This book rests on my research in special collections and personal papers, but I would be remiss if I did not thank the historians who have traveled the grade ahead of me. Their works are gratefully acknowledged in the bibliography, but from that list I must single out: Maury Klein for his exhaustive history of the Union Pacific and his insightful biographies of Jay Gould and E. H. Harriman; Richard Saunders, Jr., for his authoritative two-volume study of American railroads in the twentieth century; and Keith L. Bryant, Jr., for his landmark history of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe.
Colorado—historically and as a research location—was at the center of much of this story. The Colorado Historical Society houses the William Jackson Palmer, John Evans, and Denver and Rio Grande collections. The Western History Department of the Denver Public Library, in addition to superb newspaper and photograph collections, holds a microfilm set of the Collis P. Huntington Papers. And I always appreciate the respite of the Penrose Library of the University of Denver, as well as the special collections of the University of Colorado.
Like the Santa Fe, the Kansas Historical Society is at the top of the heap, and I particularly appreciate the assistance there of Nancy Sherbert and Lisa Keys. Thanks, as well, to Sally King, the curator of the art and photo archives of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe, and to Al Dunton of Centennial Galleries, Fort Collins, Colorado.
Of course, the places where railroad history and realism come together best are the railroad museums. In particular, my thanks go to the Colorado Railroad Museum, the Arizona Railway Museum, the California State Railroad Museum, the Orange Empire Railway Museum, the Southern Arizona Transportation Museum, and the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum (San Diego).
Once again, I thank the skill and patience of David Lambert for making legible maps from my scratches. I also appreciate the research assistance of Greg W. Stoehr at the University of Arizona and the Arizona Historical Society libraries, Monica Wisler at the San Diego Public Library, and Shea Houlihan at the University of Texas El Paso Library. I am particularly grateful to James E. Fell, Jr., and Lyndon J. Lampert, both accomplished writers and historians, for their critical reviews and insights. Courtney Turco at Random House deserves high praise for doing numerous tasks exceedingly well.
It would be difficult to find a more knowledgeable railroad enthusiast and historian than my highly esteemed agent, Alexander C. Hoyt. He is simply the best. My deep thanks go to Alex at many levels.
As always, I have enjoyed my research in the field: chasing trains across the Southwest, riding the rails with Marlene, and exploring abandoned grades from Marshall Pass to Alpine Tunnel with my friends Anne and Omar Richardson.
Notes
CHAPTER 1: LINES UPON THE MAP
1. Oscar Osburn Winther, The Transportation Frontier: 1865–1890 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964), pp. 48–49; Butterfield Overland Mail–The Pinery, Guadalupe Mountains National Park brochure, 1988; Lyle H. Wright and Josephine M. Bynum, eds., The Butterfield Overland Mail (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1942), pp. 72–76.
2. W. H. Emory, Notes on a Military Reconnaissance from Fort Leavenworth, in Missouri, to San Diego, in California, Including Parts of the Arkansas, Del Norte, and Gila Rivers, 30th Cong., 1st sess., H.R. Ex. Doc. 41, pp. 35–36.
3. “The consequences of such”: William H. Goetzmann, Army Exploration in the American West, 1803–1863 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979), p. 209. Colonel Abert should not be confused with his son, Lieutenant James W. Abert, who served in New Mexico in 1846.
4. Goetzmann, Army Exploration, p. 263.
5. Goetzmann, Army Exploration, pp. 218–19, 265.
6. Congressional Globe, 32nd Cong., 2nd sess., vol. 26 (March 2, 1853), p. 841.
7. Goetzmann, Army Exploration, p. 262.
8. Calculating grade requires basic trigonometry. The rise (or fall) of a line over its particular run (distance) is expressed as a percentage. A vertical rise in elevation of 52.8 feet over a horizontal distance of 1 mile equals a grade of 1 percent—quite gentle (52.8 divided by 5,280 equals .01, or 1 percent). A rise of 211 feet over 1 mile makes for a grade of 4 percent—quite steep in railroad terms.
9. Reports of the Explorations and Surveys, to Ascertain the Most Practicable and Economical Route for a Railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, 33rd Cong., 2nd sess., H.R. Ex. Doc. 91 (hereinafter Pacific Railroad Reports; note the reports are individually paginated, although they may be combined in one volume), vol. 1, p. iv.
10. Goetzmann, Army Exploration, p. 305.
11. Jefferson Davis, “Introduction,” Pacific Railroad Reports, vol. 1, p. 12.
12. Philip Henry Overmeyer, “George B. McClellan and the Pacific Northwest,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 32 (1941): 48–60.
13. Isaac I. Stevens, Narrative and Final Report of Explorations for a Route for a Pacific Railroad near the Forty-seventh and Forty-ninth Parallels of North Latitude from St. Paul to Puget Sound, Pacific Railroad Reports, vol. 12, p. 331.
