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

by Walter R. Borneman

  By April, the orphan track in Querino Canyon had been joined to the main line, and crews were building west across northern Arizona at the rate of a mile a day. “The whole country north of Prescott along the 35th parallel road,” the Weekly Arizona Miner reported, “is alive with advance workmen, who are preparing the road bed of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, which is coming along from the East at break-neck rate.…”9

  But up ahead, the flat tablelands of the Colorado Plateau held one of its many surprises. Twenty-six miles west of Winslow, the serpentine meanders of Cañon Diablo cut deep into the landscape. Its white and yellow limestone walls dropped 250 feet in blocky terraces to the intermittent stream coursing along its bottom. It was more than 500 feet across the chasm.

  Stumbling upon the canyon in 1853, Lieutenant Whipple confessed his surprise and termed a descent to the “thread-like rill of water” far below to be “impossible.” But he did conclude that “for a railroad it could be bridged and the banks would furnish plenty of stone for the purpose.” Whipple and many other Arizona travelers bypassed the canyon by circling to the north, but the Atlantic and Pacific would take Whipple’s advice and bridge it directly.

  The rails of the Atlantic and Pacific reached the rim at Cañon Diablo on December 19, 1881. Having long anticipated this obstacle, the railroad had a rough and rowdy construction camp named Cañon Diablo going full blast near the east rim. Variously described as meaner than Tombstone and deadlier than Dodge City, the motley collection of windswept tents and rough buildings was home to 240 men working the bridge site and a bevy of prostitutes, gamblers, and barkeeps working the men.

  John M. Price and Co. had the primary construction contract for the bridge crossing, and its first task was to blast and excavate platforms in the canyon walls and along the streambed to hold masonry pedestals for the support towers. In addition, one large stone abutment was constructed on each rim.

  The Central Bridge Works of Buffalo, New York, prefabricated the bridge itself at a reported cost of $250,000. It was shipped to the site in pieces in some twenty railcars. Eleven separate spans—two of 100 feet in length, two of 30 feet, and seven of 40 feet—were fastened together and supported by ten sets of tower legs and the abutments on the rims. When completed, the narrow, spindly structure was 222 feet above the canyon floor and 560 feet long.

  But as the final sections were put into place, they proved to be several feet short. Somehow, someone had measured incorrectly, or the excavation for the abutments on the rims had inadvertently widened the distance. Modifications were hurriedly made.

  Meanwhile, grading crews leapfrogged ahead to work on the roadbed to the west. Finally, on July 1, 1882, the first train inched across the narrow structure under operating rules that required a maximum speed of four miles an hour, and the Cañon Diablo bridge was officially certified. At the time, it was easily the most impressive bridge structure on the combined Santa Fe–Atlantic and Pacific line between Kansas City and the Colorado River.10

  During the construction pause at Cañon Diablo, the railhead halted at Winslow. A January 1882 visitor remarked, “the town at present consists of a row of tents about one-fourth of a mile in extent.” But that was to change quickly because Winslow was slated to become a division point on the line. Service buildings, yards, and a roundhouse were built in short order.

  Of the major towns along the Atlantic and Pacific route through Arizona, all except Flagstaff and Williams were named for men somehow associated with the railroad. Edward Winslow was president of the Frisco and vice president of the Atlantic and Pacific; Lewis Kingman and H. R. Holbrook were surveyors and construction engineers (the town of Holbrook was originally called Horsehead Crossing); and Joseph Seligman was a prominent Frisco stockholder and financier.

  The construction snafu at Cañon Diablo had also given Price and Co. time to complete a second major bridge just 5 miles to the west at Cañon Padre. Not quite as spectacular as the structure at Cañon Diablo, the bridge at Cañon Padre was only 230 feet long. Its measurements had been precise, and once track was laid across Cañon Diablo, tracklayers spiked their way across without a pause.

