10. David Devine, Slavery, Scandal, and Steel Rails: The 1854 Gadsden Purchase and the Building of the Second Transcontinental Railroad Across Arizona and New Mexico Twenty-five Years Later (New York: iUniverse, 2004), pp. 159–60, 164; bond election results in Arizona Daily Citizen, June 21, 1879; “a road of easy grade”: Arizona Daily Star, September 30, 1879; “will make Tucson”: Arizona Daily Star, October 7, 1879.
11. “I wish you would”: Huntington Papers, Series 1, Reel 18 (Crocker to Huntington, September 16, 1879); “I am doing all I can”: ibid., Series 2, Reel 6 (Huntington to Crocker, November 3, 1879).
12. Myrick, Railroads of Arizona, Southern Roads, p. 50.
13. Myrick, Railroads of Arizona, Southern Roads, pp. 50–51, 54; “that a railroad”: Arizona Daily Star, March 19, 1880; “His Holiness, the Pope”: Myrick, Railroads of Arizona, Southern Roads, p. 54.
14. David F. Myrick, New Mexico’s Railroads: A Historical Survey (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993), pp. 4–5, 7; first Santa Fe dividend in Glenn D. Bradley, The Story of the Santa Fe (Palmdale, Calif.: Omni Publications, 1995), p. 138; Santa Fe town issues and Wakarusa picnic in Bryant, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, pp. 1–2, 60–63; “Yesterday morning”: Las Vegas Gazette, about January 20, 1880, quoted in Bradley, Santa Fe, p. 137.
15. James H. Ducker, Men of the Steel Rails: Workers on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, 1869–1900 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), p. 8.
16. Las Vegas Daily Optic, February 20, 1880.
17. “There is some quite”: Huntington Papers, Series 1, Reel 19 (Crocker to Huntington, April 22, 1880).
18. Myrick, Railroads of Arizona, Southern Roads, pp. 57–61; Orlando Bolivar Willcox at www.arlingtoncemetery.net/owillcox.htm, downloaded October 10, 2007. By coincidence, both Willcox and John G. Parke ended their Civil War service as generals in the same corps of the Army of the Potomac.
19. For fears of Santa Fe impacting Southern Pacific traffic around Tucson, see Huntington Papers, Series 1, Reel 19 (Crocker to Huntington, March 24, 1880); “The earnings since we”: Huntington Papers, Series 1, Reel 19 (Crocker to Huntington, April 19, 1880); naming Lordsburg for Charles H. Lord is recounted in Devine, Slavery, Scandal, and Steel Rails, p. 193, but some claim that the town was named for a Delbert Lord, who was somehow associated with the Southern Pacific.
20. “If we don’t make”: Huntington Papers, Series 1, Reel 20 (Crocker to Huntington, July 20, 1880); “I very much fear”: ibid. (Crocker to Huntington, June 24, 1880); “not get tired” and “those people [the Santa Fe backers] have”: ibid. (Crocker to Huntington, July 2, 1880).
21. “I did think” and “Still … I cannot believe”: Huntington Papers, Series 2, Reel 6 (Huntington to Crocker, July 2, 1880).
22. Trackage agreement in Bradley, Santa Fe, pp. 152–53; “We agreed to this”: Huntington Papers, Series 2, Reel 6 (Huntington to Stanford, October 9, 1880).
23. Stanford suggests Deming name and “Water, of course”: Devine, Slavery, Scandal, and Steel Rails, p. 193, quoting Towne to Huntington, November 19, 1880; “thirteen saloons”: Devine, Slavery, Scandal, and Steel Rails, p. 195; “Deming morals”: C. M. Chase, The Editor’s Run in New Mexico and Colorado (Fort Davis, Tex.: Frontier Book Company, 1968), p. 127.
24. Annual Report of the Board of Directors of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad Co. to the Stockholders for the Year Ending December 31, 1880, Santa Fe Collection, Box 1, FF 30, p. 6.
