“I will run a line through the cañon so that I can make a fair estimate of the cost of construction,” Greenwood reported to Palmer. But first he was off to Raton Pass, Greenwood explained, “to look at that pass, but in reality to throw people out there off the track.”2
After the Denver and Rio Grande was operational, Palmer scouted the Arkansas canyon himself in August 1871, while returning from a wider trip that included Raton Pass. Somewhere in the canyon, several of his party’s mules rolled down a steep cliff. The animals emerged from the fall badly bruised but alive, and the experience reminded Palmer of the loss of his horse in the Verde canyon while on the Kansas Pacific survey.
“Our experience in the cañon was the most exciting and exhausting of any I have had since the Indian fight on the Verde in Arizona,” Palmer wrote to his wife, Queen, from Cañon City. This time, it was only a battle with natural obstacles, but Palmer nonetheless described the canyon as “a fearful gorge.”3
That same year, Denver and Rio Grande engineers J. A. McMurtrie and Ray Morley—the latter not yet working for the Santa Fe—staked a preliminary line through the gorge. During 1872 and 1873, they again inspected the canyon and rode the entire route from Cañon City to the Leadville area. But for all their activity in the field, Denver and Rio Grande officials did not comply with the provisions of the Right-of-Way Act after it became law in 1875. No one filed the required plat with the General Land Office to perfect the Rio Grande’s priority claim to the Royal Gorge.
What Palmer and his associates did do was again run afoul of local sentiment. In the fall of 1872, the Denver and Rio Grande built 36 miles west from Pueblo to Labran (present-day Florence) to tap coal deposits. The railroad graded another 7 miles to the outskirts of Cañon City but did not lay rails, citing deteriorating economic conditions on the brink of the panic of 1873.
If that was indeed the case—construction throughout the West was sputtering to a halt—no one could fault the railroad. But Cañon City businessmen, who desperately wanted the railhead in their downtown, found it difficult to believe that the Denver and Rio Grande could grade 43 miles of roadbed from Pueblo, lay iron on 36 miles of it, and then profess poverty when it came to laying the remaining 7 miles of track. They looked around for the skunk.
The smell was coming from the county bond issues that Palmer and his associates routinely required as conditions for extending their road. Cañon City and surrounding Frémont County had in fact offered such an inducement as early as March 1871, if the Denver and Rio Grande would build directly from Colorado Springs to Cañon City instead of going to Pueblo.
At the time, Palmer refused the proffered $50,000 and headed for Pueblo, but two years later, with nothing but 7 miles of graded right-of-way separating his end of track from Cañon City, he demanded double that amount. The general insisted on $100,000 of bonds, claiming that the Denver and Rio Grande could easily secure Cañon City’s business at Florence without the expense of the extension.
The despotic power of a railroad to make or break a town in those days is evidenced by the fact that Frémont County acquiesced to a long list of Palmer demands and voted $100,000 in bonds on May 21, 1873. In exchange, the Denver and Rio Grande promised to build to within three-quarters of a mile of Fourth and Main streets in downtown Cañon City within six months. But suddenly the county commissioners decided that despite the majority vote, there was not sufficient reason to take on the increased indebtedness.
A year passed while Florence enjoyed the economic boom of being a railhead. Cañon City merchants were forced to haul freight between their town and the end of track. Finally, the town of Cañon City—as opposed to surrounding Frémont County—voted $50,000 of town bonds, plus deeds to $50,000 of town real estate, if the Denver and Rio Grande would lay the remaining 7 miles of rail.
After this vote was taken in April 1874, the railroad promptly laid track from Florence. But instead of continuing into downtown Cañon City and being met with belated cheers, the Denver and Rio Grande built to precisely three-quarters of a mile from Fourth and Main streets—that point to which they were legally obligated by the bond issue—and not a single tie farther.