14. Goetzmann, Army Exploration, p. 283.
15. For an account, see Howard Stansbury, An Exploration to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake of Utah (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co., 1852).
16. E. G. Beckwith, Report of Explorations for a Route for the Pacific Railroad, by Capt. J. W. Gunnison, Topographical Engineers, near the 38th and 39th Parallels of North Latitude, from the Mouth of the Kansas River, Mo., to the Sevier Lake, in the Great Basin, Pacific Railroad Reports, vol. 2, p. 85.
17. Beckwith, Report, Pacific Railroad Reports, vol. 2, pp. 56, 70.
18. Benton was so obsessed with the 38th parallel corridor that he financed two private expeditions along it that same year. Edward Fitzgerald Beale, who had just been appointed Indian agent for California and Nevada under Benton’s patronage, led one party. Lest Gunnison’s official report prove negative, Benton hedged his bets by dispatching an eastern reporter named Gwin Harris Heap along with Beale as his press agent. Frémont led the other private excursion, although having apparently learned nothing from his 1848 trip, he again entered the mountains late in the season and achieved little more than following on Gunnison’s heels (Goetzmann, Army Exploration, p. 284).
19. A. W. Whipple, Report of Explorations for a Railway Route near the Thirty-fifth Parallel of North Latitude from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, Pacific Railroad Reports, vol. 3, p. 132; cost estimates in Report of Captain A. A. Humphreys, Top. Engineers, upon the Progress of the Pacific Railroad Explorations and Surveys, 34th Cong., 1st sess., Senate Ex. Doc. 1, pt. 2, p. 94.
20. John G. Parke, Report of Explorations for That Portion of a Railroad Route, Near the Thirty-second Parallel of North Latitude, Lying Between Dona Ana, on the Rio Grande, and Pimas Villages, on the Gila, Pacific Railroad Reports, vol. 2, pp. 4, 18–19.
21. John Pope, Report of Exploration of a Route for the Pacific Railroad, near the Thirty-second Parallel of North Latitude, from the Red River to the Rio Grande, Pacific Railroad Reports, vol. 2, p. 56.
22. Pope, Report, Pacific Railroad Reports, vol. 2, pp. 35, 49–50.
23. Congressional Globe, 35th Cong., 2nd sess., pt. 1 (December 14, 1858), p. 73.
CHAPTER 2: LEARNING THE RAILS
1. “Nothing stops us”: William Jackson Palmer Collection, Stephen H. Hart Library, Colorado Historical Society, Denver (hereinafter Palmer Collection), Box 8, File Folder (FF) 641 (Palmer to Isaac Clothier, June 23, 1853).
2. “spending the time”: John S. Fisher, A Builder of the West: The Life of General William Jackson Palmer (Caldwell, Idaho: The Caxton Printers, 1939), p. 40; salary in Palmer Collection, Box 3, FF 223 (Palmer daily pocket diary, June 1, 1857).
3. “John Edgar Thomson,” Dictionary of American Biography, vol. 18 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1943), p. 486; Albro Martin, Railroads Triumphant: The Growth, Rejection, and Rebirth of a Vital American Force (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 260–61; James A. Ward, J. Edgar Thomson: Master of the Pennsylvan
ia (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980), pp. 25, 42.
4. Ward, Thomson, pp. 70, 78, 80, 90; Timothy Jacobs, The History of the Pennsylvania Railroad (Greenwich, Conn.: Bonanza Books, 1988), pp. 21, 24–25.
5. “Quick-witted, dapper”: Ward, Thomson, p. 95–96; “the best investment”: Martin, Railroads Triumphant, pp. 263–64; see also Scott biography at www.texaspacificrailway.org/history and “Reassessing Tom Scott, the ‘Railroad Prince,’ ” a paper given for the Mid-America Conference on History, Furman University, September 16, 1995, by T. Lloyd Benson and Trina Rossman.
6. “You Pennsylvania people”: Lela Barnes, ed., “Letters of Cyrus Kurtz Holliday, 1854–1859,” Kansas Historical Quarterly 6 (August 1937): 249 (Holliday to Mary Holliday, December 31, 1854); Holliday biographical information from Keith L. Bryant, Jr., History of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1974), pp. 4–9; L. L. Waters, Steel Trails to Santa Fe (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1950), pp. 24–29.
7. This account of Huntington’s early years is from David Lavender, The Great Persuader (New York: Doubleday, 1970), specifically, “a fine trip,” p. 39. In December 1887, when the Frémonts moved from New York to Los Angeles for his health, they were nearly destitute after numerous fortunes made and lost. Collis P. Huntington, then at the height of his railroad powers, gave them free passage. Pride initially forced Frémont to reject the offer, but Huntington was quick with a magnanimous reply: “You forget,” he told the old explorer, “our road goes over your buried campfires and climbs many a grade you jogged over on a mule; I think we rather owe you this.” Tom Chaffin, Pathfinder: John Charles Frémont and the Course of American Empire (New York: Hill and Wang, 2002), pp. 3–4.