  Up ahead at the base of the San Francisco Peaks was the booming lumber town of Flagstaff, already boasting one hundred houses. Across the dry mesas of northern Arizona, the San Francisco Peaks were a welcome oasis of green and a ready source of ponderosa pine for ties and lumber. The first train steamed into Flagstaff on August 1, 1882.11

  All this construction was satisfying to the directors of the Atlantic and Pacific’s parent organizations. As expected, local traffic along the expanding 35th parallel route was still weak, but westward lay the gateway to California. Expansion westward had become the mantra of William Barstow Strong, who became president of the Santa Fe in 1881, just as assuredly as it had been J. Edgar Thomson’s charge on the Pennsylvania three decades earlier.

  Strong recognized that “in the United States … the power of a Railroad to protect and increase its business depends upon its length, and the extent of the territory it can touch.” Pausing at the Colorado River while westbound was really no more of an option for the Atlantic and Pacific than halting at the Colorado while eastbound had been for Huntington and the Southern Pacific several years earlier.

  So, quite logically, Strong championed continued expansion westward into California. At their December 1881 Atlantic and Pacific board of directors meeting, the representatives of the Santa Fe and the Frisco jointly agreed to raise an additional $16.5 million. A small portion was to be used to extend the Vinita branch through Indian Territory, but the lion’s share was to finance construction from the Colorado River crossing at Needles all the way to San Francisco.

  A solicitation circular was distributed to this effect and met with initial success. Then, in February 1882, Strong and the Santa Fe were unexpectedly notified by their equal partner in the venture that the Frisco was not going to raise its one-half share. “Owing to changes going on in the ownership of the stock of the St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad Company,” it was suspending all sales of the new issue of securities. It didn’t take long to smell a rat. In fact, this time, from the Santa Fe’s perspective, there were two rats, and they were acting in concert.12

  Fresh from their agreement in West Texas, Collis P. Huntington and Jay Gould had decided that being allies wasn’t so bad. The two titans momentarily found great commonality of purpose in joining forces to oppose the extension of the Santa Fe via the Atlantic and Pacific. Not only would the Santa Fe’s 35th parallel line strike directly to Huntington’s California border but also its eastern transcontinental traffic and the proposed Vinita expansion were threats to Gould’s Texas and Pacific and his budding Missouri Pacific system.

  From the New York banking firm of J. and W. Seligman and Company, of which Gould had been a client since the late 1860s, Huntington and Gould jointly bought a controlling interest in the stock of the Frisco. Apparently Huntington had taken to heart the advice his father is supposed to have given him: “Do not be afraid to do business with a rascal, only watch him; but avoid a fool …”

  Controlling the Frisco, Huntington and Gould now owned half interest in the Atlantic and Pacific as well. The irony was that Joseph Seligman of Seligman and Company had championed the Santa Fe–Frisco alliance and expansion, but his recent death had given his brothers the opportunity to dispose of what they felt was an overly large investment in the 35th parallel route. Frisco president Edward Winslow balked at the sale, but the surviving Seligmans made it, at least in part because of past loyalties “to Gould as a client.”13

  This deft maneuver left Strong and his Santa Fe directors decidedly embarrassed. They had gone to great pains to promote the Atlantic and Pacific’s construction and tout their strategic alliance with the Frisco. Suddenly, Santa Fe shareholders found themselves equal partners with Huntington and Gould in the Atlantic and Pacific, but partners with very different agendas.

  When the Atlantic and Pacific’s board of directors
next convened, the newcomers—Collis Huntington, Leland Stanford, Jay Gould, and Gould’s close associate, Russell Sage—sat down across the table from William Barstow Strong and the Santa Fe directors. The former group wanted to halt the Atlantic and Pacific at the Colorado River; the latter, to continue on to San Francisco as planned.

  In public, Strong tried to put the best possible face on the new relationship. The Santa Fe president was quoted in the New York Times as saying that relations with Gould would be harmonious and that the new blood at the Frisco might even prove a positive advantage to his road. Offhandedly, Strong professed it “a matter of indifference to the Atchison who controls the San Francisco Road.”

  A week later, Strong received a letter written personally by Jay Gould that left no doubt about who controlled the Frisco, as well as the immediate fate of the Atlantic and Pacific. “Mr. Huntington today informs me that he has decided to extend the Southern Pacific from Mohave to the Colorado River to connect with the Atlantic and Pacific,” Gould wrote.