The result was predictable. The bond issue lands that the Denver and Rio Grande acquired near the new railhead increased in value faster than the downtown area, much to the chagrin of the town’s established businessmen, who still had to haul passengers and freight some distance by wagon. Consequently, just as folks in Trinidad had looked to the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe as their savior after the Rio Grande’s halt at El Moro, so too did the people of Cañon City search for another railroad. Since the Santa Fe was at Pueblo, they didn’t have far to look.4
The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe had ample reasons of its own to build to the rescue. If the railroad’s only interest had been in racing through Colorado for transcontinental destinations, it might have built from La Junta directly to Trinidad and over Raton Pass in 1875 instead of continuing up the Arkansas River to Pueblo. Now, in 1877, the Santa Fe eyed the Royal Gorge as a plausible route directly west. It led not only to Colorado’s developing mining country but also toward Salt Lake City and a likely connection with the Big Four’s Central Pacific.
Cañon City was doing a rush of business with Leadville even though the silver camp was still only on the cusp of its boom. With the enthusiastic blessing of Cañon City businessmen, the Santa Fe organized a subsidiary—the Cañon City and San Juan Railway Company—in February 1877. Its stated goal was to build to Leadville and the budding mining camps of Colorado’s Western Slope.
The Santa Fe made the Cañon City and San Juan more than just another paper railroad when it quickly surveyed and staked the first 20 miles of the route through the Royal Gorge and up the Arkansas Canyon. The Santa Fe’s surveyor, H. R. Holbrook, later testified that he had found old Rio Grande survey stakes in the gorge and in some places had in fact run his line fifty feet below them.
Nonetheless, the Santa Fe used Holbrook’s survey to file the plat required by the Right-of-Way Act of 1875, and the General Land Office accepted it on June 22, 1877. Since there was enough room through this narrow canyon for only one railroad—and even then passage would require a famous “hanging bridge”—it appeared that the Santa Fe had won the day.5
By the end of the summer of 1877, the Leadville boom had broken wide open. Never mind the usual excitement of rich mining strikes; here, by some accounts, was the greatest El Dorado of them all. Negligent though Palmer may have been in adhering to the 1875 filing requirements, he certainly had never abandoned the gorge route, nor had he given up the promise of the Leadville trade. Now, mushrooming freighting receipts to and from the silver bonanza showed just how costly its loss would be to the Denver and Rio Grande.
Early in September 1877, Palmer was back in the Royal Gorge in person. Accompanied by J. A. McMurtrie, the general spent eight days making a thorough inspection of the main route to Leadville and adjacent routes to South Park, the Wet Mountains, and the San Luis Valley. Afterward Palmer reported to Charles B. Lamborn, an old Fifteenth Pennsylvania Cavalry comrade who was then the Rio Grande’s treasurer, that he was considering an alternative route that would eliminate the line through the gorge.
Even as he did so, however, Palmer gave Lamborn an exhaustive list of the benefits of the Royal Gorge route. He noted the “low gradient per mile, good water, freedom from snow, fertile lands, abundant timber, and rich mineral sources all the way to Leadville.” The general also appreciated that the route’s magnificent scenery might become a valuable tourist attraction. In Palmer’s words, the Royal Gorge would bring the “Manitou frequenters and those from Denver” over the entire line from Denver to Leadville.
But the driving reason for Palmer’s determination to seize the gorge seems to have been competition. With one line, Palmer saw the chance to block the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe on his southern flank and John Evans’s Denver, South Park and Pacific to the north. Seize the corridor to Leadville, and tentacles co
uld spread from that line as it raced through Tennessee Pass toward Salt Lake City.
“It is the shortest and cheapest single line,” Palmer concluded, “which will at the same time tend to keep both the Atchison company and the Denver and South Park company from our territory; while certainly paying from the start.” He suggested that the entire route could be built in winter just as readily as in summer and be completed in six months. 6
As usual, Palmer was overly optimistic. Initial construction in the gorge by either the Rio Grande or the Santa Fe was delayed by winter weather and shortages of supplies and operating cash, as well as the uncertainty of what would transpire between the two roads at Raton Pass. William Barstow Strong’s subsequent quick seizure of Raton for the Santa Fe rattled Palmer and was done amidst mounting evidence that the Denver and Rio Grande’s standard gauge competitor would become far more aggressive. On March 23, 1878, the Rio Grande’s traffic agent gave Palmer equally disturbing news about increasing ore shipments from the Harrison Reduction Works smelter at Leadville.