8. Thirteenth Annual Report of the Board of Directors of the Pennsylvania Rail Road Company, pp. 20–21; quoted in Brit Allan Storey, “William Jackson Palmer: A Biography,” unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Kentucky, 1968, p. 38.
9. Palmer Collection, Box 9, FF 696 (Palmer to John and Matilda Palmer, September 10, 1859).
10. Palmer Collection, Box 4, FF 243 (draft letter, Thomson to Gov. Hon. Alex Stevens [sic], Ga, undated; back has “Manuscript of letter to Hon. Jno. C. Kunkel relative to Pacific Railroad May 20, 1858.” In another hand: “proposed but never sent J. Edgar Thomson”).
11. Palmer Collection, Box 4, FF 250 (Ellet to Palmer, March 19, 1860).
12. Palmer Collection, Box 7, FF 496 (Palmer to Lamborn, March 6, 1861).
CHAPTER 3: AN INTERRUPTION OF WAR
1. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series 1, vol. 2, p. 596, hereinafter cited as Official Records (Thomson to Cameron, April 23, 1861).
2. Official Records, Series 1, vol. 2, p. 596 (Thomson to Cameron, April 23, 1861).
3. Palmer Collection, Box 2, FF 78 (Scott to Palmer, May 8, 1861).
4. Fisher, A Builder of the West, p. 75.
5. Palmer Collection, Box 3, FF 184 (Palmer to Jackson, April 10, 1862).
6. David Haward Bain, Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad (New York: Penguin Books, 1999), p. 110.
7. Bain, Empire Express, pp. 106–8.
8. Lavender, The Great Persuader, pp. 97–98; Bain, Empire Express, p. 110.
9. Bain, Empire Express, pp. 112–14.
10. Bain, Empire Express, pp. 115–16; U.S. Statutes at Large, 37th Cong., 2nd sess., chap. 120 (1862), pp. 492–95; for an analysis of the traditional “drawn the elephant” quote, see Lavender, The Great Persuader, pp. 113, 391n5.
11. Robert C. Black III, The Railroads of the Confederacy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1952), pp. 185–91.
12. John Bowers, Chickamauga and Chattanooga: The Battles That Doomed the Confederacy (New York: Avon Books, 1995), pp. 136–38, 153.
13. “the most monstrous and flagrant”: Congressman E. B. Washburne of Illinois comments in Congressional Globe, 40th Cong., 2nd sess. (March 26, 1868), p. 2136.
14. U.S. Statutes at Large, 38th Cong., 1st sess., chap. 216 (1864), pp. 358, 360.
15. “How dare you”: Bain, Empire Express, p. 179; see also Lavender, The Great Persuader, pp. 152–53, and U.S. Statutes at Large, 38th Cong., 1st sess., chap. 216 (1864), p. 363.
16. Official Records, Series 1, vol. 49, pt. 2, pp. 488–89 (Thomas to Stoneman, April 27, 1865); Official Records, Series 1, vol. 49, pt. 1, p. 548 (Report of Bvt. Brig. Gen. William J. Palmer, May 6, 1865).
17. Official Records, Series 1, vol. 49, pt. 1, pp. 550–54 (Reports of Bvt. Brig. Gen. William J. Palmer, May 1865); “General Wilson held”: Charles H. Kirk, ed., History of the Fifteenth Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry (Philadelphia: Society of the Fifteenth Pennsylvania Cavalry, 1906), p. 517.
18. Palmer Collection, Box 3, FF 194 (Palmer to Jackson, June 23, 1865).
19. Samuel Bowles, Across the Continent: A Summer’s Journey to the Rocky Mountains, the Mormons, and the Pacific States, with Speaker Colfax (Springfield, Mass.: Samuel Bowles & Company, 1865), “It was a magnificent”: p. 18, “I believe”: p. 412.
20. John Hoyt Williams, A Great & Shining Road (New York: Times Books, 1988), p. 72.
CHAPTER 4: TRANSCONTINENTAL BY ANY NAME
1. Troop numbers in Official Records, Series 3, vol. 5, p. 494 (Stanton to the president, November 22, 1865); “Can you meet me”: Storey, “William Jackson Palmer: A Biography,” p. 142 (Scott to Palmer, July 26, 1865, telegram); Palmer Collection, Box 9, FF 690 (Palmer to Jackson, August 7, 1865).
