Iron Horses, page 39
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 signed 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).
CHAPTER 5: THE SANTA FE JOINS THE FRAY
1. U.S. Statutes at Large, 37th Cong., 3rd sess., chap. 98 (1863), pp. 772–74. Technically, this congressional legislation conditionally granted the lands to the State of Kansas, which accepted them on February 9, 1864, and in turn passed them on to the Santa Fe and the Leavenworth, Lawrence, and Fort Gibson Railroad and Telegraph Company, with the same conditions. The latter road was to build from Leavenworth to Indian Territory.
2. Bryant, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, pp. 12–13; “The child is born”: Kansas State Record (Topeka), October 7, 1868.
3. William E. Treadway, Cyrus K. Holliday: A Documentary Biography (Topeka: Kansas State Historical Society, 1979), p. 214 (quoting Holliday to Mary Holliday, August 30, 1873).
4. Bryant, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, pp. 15, 17–18; “old earth slowly careened”: Joseph W. Snell and Don W. Wilson, “The Birth of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad,” Kansas Historical Quarterly 34, no. 2 (Summer 1968): 135, quoting Osage Chronicle, September 18, 1869.
5. Bryant, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, pp. 21–24.
6. Kansas Daily Commonwealth (Topeka), April 27, 1872.
7. Joseph W. Snell and Don W. Wilson, “The Birth of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad—Concluded,” Kansas Historical Quarterly 35, no. 3 (Fall 1968): 332–37; “an enterprising railroad town”: Kansas Daily Commonwealth (Topeka), May 30, 1871; “It must be borne”: Emporia News, August 25, 1871.
8. Bryant, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, pp. 26–29; “This beats anything”: Kansas Daily Commonwealth (Topeka), July 16, 1872; tie boom in Snell and Wilson, “The Birth of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad—Concluded,” p. 348, quoting the Hutchinson News, July 18, 1872.
9. Snell and Wilson, “The Birth of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad—Concluded,” pp. 351–52.
10. Bat Masterson is one of those characters whose myth transcends the facts, but perhaps his most solid biographer is Robert K. DeArment, Bat Masterson: The Man and the Legend (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1979), from which this account of Bat’s Dodge City days is taken, specifically, the grading contract, pp. 19–21; “led the way” and “considered a man,” pp. 32–33; “offering one-hundred-dollar” and the train robbers hunt, pp. 87–95. For Ed’s death, see pp. 97–108.
11. Bryant, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, pp. 29–31; “ ‘State Line City’ ”: Snell and Wilson, “The Birth of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad—Concluded,” p. 352, quoting Hutchinson News, December 12, 1872; “We send you greeting”: Hutchinson News, January 2, 1873.
12. “The road cannot”: Kansas Daily Commonwealth (Topeka), December 29, 1872.
CHAPTER 6: STRAIGHT WEST FROM DENVER
1. The principal biography of John Evans is Harry E. Kelsey, Jr., Frontier Capitalist: The Life of John Evans (Denver: State Historical Society of Colorado and Pruett Publishing, 1969). Railroads were not the only thing that Evans was interested in building. He was instrumental in founding both Northwestern University and the University of Denver. He ran for Congress in 1854 and campaigned for Lincoln in 1860, which put him in line for a political appointment. He declined the governorship of Washington Territory as too far removed from his Chicago interests but accepted the governorship of Colorado Territory.
2. “Whether famine reigns”: Rocky Mountain News, May 24, 1862.
3. S. D. Mock, “Colorado and the Surveys for a Pacific Railroad,” Colorado Magazine, vol. 17, no. 2 (March 1940): 56–57.
4. Instructions to John Pierce, John Evans Collection, Stephen H. Hart Library, Colorado Historical Society, Denver, Box 7, File Folder (FF) 78 (Evans to Pierce, February 24, 1866), hereinafter cited as Evans Collection by box and file folder number. “The richness of the country”: Evans Collection, Box 7, FF 78 (Pierce to Evans, February 25, 1866); Mock, “Colorado and the Surveys,” pp. 60–61, and Kelsey, Frontier Capitalist, pp. 127, 170–72.
5. S. D. Mock, “The Financing of Early Colorado Railroads,” Colorado Magazine 18, no. 6 (November 1941): 202–3; Kelsey, Frontier Capitalist, pp. 173–74.
6. “I am very busy”: Evans Collection, Box 2, FF 17 (Evans to Margaret Evans, July 5, 1868); Kelsey, Frontier Capitalist, pp. 174–75; Mock, “Financing of Early Colorado Railroads,” pp. 204–205; U.S. Statutes at Large, 40th Cong., 3rd sess., chap. 127 (1869), p. 324; Klein, Union Pacific: Birth, pp. 344–45.