25. “The southern way” and “Tourists for pleasure”: Boston Herald quote reprinted in Arizona Daily Citizen, December 2, 1880; “This month witnesses”: Railway Times, March 26, 1881, p. 283.
26. Arrival in Deming, first trains, and “the Santa Fe announced”: Bryant, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, pp. 79–80; fares from Devine, Slavery, Scandal, and Steel Rails, p. 196; relative values adjusted for CPI from www.measuringworth.com/uscompare, downloaded November 23, 2009; “the steps taken” and “prevented all business” and “a carload of beer”: Huntington Papers, Series 1, Reel 22 (Coolidge to Huntington, May 10, 1881); for a detailed study of Pullman and his car designs, see Liston Edgington Leyendecker, Palace Car Prince: A Biography of George Mortimer Pullman (Niwot, Colo.: University of Colorado Press, 1992). George Mortimer Pullman did not invent the sleeping car, but through numerous refinements, he took the concept of a straight-backed chair or a cramped fold-down bunk to a palatial experience deserving of the Pullman’s Palace Car Company name. Pullman’s overarching concept was that one might dine, sleep, relax, and even conduct business with as much comfort on the rails as in the best hotels of the land. Among Pullman’s innovations were fold-down seats and couches, private drawing rooms that converted to sleeping quarters, dining cars with refrigeration, and more pleasing and separate lavatory facilities for ladies and gentlemen. As for the cars themselves, in addition to plush furnishings, Pullman put more wheels on the undercarriage and added shock absorbers that reduced sway and made for a smoother ride. Sometimes Pullman leased its cars to railroads along with continuing service contracts, and sometimes they were sold outright.
CHAPTER 12: WEST ACROSS TEXAS
1. Handbook of Texas Online, under the word “Railroads,” www.tsha.online.org/handbook/online/articles/RR/eqr1.html (accessed September 27, 2007); “Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway,” www.tsha.online.org/handbook/online/articles/GG/eqg6.html (accessed September 27, 2007); “Texas and Pacific Railway,” www.tsha.online.org/handbook/online/articles/TT/eqt8.html (accessed September 27, 2007). The Texas and Pacific acquired the faltering attempts of the Memphis, El Paso, and Pacific and another road’s 60-mile stretch of track between Longview and Waskom, Texas. By 1873, it had built north from Marshall to Texarkana, Texas, and west from Longview to Dallas. Construction west from Dallas was halted at Eagle Ford by the panic of 1873, but by 1876, the Texas and Pacific reached Fort Worth.
2. Klein, Union Pacific, Birth, pp. 275–77, 285–89, specifically, “an able man” and “was not worth that,” p. 287; “the vaunted Pennsylvania connection,” p. 286.
3. This summary of Gould’s early career is from his most balanced and insightful biographer, Maury Klein, The Life and Legend of Jay Gould, specifically, “He never disclosed,” p. 67; Erie election and Boston Herald quote, p. 79; “quite depressed,” p. 113; Erie ouster, p. 125; entry into the Union Pacific, pp. 139–41.
4. “You know I never had much respect” and “the reverse of Scott”: Huntington Papers, Series 4, Reel 3 (Colton to Huntington, October 15, 1877); “You write that you”: ibid. (Huntington to Colton, February 2, 1875).
5. “Disagreeable as the medicine”: Huntington Papers, Series 4, Reel 3 (Colton to Huntington, October 15, 1877); Gould buys out Scott in Klein, Gould, p. 265.
6. Lavender, The Great Persuader, p. 336.
7. “our line down” and “It seems to me”: Huntington Papers, Series 1, Reel 21 (Crocker to Huntington, January 3, 1881); Lavender, The Great Persuader, p. 327, 420n14.
8. “I do not suppose”: Huntington Papers, Series 1, Reel 21 (Crocker to Huntington, January 8, 1881).