  Gould claimed that “under other circumstances, I might think it desirable to extend the A & P to Mohave or even to San Francisco,” but he saw no reason to “antagonize” the Southern Pacific when it was in “our interest to tie them up to our new line in the way suggested.”

  “My interests lie in working in harmony with both the Southern and the Atchison Companies,” Gould told Strong, “and I think before any further steps are taken in issuing securities we should have a meeting and come to an equitable harmonious adjustment.…” Then Gould penned a much shorter note to Huntington: “Enclosed I hand you copy of letter written to Wm. Strong as per our conversation today.” The rats were indeed working together.14

  Strong’s written response was equally cordial and, perhaps, equally disingenuous. “Your desire to secure harmony is appreciated,” Strong replied to Gould, adding “that from the day you took charge of the Union Pacific Railroad to the present, whenever and wherever your interests and the interests of this Company have come in conflict, all differences have been arranged with a spirit of fairness.”

  Strong went on to delay the Huntington-Gould victory by pleading that he was “without official notice from the St. L. & S.F. that any change in the original plan is desired” and that he would refer Gould’s letter to his board. But the outcome was as certain as the bold scrawl of Gould’s handwriting.15

  One New York financial paper—quite possibly encouraged in its perspective by the Santa Fe’s investors—later went so far as to praise the Boston crowd’s “sagacity and good sense” in not pursuing its own purchase of the Frisco before Gould and Huntington had done so.

  While an independent line to the Pacific was “a pleasing idea,” the Commercial and Financial Chronicle mused, it was far better “to discriminate and draw the line between ventures of a dubious or not very promising character and those offering a fair measure of success, that, is the true test …”16

  But the ultimate test, as Strong well knew, was in reaching the Pacific. Strong and his Santa Fe directors, however, were quite willing to be patient in achieving that goal. They might have gotten into a cutthroat battle with Huntington and Gould that likely would have left the Santa Fe exhausted and still without a Pacific outlet. Instead Strong took a chapter from the Huntington-Gould agreement at Sierra Blanca. Why fight one’s competitors if you could work with them to your own advantage?

  When at the first opportunity Huntington formally proposed to the newly comprised Atlantic and Pacific board of directors that the Southern Pacific would meet the Atlantic and Pacific at Needles, Strong accepted the proposition without argument.

  He concluded an agreement with Huntington and Gould that earmarked 25 percent of the Southern Pacific’s gross revenues on through business over the Atlantic and Pacific to the payment of the interest on the latter’s bonds, effectively helping to pay for the construction of the line. The two roads further agreed to expedite their construction and meet at Needles as soon as possible—the Southern Pacific extending a line eastward from Mojave and the Atlantic and Pacific completing its 35th parallel route west of Albuquerque.

  In addition, the Atlantic and Pacific retained whatever rights it might have to build through California. But when Strong looked at the numbers, what was the rush? It had been projected to cost the Atlantic and Pacific at least $10 million to build from Needles to San Francisco. If, through its interest in the railroad, the Santa Fe could gain access to the entire Southern Pacific system without additional capital expense, the Atlantic and Pacific and the Santa Fe could save millions of dollars to use in improving their existing lines.

  That is exactly what Strong set about doing throughout the remainder of 1882 and into 1883 as the two roads converged on Needles. Even Huntington had become envious of the financial condition of the Santa Fe. The railroad had “strong backers in Boston,” Charley Crocker acknowledged to Huntington, “[who] do not seem to want for money.” Part of the reason, of course, was that unlike many railroads, the Santa Fe was making money for its investors by means of steady but conservative expansion.