7. Kelsey, Frontier Capitalist, pp. 176–79; Mock, “Financing of Early Colorado Railroads,” pp. 205–6; Palmer Collection, Box 9, FF 304 (Certificate of Interest in Assignment, July 1869); Elmer O. Davis, The First Five Years of the Railroad Era in Colorado (Golden, Colo.: Sage Books, 1948), pp. 38, 90–91; “Everybody and wife”: Colorado Tribune (Denver), June 18, 1870.
8. “Our long agony”: Palmer Collection, Box 9, FF 701 (Palmer to Queen Mellen, July 2, 1869); “Poor Sheridan!”: Palmer Collection, Box 9, FF 706 (Palmer to Queen Mellen, February 13, 1870); “brisk and lively” and “the water about town”: Rocky Mountain News (Weekly), April 27, 1870.
9. “the business men”: Davis, First Five Years, p. 72; tie advertisement in Anderson, Palmer, pp. 32–34; construction schedule and Indian raids in Davis, First Five Years, pp. 70, 74, 76, 78, 94–95; “fighting along our line”: Palmer Collection, Box 9, FF 707 (Palmer to Queen Mellen, May 15, 1870).
10. Rocky Mountain News (Weekly), August 17, 1870.
11. “In the name”: Palmer Collection, Box 7, FF 552 (telegram, Perry to Palmer, August 16, 1870); “The coach has given”: Rocky Mountain News, August 19, 1870; “the only road”: Rocky Mountain News (Weekly), April 27, 1870.
12. Davis, First Five Years, pp. 107–8; see also an inserted supplement in Davis entitled “Completion Dates for the First Trans-continental Railway.”
13. Kelsey, Frontier Capitalist, pp. 180–81. William H. Loveland, who was intent on making the town of Golden, about 15 miles west of Denver, Colorado’s commercial hub, incorporated the Colorado Central and grabbed control of Clear Creek Canyon, leading from Golden to the mining districts of Central City and Black Hawk. Loveland also flirted with the Union Pacific for support of a Golden-Cheyenne connection. When this was not forthcoming, the Colorado Central built down Clear Creek from Golden to connect with the Denver Pacific–Kansas Pacific rail junction just northeast of what remains Denver Union Station.
14. addressing him as “General”: Palmer Collection, Box 9, FF 700 (Palmer to Queen Mellen, April 16, 1869); “a little railroad”: Palmer Collection, Box 9, FF 706 (Palmer to Queen Mellen, January 17, 1870); “laid the smallest” and “but not near enough”: Palmer Collection, Box 9, FF 706 (Palmer to Queen Mellen, February 4, 1870).
15. “run from the Missouri”: U.S. Statutes at Large, 37th Cong., 2nd sess., chap. 120 (July 1, 1862), p. 495; U.S. Statutes at Large, 37th Cong., 3rd sess., chap 112 (March 3, 1863), p. 807; Bain, Empire Express, pp. 131–32.
16. Anderson, William J. Palmer, pp. 54–57; “how fine it would be”: Palmer Collection, Box 9, FF 706 (Palmer to Queen Mellen, January 17, 1870). A key difference in construction costs between the gauges was in rails. Early narrow gauge rails weighed thirty pounds per yard compared to fifty-six pounds for standard gauge.
17. U.S. Statutes at Large, 42nd Cong., 2nd sess., chap. 354 (1872), p. 339; Davis, First Five Years, pp. 152, 163; Tivis E. Wilkins, Colorado Railroads (Boulder, Colo.: Pruett, 1974), pp. 7, 11. The Rio Grande was built largely without federal subsidies or major land grants. After construction began, Congress ratified the railroad’s territorial charter and granted it a right-of-way 200 feet wide through the public domain. It also gave it the same right to condemn private land with appropriate due process that was given to the other Pacific roads under the 1862 act. Finally, the railroad got the privilege of taking timber, stone, and earth from public lands adjacent to the right-of-way and 20 acres of land every 10 miles for station and yard purposes.
CHAPTER 7: “WHY IS IT WE HAVE SO MANY BITTER ENEMIES?”
1. Oscar Lewis, The Big Four: The Story of Huntington, Stanford, Hopkins, and Crocker, and of the Building of the Central Pacific (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1938), p. 211.
