the employ of the Kansas Pacific, the general hired W. H. Greenwood to make a further survey of the entire Arkansas canyon and estimate construction costs. Even then, with Palmer’s Denver and Rio Grande not yet a dream and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe still struggling to get out of Topeka, Greenwood seems to have appreciated fully the secrecy that would envelope so many western railroad expansions.