  At the close of 1878—the year of the fight for Raton Pass and the opening blows in the Royal Gorge—the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe owned, leased, and operated 868 miles of track. It had net earnings of $2 million on gross earnings of $4 million. That left $2 million to service debt and reward shareholders with dividends. But just four years later, at the close of 1882—before completing the line to Needles—those numbers had more than tripled to 2,620 miles of track and net earnings of $6.5 million on gross earnings of $14.8 million.17

  If nothing else, these numbers evidence the conservative financial leadership under Thomas Nickerson and William Barstow Strong that was to become a hallmark of the Santa Fe. Strong had big plans to increase those numbers much more, but for the moment in 1882, it served his long-term purposes to agree to meet Huntington at the Colorado River at Needles. After all, why do battle when one could achieve half the plum peacefully and ponder acquiring the other half at a later date?

  So, the corporate shell of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, with the solid financial backing of both the Santa Fe and the Frisco, continued to build westward from Flagstaff in the summer of 1882. By September 1, the railhead had reached Williams—a bustling settlement named for mountain man and trapper “Old Bill” Williams. Land speculators anticipated the railroad’s advance, and their optimism was rewarded when Williams was initially made a division point.

  West of Williams, the terrain got tougher again. The line dropped 2, 000 feet in elevation along a 3 percent grade to reach Ash Fork. The chief difficulty was in Johnson Canyon. Here workers were forced to blast two 150-foot cuts and a 328-foot tunnel through hardened lava flows.

  It was dangerous work. On one hot summer day, two and one-half tons of powder were tamped into drill holes in preparation for the usual blast. Tamping with a copper or bronze rod was the correct procedure, but someone picked up an iron bar by mistake. It struck the hard rock with a spark that ignited the powder and caused a premature explosion. Six workers were killed and another three seriously injured. A young boy riding nearby in a mule cart became a seventh victim. The cart was totally demolished, but somehow the mule escaped unharmed.

  J. T. Simms was the tunnel contractor, and he worked crews from both ends. Once completed in the spring of 1882, the Johnson Canyon Tunnel was a work of art. Because of loose rock, the tunnel was lined with stonework retaining walls topped with sections of boilerplate that arched across the roof.

  The Santa Fe continued to use this tunnel until 1959. The fact that it was the only tunnel on the Santa Fe line between Cajon Pass and Raton Pass is a testament to the less mountainous terrain of the 35th parallel route when compared to lines in the Rockies or Sierras. (The Crookton Cutoff on the main line now bypasses this entire section of Johnson Canyon and has reduced grades to about 1 percent.)

  Once the Johnson Canyon Tunnel and two nearby viaducts across arroyos were ready for rails, the trackla
yers quickly pushed westward to Seligman, which eventually replaced Williams as the division point. Beyond Seligman lay Chino Wash, a normally dry expanse of arroyos that had the tendency to fill with raging flash floods when the rains of July and August dumped moisture from the south onto the rocky terrain.

  Construction crews had already learned the lesson of the infamous summer monsoons of the Arizona desert the hard way. Flash floods and high water destroyed portions of the Southern Pacific’s new line across Cienega Wash, east of Tucson, in the summer of 1880. The Atlantic and Pacific experienced similar problems and was forced to rebuild sections of roadbed around Holbrook the following year. Finally getting wise to nature’s vagaries, the Atlantic and Pacific opted to construct a 600-foot iron viaduct across the usually dry flats of Chino Wash.

  From there the line headed northwest to a more reliable and less tumultuous source of water. Near orchards that the Hualapai Indians cultivated, Peach Springs gushed out a reliable supply. Crews constructed a 50,000-gallon water tank there, and because of the reliability of water, the little oasis became a place of importance to the railroad. Major sidetracks and a six-bay roundhouse were also installed. Later, a generation of Route 66 travelers found similar respite at Peach Springs.

  By now it was March 1883, and Strong and his Santa Fe associates were anxious to beat the Southern Pacific to Needles. Yes, they had Huntington’s word that he would meet them there and not build into Arizona, but the Boston crowd well remembered the Southern Pacific’s charge into Yuma six years earlier. They urged their contractors onward, and crews put down from 2 to 2.5 miles of track per day. The line advanced so quickly that carpenters working on bridges were almost bowled out of the way as temporary shoo-fly tracks were thrown down on hastily piled debris around the permanent sites.