2. Stuart Daggett, Chapters on the History of the Southern Pacific (1922; rpr., New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1966), pp. 120, 122; Atlantic and Pacific Railroad Company incorporation at U.S. Statutes at Large, 39th Cong., 1st sess., chap. 278 (1866), pp. 292–99. The San Jose-to-Gilroy extension was technically undertaken by the Santa Clara and Pajaro Valley Railroad Company, just one of many instances where controlling interests, for a variety of reasons, incorporated what were in essence subsidiary companies.
3. Lavender, The Great Persuader, pp. 122, 164, 178, 186.
4. “I notice that you”: Huntington Papers, Series 4, Reel 2 (Huntington to Hopkins, April 14, 1868).
5. Cerinda W. Evans, Collis Potter Huntington, vol. 1 (Newport News, Va.: Mariners’ Museum, 1954), pp. 239–40.
6. Daggett, Southern Pacific, pp. 122–23.
7. Lavender, The Great Persuader, pp. 265–66.
8. Lavender, The Great Persuader, pp. 283, 413n2.
9. Lavender, The Great Persuader, pp. 284–85; Daggett, Southern Pacific, p. 125; see also Lewis B. Lesley, “A Southern Transcontinental Railroad into California: Texas and Pacific Versus Southern Pacific, 1865–1885,” Pacific Historical Review 5, no. 1 (1936): 55; “from a point at”: U.S. Statutes at Large, 41st Cong., 3rd sess., chap. 122 (1871), p. 579; Texas Pacific name change at U.S. Statutes at Large, 42nd Cong., 2nd sess., chap. 132 (1872), p. 59.
10. Robert M. Fogelson, The Fragmented Metropolis: Los Angeles, 1850–1930 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 52–56; Lavender, The Great Persuader, pp. 289–91; Los Angeles and San Pedro dates and census, Daggett, Southern Pacific, p. 127.
11. “where the money”: Huntington Papers, Series 4, Reel 2 (Huntington to Hopkins, April 3, 1872). For all his expenditures in pursuit of railroad empires, Huntington stayed quite frugal personally in these lean years, supposedly saying later in life, “Young man, you can’t follow me through life by the quarters I have dropped” (Lewis, The Big Four, p. 213).
12. “It is possible”: Huntington Papers, Series 4, Reel 3 (Huntington to Hopkins, October 29, 1872); New York meeting with Scott in ibid. (Huntington to Hopkins, November 30, 1872); “I thought it would”: ibid.. (Huntington to Hopkins, December 13, 1872); “I have been out to see”: ibid. (Huntington to Hopkins, December 3, 1872); floating debt analysis in Julius Grodinsky, Transcontinental Railway Strategy, 1869–1893 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1962), pp. 50–51.
13. Scott’s offer of $16 million and “while I think the property”: Huntington Papers, Series 4, Reel 3 (Huntington to Hopkins, January 17, 1873); “sell anything that” and “I am doing all”: ibid. (Huntington to Hopkins, February 15, 1873).
14. “made up my mind”: Huntington Papers, Series 4, Reel 3 (Huntington to Stanford, February 28, 1873); “I have never seen”: ibid. (Huntington to Hopkins, March 8, 1873); “You know that”: ibid. (Huntington to Hopkins, March 10, 1873).
15. “It looks a little” and “If we do not trade”: Huntington Papers, Series 4, Reel 3 (Huntington to Hopkins, March 11, 1873); “been out today” and “he cannot do anything”: ibid. (Huntington to Hopkins, March 26, 1873). Hopkins and Stanford were also negotiating for a sale of Southern Pacific and/or Central Pacific interests to a group of San Francisco investors fronted by Alfred A. Cohen. Hopkins speculated that Cohen might be working with Scott; see, for example, ibid. (Hopkins to Huntington, February 4, 1873).
16. “Why is it”: Huntington Papers, Series 2, Reel 5 (Huntington to Hopkins, February 20, 1873); “these hellhounds”: ibid. (Huntington to Hopkins, March 3, 1873); “the truth, but nothing more”: ibid. (Huntington to Hopkins, February 27, 1873); testimony generally and destruction of records in Lavender, The Great Persuader, pp. 291–93. Whether it was correct to say that the Big Four operation involved three, four, or five men depended on the dates. Charles Crocker and his brother, Judge E. B. Crocker, sold many of their interests to the other three in 1871 for $900,000 each. When Charles confronted Huntington in the fall of 1873 for his second installment and learned the dire straits the associates were in, he promptly returned his down payment and rejoined the operations. Huntington wasn’t pleased to divide the pie again but needed the money. By then, the judge was incapacitated from a stroke; he died in 1875.