9. “They really damage”: Huntington Papers, Series 1, Reel 22 (Crocker to Huntington, April 9, 1881); “We crossed the bridge”: ibid. (Crocker to Huntington, May 9, 1881).
10. Lavender, The Great Persuader, p. 336; “should be ours” and “I am afraid”: Huntington Papers, Series 1, Reel 22 (Crocker to Huntington, April 27, 1881).
11. “If one man builds” and “there is no local business”: Klein, Gould, p. 270.
12. “I do not believe”: Huntington Papers, Series 1, Reel 22 (Crocker to Huntington, May 13, 1881, No. 309); “we shall go right”: ibid. (Crocker to Huntington, May 13, 1881, No. 310); “My own opinion”: Devine, Slavery, Scandal, and Steel Rails, p. 208, quoting Huntington to Crocker, May 12, 1881.
13. “as little to do”: Klein, Gould, p. 269; “do more watching” and “Their friendship is”: ibid., p. 271.
14. “At our last meeting”: Huntington Paper
s, Series 1, Reel 25 (Gould to Huntington, November 1, 1881); Klein, Gould, p. 271.
15. William S. Greever, “Railway Development in the Southwest,” New Mexico Historical Review 32, no. 2 (April 1957): 158–59; see also Lavender, The Great Persuader, pp. 336–37.
16. Last spike ceremony and “What should have been”: Lone Star (El Paso, Texas), December 3, 1881.
17. “such as will sooner” and “in making the owners”: Huntington Papers, Series 1, Reel 21 (Stanford to Huntington, February 1, 1881).
CHAPTER 13: TRANSCONTINENTAL AT LAST
1. “a matter of detail”: Congressional Globe, 30th Cong., 2nd sess. (February 7, 1849), pp. 470, 472; for details of these early predecessors to the St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad, see H. Craig Miner, The St. Louis–San Francisco Transcontinental Railroad: The Thirty-fifth Parallel Project, 1853–1890 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1972).
2. U.S. Statutes at Large, 39th Cong., 1st sess., chap. 278, 1866, pp. 292–99.
3. Bradley, Santa Fe, pp. 142–45; Miner, St. Louis–San Francisco, pp. 93–95; “The new company is”: Railroad Gazette, September 1, 1876.
4. Miner, St. Louis–San Francisco, pp. 104, 115–16; Bryant, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, p. 85; annual report in Bradley, Santa Fe, p. 140.
5. Bradley, Santa Fe, pp. 147–48; Miner, St. Louis–San Francisco, p. 121; “As a county we agreed”: Wichita City Eagle, October 9, 1879.
6. Bryant, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, p. 83.
7. Van Law, “Four Years on Santa Fe Railroad Surveys,” pp. 7–9.
8. James Garrison et al., Transcontinental Railroading in Arizona, 1878–1940: A Component of the Arizona Historic Preservation Plan, prepared for the Arizona State Historic Preservation Office, December 1989, by Janus Associates, Phoenix, pp. 17–18; “on railroad business”: Weekly Arizona Miner, July 9, 1880.
9. Land grant application and construction in Bradley, Santa Fe, pp. 148–49; wages and workforce in Bryant, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, pp. 87, 90; “The directors of the 35th Parallel R.R.”: Garrison, Transcontinental Railroading in Arizona, p. 18, quoting Weekly Arizona Miner, March 25, 1881; “The whole country”: Weekly Arizona Miner, April 8, 1881.
10. Garrison, Transcontinental Railroading in Arizona, pp. 19–20; “thread-like rill” and “for a railroad”: Whipple, Report, Pacific Railroad Reports, vol. 3, p. 78; Whipple initially named the location “Cañon Diablo,” and it retained its Spanish spelling until 1902, when the Santa Fe anglicized the spelling of cañon all along its line; David F. Myrick, Railroads of Arizona, vol. 4, The Santa Fe Route (Wilton, Calif.: Signature Press, 1998), pp. 27–29, 106. The original Cañon Diablo bridge served until 1900, when it was replaced by a newer single-track structure. This second bridge was replaced in 1947 by a massive double-track steel arch bridge that eliminated the last bottleneck of single track between San Bernardino, California, and Belen, New Mexico.
