CULTURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT CRM VOLUME 22 NO. 10 1999
Historic Railroads
A Living Legacy
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR National Park Service Cultural Resources PUBLISHED BY THE VOLUME 22 NO. 10 1999 NATIONAL PARK SERVICE Contents ISSN 1068-4999 Information for parks, federal agencies, Indian tribes, states, local governments, Historic Railroads and the private sector that promotes and maintains high standards for pre serving and managing cultural resources Foreword 3 The Copper River and Katherine H. Stevenson Northwestern— Alaska's Bonanza DIRECTOR Railway 34 Robert Stanton Historic Railroads in the National Park Geoffrey Bleakley
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR System and Beyond 4 CULTURAL RESOURCE STEWARDSHIP Susan Kraft and Gordon Chappell Frontiers in Transportation—Denali AND PARTNERSHIPS and the Alaska Railroad 36 Katherine H. Stevenson Railroads as World Heritage Sites 6 Ann Kain Colin Divall EDITOR Alaska Tourism, Skagway, and the Ronald M. Greenberg 19th- and 20th-century Potawatomi White Pass and Yukon Route 39 ASSOCIATE EDITOR Culture and the Railroad—The Rails Frank Norris Janice C. McCoy of Change 9 Kenneth C. Kraft and Lisa A. Kraft The Curious Case of the Buried GUEST EDITOR Locomotives—or Railroad Archeology Susan Kraft The Unheralded Resources of with a Vengeance 42 ADVISORS Golden Spike National Historic Site . .12 Gordon Chappell David Andrews Adrienne B. Anderson and Allegheny Portage Railroad— Editor, NPS Rick Wilson Joan Bacharach New Support for Old Arches 44 Museum Registrar, NPS Diane M. Garcia and Randall J. Biallas A Grand Canyon Railway —Project Historical Architect, NPS for a New Century-the 20th 15 Nancy L. Smith John A. Burns Architect, NPS Gordon Chappell "Paint and Park"—The Lehigh &c New Harry A. Butowsky England Railroad Caboose 583 47 Historian, NPS Through "the Greatest Gateway to the Pratr Cassity Greatest Park"—Dudes on the R. Patrick "Pat" McKnight Executive Director, National Alliance of Preservation Commissions Rails to Yellowstone 18 The Rutland Railroad's Muriel Crespi Susan Kraft Caboose No. 28 49 Cultural Anthropologist, NPS R. Jay Conant and MaryCullen Livingston—A Railroad Town and Director, Historical Services Branch R. Patrick "Pat" McKnight Parks Canada its Depot 21 Mark Edwards Dale Martin The Sacramento Locomotive Works Historic Preservation and Cultural Resource Group Manager URS Greiner Wtoodward Clyde Federal Services of the Central Pacific and Southern Roger E. Kelly To the Tetons by Train 24 Pacific Railroads, 1864-1999 51 Archectogist, NPS Robert C. Hoyle Antoinette J. Lee Gordon Chappell Historian, NPS Union Pacific Railroad Dining Lodges Pardon Me Boys, Is That the Naval ASSISTANT and Cafeterias for the National Parks . .26 Ordnance Choo-Choo? 54 Denise M. Mayo Paul Shea Robert A. Rowe Petrified Wood and Railroads 29 The Valley Railway—A Tale of Terry E. Maze Two Landscapes 56 Sam Tamburro Copper Mining, Railroads, and the "Hellhole of Arizona" 31 On Track through a Laurie V. Slawson Beautiful Country 59 Deloris Jungert Davisson An electronic version of this issue of CRM can be accessed Cover: Top, Chicago, Burlington & Quincy workers posed by a railroad car in Cody, Wyoming, through the CRM homepage at 1924, photo courtesy Yellowstone National Park; middle, first passenger train to the Grand Canyon,
Statements of fact and views are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect an opinion or endorsement on the part of the editors, the CRM advisors and consultants, or the National Park Service. Send articles and correspondence to the Editor, CRM, U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1849 C Street, NW, Suite 350NC, Washington, DC 20240 (U.S. Postal Service) or 800 North Capitol St., NW, Suite 350NC, Washington, DC 20002 (Federal Express); ph. 202-343-3411, fax 202-343-5260; email:
map of the United States showing the routes of its current and bygone rail roads gives the impression of a large quilt stitched together by the universal symbol of the railroad track. Indeed, this impression is not far from reality. American history is interwoven with and bound to the history of its railroads. It is aA history of growth and change, manifest destiny and financial scandals, the desire to improve the quality of life and a reckless disregard for lifeways destroyed. To some it is the epic tale of transcontinental travel reduced from several grueling months overland to several days on the iron trail, the trip perhaps made memorable by stunning scenery, fresh-faced Harvey girls, and glimpses of the sooty workers who made it all possible. To others, it meant cheaper transport of natural resources that once seemed boundless, the scarring of unvalued pristine landscapes, or the desecration of sacred ground. It is also synonymous with the char acters who peopled it. Notorious tycoons financed the lines, reveled in competition with their rivals, and, in many cases, have justly taken their place in the gallery of Americas greatest scoundrels. At the same time, often nameless immigrants—Irish, Chinese, German, Greek, and others—along with America's Civil War veterans, Mormons, American Indians, and for mer slaves, made the tycoon's vision real. Over a history at once glorious and shameful but never colorless, railroads have moved soldiers and vacationers, catalog houses and furnishings, commuters and hobos, circus animals and livestock, sugar cane and parlor organs. They attracted and exploited America's newest citizens; misled settlers; created, named and aban doned towns; and brought loved ones home for the holidays. They opened a new world to the many Americans who had never been more than a day's travel from home. Today, American railroad history is preserved in myriad ways across the land, as scores of federal, state, local and private sites—including more than a dozen units of the National Park System—concern themselves with the subject. This issue of CRM highlights some of the most notable ongoing efforts to research, compile, synthesize, analyze, preserve, and interpret the history of railroads in America. From Maine to Florida and across the West, to Alaska and even Hawaii, railroads have touched every part of the nation, for better or for worse. Their presence and impact are always before us.