2. Maury Klein, Union Pacific: The Birth of a Railroad, 1862–1893 (New York: Doubleday, 1987), pp. 27–28, 36–37; Bain, Empire Express, pp. 162, 168; Charles N. Glaab, Kansas City and the Railroads (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1962), pp. 112–13, 117–21, 231–32, specifically, “the biggest swindle yet,” p. 121. For a version more favorable to Hallett, see Alan W. Farley, “Samuel Hallett and the Union Pacific Railway Company in Kansas,” Kansas Historical Quarterly, 25, no. 1 (Spring 1959): 1–16.
3. “Scott drove a pretty hard bargain” and “Young men without money”: Palmer Collection, Box 9, FF 690 (Palmer to Jackson, August 25, 1865); Lavender, The Great Persuader, pp. 173–74, 214; Klein, Union Pacific, Birth, pp. 79–80; U.S. Statutes at Large, 39th Cong., 1st sess., chap. 159 (1866), pp. 79–80.
4. George Anderson, General William J. Palmer: A Decade of Colorado Railroad Building, 1870–1880 (Colorado Springs: Colorado College Publication, 1936), pp. 14–15; Kansas Pacific construction dates and mileages in Palmer Collection, Box 4, FF 287 (Report of the Condition and Progress of the Union Pacific Railway, E.D., for the year ending September 30, 1867); UP reaching 100th meridian in Bain, Empire Express, p. 290; UP construction mileage in Lavender, The Great Persuader, p. 175.
5. Palmer Collection, Box 8, FF 606 (Thomson to Perry, March 20, 1867). Palmer gave one version of the change in route from the Republican River to the Smoky Hill on September 21, 1867, during an address to citizens of New Mexico while surveying the line’s continuation. The “political reasons” for the line’s original northward bent had vanished with the end of the war, he said, and “an independent trunk line through to the Pacific, on a latitude free from those wintry obstacles” was thought best. In Palmer Collection, Box 4, FF 287 (“Address of William Jackson Palmer Delivered Before a Meeting of Citizens of New Mexico, at Santa Fe, September 21, 1867”).
6. William J. Palmer, Report of Surveys Across the Continent, in 1867–68, on the Thirty-fifth and Thirty-second Parallels, for a Route Extending the Kansas Pacific Railway to the Pacific Ocean at San Francisco and San Diego (Philadelphia: W. B. Selheimer, printer, 1869), specifically, “to ascertain the best” p. 3, “dry and inferior country,” p. 13; “by far the best”: William A. Bell, New Tracks in North America: A Journal of Travel and Adventure Whilst Engaged in the Survey for a Southern Railroad to the Pacific Ocean in 1867–1868 (London: Chapman and Hall, 1870), pp. 94–95. Bell was an Englishman and doctor by training, who si
gned on as the expedition’s photographer because that was the only vacancy. He spent a frantic couple of weeks learning to use the expedition’s photographic equipment.
7. “General Palmer held”: Bell, New Tracks, p. 152; “the decided preference”: ibid., pp. 245–46.
8. Bell, New Tracks, pp. 254–55, 286–88; “information as to”: p. 327; “they seemed to me,” p. 367; “radiating from the coast inland,” p. 371.
9. Bell, New Tracks: “A very small place,” p. 315; “an excellent bridging point,” p. 319; pp. 320–21.
10. Bell, New Tracks, pp. 405, 411–20, specifically, “This country belongs,” p. 413, “The grades up to this,” p. 420.
11. “If the Grand Canyon” and “The innumerable side cañons”: Palmer, Report of Surveys, p. 47; Bell, New Tracks, pp. 424–25; Donald Worster, A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 133, 299.
12. “We can never get”: Storey, “William Jackson Palmer,” p. 179, quoting Palmer to John D. Perry, September 17, 1867; “I, of course”: Bain, Empire Express, p. 457, quoting E. B. Crocker to Huntington, January 20, 1868; Bell, New Tracks, pp. 17, 455, 470.
13. “practicable and good”: Palmer, Report of Surveys, p. 181; “The results along”: ibid., pp. 5–6; “the Government should”: ibid., p. 192.
14. “would not think of it” and “would only be a small”: Collis P. Huntington Papers, 1856–1901, microfilm edition in Western History Department, Denver Public Library, Denver (hereinafter cited as Huntington Papers), Series 4, Reel 2 (Huntington to E. B. Crocker, March 13, 1868); “Their proposition was” and “very sharp” and “said if I would”: ibid. (Huntington to E. B. Crocker, March 21, 1868); “agree to what we want”: ibid. (Huntington to Hopkins, March 31, 1868).
15. “Since General Palmer’s return” and “I could do nothing”: Huntington Papers, Series 4, Reel 2 (Huntington to Hopkins, April 13, 1868); New York meeting in ibid. (Huntington to Hopkins, April 17, 1868); “I think we have got”: ibid. (Huntington to E. B. Crocker, April 21, 1868).
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