11. “the town at present”: Weekly Arizona Miner, January 27, 1882; Garrison, Transcontinental Railroading in Arizona, pp. 19–20; Myrick, Railroads of Arizona, The Santa Fe Route, p. 29.
12. “in the United States”: Miner, St. Louis–San Francisco, p. 122; “Owing to changes”: Bradley, Santa Fe, p. 149.
13. Bradley, Santa Fe, p. 150; “Do not be afraid”: Evans, Huntington, p. 5; “to Gould as a client”: Miner, St. Louis–San Francisco, p. 131.
14. “a matter of indifference”: New York Times, January 31, 1882; “Mr. Huntington today informs me”: Huntington Papers, Series 1, Reel 26 (Gould to Strong, copy with note to Huntington, February 5, 1882).
15. “Your desire to secure”: Huntington Papers, Series 1, Reel 26 (Strong to Gould, February 8, 1882).
16. “sagacity and good sense” and “a pleasing idea” and “to discriminate”: Commercial and Financial Chronicle, March 4, 1882.
17. Agreement in Bradley, Santa Fe, pp. 150–51; “strong backers in Boston”: Grodinsky, Transcontinental Railway Strategy, p. 194, quoting Crocker to Huntington, April 27, 1882; financial statistics from Bradley, Santa Fe, pp. 290, 294–95.
18. Garrison, Transcontinental Railroading in Arizona, pp. 20–22; Myrick, Railroads of Arizona, The Santa Fe Route, pp. 30–31, 70.
19. Garrison, Transcontinental Railroading in Arizona, p. 22; Miner, St. Louis–San Francisco, p. 138. Portions of the 1883 trestle at Needles washed out the following year even as a stronger replacement was under construction. Passengers and freight were ferried across the river while the new bridge was completed.
CHAPTER 14: BATTLING FOR CALIFORNIA
1. Waters, Steel Trails, pp. 71–72.
2. “You could knock” and “try and break”: Grodinsky, Transcontinental Railway Strategy, p. 168.
3. “a brawling stream”: William Henry Bishop, “Southern California,” Harper’s New Monthly magazine (December 1882): 63–64; high water line story from Kurt Van Horn, “Tempting Temecula: The Making and Unmaking of a Southern California Community,” Journal of San Diego History 20, no. 1 (Winter 1974), accessed online at www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/74winter/temecula.htm.
4. Waters, Steel Trails, pp. 72–73.
5. Waters, Steel Trails, pp. 131–33.
6. Fogelson, Fragmented Metropolis, p. 60.
7. “They [the Southern Pacific] are expected”: Miner, St. Louis–San Francisco, p. 138; Bryant, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, pp. 90, 92, specifically, “freight often became,” p. 92; revenue figures from Bradley, Santa Fe, p. 295.
8. Van Horn, “Tempting Temecula,” accessed online.
9. Bradley, Santa Fe, pp. 161–63; Lavender, The Great Persuader, pp. 338–41.
10. Donald Duke, Santa Fe … The Railroad Gateway to the American West, vol. 1, Chicago-Los Angeles-San Diego (San Marino, Calif.: Golden West Books, 1995), pp. 17, 58–59, 72. The Cajon Pass route has remained a critical artery to rail traffic. In the summer of 2007, the Burlington Northern–Santa Fe added a third line to its corridor and daylighted two short tunnels on its northbound leg. The Union Pacific maintains a fourth line, its Palmdale Cutoff, across the pass.
11. Grodinski, Transcontinental Railway Strategy, p. 218.
12. “San Diego is”: San Diego Union, October 16, 1885; “a period of moderate expansion”: Bryant, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, p. 102.