“Harrison goes east via the Santa Fe at the invitation of Mr. Strong,” he reported. “They are determined to get his shipments of ore if possible. Mr. Strong is getting all the information he can with regard to that section [Cañon City to Leadville], and I believe intends to make a move in that direction.”
When Rio Grande construction superintendent Robert F. Weitbrec asked chief engineer McMurtrie to join him in mid-April in yet another look at the Arkansas Canyon, McMurtrie told Palmer that he would rather not go. “All my movements are watched,” he explained, “and should I go, I am afraid Atchison will know of it and take it that we mean to move in that direction and to stop us, jump into the Canon and commence work at once.”
McMurtrie’s fears were confirmed when he began to bring men off the futile efforts along Chicken Creek at Raton Pass. Santa Fe engineer A. A. Robinson telegraphed Strong that rather than merely an abandonment of Raton, McMurtrie’s moves appeared to be a redeployment in force. Robinson surmised correctly that McMurtrie’s destination was Cañon City. Strong replied at once and told his engineer to “see to it that we do not ‘get left’ in occupying the Grand Canyon.”7
Palmer was indeed making his move. Ignoring the Santa Fe’s filed plat, the general sent a telegram in cipher to McMurtrie that he should assemble a work crew and head for the gorge. Shortly after midnight on the morning of April 19, 1878, McMurtrie and about 150 men left El Moro bound for Pueblo on a heavy Denver and Rio Grande construction train that included carloads of mules and grading equipment. Robinson watched them go and immediately wired Ray Morley, who was at La Junta, to get to Cañon City first and once again beat the Rio Grande to the key portion of ground.
Morley commandeered a special Santa Fe train for the run from La Junta to Pueblo and later that morning boarded the regularly scheduled Rio Grande passenger train from Pueblo to Cañon City. Not surprisingly, the Rio Grande conductor recognized Morley as a rival. While McMurtrie and his crew chugged toward Cañon City with their construction train, the Rio Grande passenger train sat quietly at the Pueblo station. It did not depart on schedule, nor did it show any sign of departing at all. Finally, Morley realized that the Rio Grande was stalling to his detriment, and the Santa Fe engineer saddled his horse and hurriedly rode the 35 miles from Pueblo to Cañon City.
If the affair at Raton Pass has many conflicting versions, the battle for the Royal Gorge has it beat in spades. Partisans of the Santa Fe made Morley a hero and compared his Pueblo to Cañon City ride with Union general Phil Sheridan’s famous dash from Winchester during the Civil War. Denver and Rio Grande partisans insisted that Morley had cruelly ridden his horse to death, a charge that was later met with considerable indignation by Morley’s descendants, “as it suggested poor horsemanship on Grandfather’s part.”
Whatever the truth, Ray Morley arrived in Cañon City about noon on April 19, having passed the slow-moving construction train. Even though he was alone and seemingly outnumbered, Morley enlisted the assistance of Cañon City locals, who were all too willing to help the Santa Fe best the Rio Grande. Downtown merchants still smarting over the Rio Grande’s halt on the outskirts donated tools, and every available man and boy in the city shouldered a shovel, gun, or pick and was ferried to the mouth of the gorge in a line of hacks and wagons.
Thirty minutes after Morley’s arrival in Cañon City, McMurtrie’s Rio Grande construction train came to a halt on the eastern edge of town. McMurtrie and his surveyors disembarked and fairly flew through town on a dead run, chaining the ground and setting survey stakes as fast as they could from the depot to the mouth of the gorge. But by then, Morley’s hastily assembled forces were turning shovels of dirt and had managed to scrape at least one hundred feet of grade. For McMurtrie and his Rio Grande crew, it was a scene depressingly reminiscent of Raton Pass just six weeks before.
But this time, McMurtrie did not pause. Instead his party of surveyors rushed on, setting their stakes atop the Santa Fe’s newly dug grade and creating considerable uncertainty over which railroad was the first to reach the point where the canyon narrowed and there was room for only one set of tracks.
Confusion ensued amidst volleys of threats from each side. Anxious workers kept looking over their shoulders toward Cañon City to see which side would be the first to receive reinforcements. Later that afternoon, another Rio Grande train rolled into Cañon City with one hundred more men for McMurtrie, but meanwhile, Morley had recruited additional Cañon City locals to the Santa Fe cause and dispatched them upriver to seize key points toward Leadville.8
By the next day, the lawyers got involved. The Cañon City directors of the Santa Fe’s Cañon City and San Juan Railway subsidiary sought a preliminary injunction prohibiting the Denver and Rio Grande from further work in the gorge. Colorado district court judge John W. Henry was on vacation, so in his absence, Frémont County judge N. A. Bain ruled in favor of the local company and granted it. Writs were promptly served on McMurtrie and other Rio Grande officials, and, without abandoning any ground, they halted work about three o’clock on the afternoon of April 20.
The Denver and Rio Grande’s attorneys immediately petitioned to move the case to federal court and out of what they deemed was the anti–Rio Grande atmosphere of Frémont County—self-induced by the Rio Grande though it may have been. But before the U.S. circuit court could issue any ruling, Judge Henry returned from vacation and held hearings to consider making the injunction permanent.
Initially Judge Henry enjoined both companies from further work. Later that same afternoon of April 27, he withdrew the injunction against the Santa Fe. But when Santa Fe workers attempted to return to the grade, they were met by armed Rio Grande guards and forced to turn back.
Meanwhile, part of the Rio Grande lawyers’ argument in federal court was that the Cañon City and San Juan Railway was but a pawn of the Santa Fe—they were right about that—and that the Santa Fe itself had no standing because it was not chartered to do business in the state. It was one more twist in a complicated legal battle.
In the most simplistic terms, the Santa Fe appeared to hold a valid claim under federal law to the first 20 miles of right-of-way through the gorge and up the Arkansas canyon based on the plat that had been approved on June 22, 1877. The Denver and Rio Grande had also belatedly filed a plat to the gorge as well as the canyon beyond, but it had been approved subsequent to the Santa Fe’s. This meant that while the Santa Fe had the priority claim through the critical 8-mile gorge and west from Cañon City—a distance of 20 miles—the Rio Grande had a priority claim through the remainder of the Arkansas canyon.
Under the right-of-way law, an opposing company was not permitted to locate and build a parallel line until the company with the priority had completed its line. Consequently, during the testy summer of 1878, the Denver and Rio Grande had its tracks into Cañon City and controlled the Arkansas Canyon west of the Royal Gorge, but the Santa Fe held its 20 miles of ground in the middle between the mou
th of the gorge and a point called Spike Buck.9
There is a widely circulated photo from that summer of Rio Grande engineer J. R. DeRemer’s men at a hastily constructed breastwork of logs and dirt called “Fort DeRemer.” This is often assumed to show Rio Grande men blocking the Santa Fe at the mouth of the gorge just outside Cañon City. Actually, the site is near Spike Buck, 20-some miles above Cañon City (between present-day Parkdale and the town of Texas Creek). DeRemer’s men were intent on keeping the Santa Fe crews bottled up inside the gorge and prohibiting them from building farther up the Arkansas River. This photo may well have been staged as proof to the Santa Fe of the Rio Grande’s resolve. There is no question that tempers were short and guns supplemented shovels on both sides.
From the McClure House hotel in Cañon City, Ray Morley took a moment to write to his beloved Ada. While “the war progresses in a satisfactory manner,” he told her, “it has been prolonged further than we expected. It is a funny affair and is the death struggle of the D. & R. G., I think. They are moving heaven and earth, but we will whip them sooner or later.”
Then Morley noted what was far too obvious: “The papers are beginning to get filled with stuff, the result of ponderous lying on both sides to influence public opinion.” But he assured her, “do not, however be uneasy about me. I do not think there will be any serious fight outside of the courts.”10
Morley was right. Despite history’s shorthand of referring to the struggle as the Royal Gorge war, most of the battling was done in the courts between lawyers and not in the windswept canyons. Some secondary accounts say that men were killed in the field on both sides, but there is no proof of those claims.
Rival Rails: The Race to Build America's Greatest Transcontinental Railroad Page 16