13. “San Diego should have” and “San Francisco is”: Los Angeles Times, January 12, 1886; “It doesn’t stand to reason”: Los Angeles Times, November 29, 1885. 14. “Railroading is a business”: Annual Report of the Board of Directors of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad Company to the Stockholders for the Year Ending December 31, 1884, p. 36.
CHAPTER 15: GOULD AGAIN
1. Maury Klein, “In Search of Jay Gould,” Business History Review 52, no. 2 (Summer 1978): 167. This article predates Klein’s landmark biography of Gould and may be the best analysis of his reputation. There is an anecdotal story about these fierce competitors from a meeting that occurred at J. P. Morgan’s New York home late in 1890. Among those present were Gould, Huntington, Palmer, and Allen Manvel of the Santa Fe. “You are all gentlemen here,” noted the president of a much smaller Midwest road. “In your private capacity as such, I would trust any of you with my watch, and I would believe the word of any of you, but in your capacity as railroad presidents, I would not believe one of you on oath, and I would not trust one of you with my watch.” Indeed, each knew that the others would look after their own interests first and foremost, but in their own way and time, Gould, Huntington, Palmer, and many others at that meeting were generous philanthropists with the largesse of their success (Klein, Gould, pp. 460–61, quoting New York Herald, December 16, 1890).
2. “I know there are” and “I have always”: Klein, “In Search of Jay Gould,” p. 172.
3. J. R. Perkins, Trails, Rails, and War: The Life of General G. M. Dodge (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1929), p. 263.
4. “I appreciate your friendship”: Klein, Gould, p. 264; for family, see ibid., pp. 74–76.
5. Klein, Union Pacific, Birth, pp. 398–99. The Denver Pacific was included with the Kansas Pacific sale. The transaction left Denver wondering about John Evans’s promises that the Denver Pacific and Kansas Pacific would never pass from local control. Palmer and his Denver and Rio Grande also weighed Gould’s moves, first tolerating him as a short-term savior in the midst of the Royal Gorge war and then as a potential customer for a western extension of the Missouri Pacific.
6. Klein, Union Pacific, Birth, pp. 432, 444; Athearn, Rebel of the Rockies, pp. 133–35; Klein, Gould, p. 270.
7. Colorado Central construction dates from Wilkins, Colorado Railroads, pp. 4, 7, 9, 11, 19; “that the Colorado Central”: Robert C. Black III, Railroad Pathfinder: The Life and Times of Edward L. Berthoud (Evergreen, Colo.: Cordillera Press, 1988), p. 79. Part of the Colorado Central’s problem was a continuing battle between Loveland’s commercial interests centering around Golden, and Denver’s own rail interests championed by John Evans. Seeking an independent link to the Union Pacific main line, the Colorado Central further diffused its focus by pushing multiple lines in too many directions in both standard and narrow gauges. Its Golden-Denver artery was built in 1870 to standard gauge. Two years later, the railroad laid narrow gauge tracks west up Clear Creek to its forks and up the north fork to the mining town of Black Hawk, a distance of 20 miles. Just before the panic of 1873, it extended the three-foot line from the forks several miles to Floyd Hill and laid standard gauge tracks from just east of Golden northerly to Boulder and Longmont, reaching out to the Union Pacific.
8. Black, Railroad Pathfinder, pp. 96–99; Cornelius W. Hauck, Narrow Gauge to Central and Silver Plume, Colorado Rail Annual, no. 10 (Golden, Colo.: Colorado Railroad Museum, 1972), pp. 74, 77. Interestingly enough, when the Union Pacific reorganized the Georgetown, Leadville and San Juan Railroad in 1881, the geography of its name got shorter, not longer: It became the Georgetown, Breckenridge and Leadville.
Rival Rails: The Race to Build America's Greatest Transcontinental Railroad Page 41