Katherine H. Stevenson Associate Director, Cultural Resource Stewardship and Partnerships National Park Service
CRM No 10—1999 3 Susan Kraft and Gordon Chappell Historic Railroads in the National Park System and Beyond
ailroads and national parks have from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Coast just rolled through history hand in south of Glacier National Park in 1893. The hand since 1883, when the first Great Northern also undertook development of national park, Yellowstone, was a an impressive array of lodging in and near decadRe old. In that year, the Northern Pacific Glacier, including the magnificent Many Glacier Railroad completed a spur line from Livingston Hotel. to Cinnabar, Montana, near the northern edge of Far to the south, the Atchison, Topeka & the park. Eventually, four other railroads would Santa Fe Railway and its Arizona subsidiary, the bring the "dudes" to the park's other entrances or Atlantic & Pacific Railroad, Western Division, nearby gateway communities. had just recently emerged from bankruptcy. The close, often interdependent, relation Nevertheless, an enterprising Arizona business ship between parks and railroads began even man proposed a branch line to the Grand before the first train arrived at Cinnabar; indeed, Canyon. His efforts paved the way—literally lay it started before the national park idea had fully ing much of the track—for the Grand Canyon taken shape. Agents of the Northern Pacific Railway. Development of the South Rim of the warmed to the notion of setting Yellowstone Grand Canyon as a destination resort for tourists aside as a public park, seeing in this historic quickly followed. The Santa Fe System erected a Northern Pacific development a clear opportunity for profit. Once large, rustic hotel, El Tovar, virtually on the rim; Railroad promo the park was established, the railroad went about a reproduction of a Hopi Indian pueblo, Hopi tional booklet courtesy promoting and facilitating travel to and through House, as a sales outlet for southwestern Indian Yellowstone the legendary but little-visited destination. The arts and crafts; and sundry other facilities, roads National Park. results of their efforts included fleets of deluxe and trails. Then the railway—through its allied vehicles and luxuri Fred Harvey Company, which operated the ous park lodging, tourist facilities—successfully lobbied for the most notably, per establishment of Grand Canyon National Park. haps, the Old There were other motives for railroad build Faithful Inn. ing that had little to do with tourism. The This story was Southern Pacific Railroad lobbied Congress for repeated, with differ the creation in 1890 of Sequoia National Park, ent casts of charac but its main goal was to deny the timber in the ters, at existing and park to local markets, forcing them to import future national park from railroad timberlands in Oregon over a much areas throughout the longer—and more profitable—haul for the rail West. And, as in road. Yellowstone, market That same year, Congress created Yosemite ing by railroads National Park, surrounding the vaunted Yosemite would play a key— Valley, which had been granted to the State of some would argue California for park purposes in 1864. Some years overpowering—role later, the Yosemite Valley Railroad would con in the early history of struct a line from Merced to El Portal (literally, visitation to the "The Gateway,") a settlement just west of parks. The Great Yosemite's main entrance. The Yosemite Valley Northern Railway Railroad would haul many a trainload of visitors built its main line
4 CRM No 10—1999 Union Pacific to the park until torn up for scrap following Railroad promo World War II. tional booklet. Courtesy Still other railroad projects came at the urg Yellowstone ing of the National Park Service itself. A direct National Park. request from NPS Director Stephen T. Mather led the Union Pacific Railroad, during the 1920s, to develop tourism to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Zion, and several other Utah parks. A Union Pacific subsidiary, the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, constructed a branch line from Lund to Cedar City, Utah, where its motor coaches collected and hauled tourists to the North Rim, Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks, and Cedar Breaks National Monument. Another Union Pacific subsidiary, the Utah Parks Company, built lodges, inns, and other facilities at these parks. Each and every one of these railroads pro duced, over a period of more than a half century, literally tons of promotional literature. Artistic posters, paintings, folders, brochures, pamphlets, booklets, and even books promoted visits to Americas great national parks. Today, such rail road ephemera and art are prized by railroad buffs and national park enthusiasts alike, and comprise some of the more interesting and colorful items in many a National nized the Death Valley Hotel Company, which Park Service museum constructed the Furnace Creek Inn and con collection. verted other facilities to hotels. Eventually, the The great rail company converted its old Greenland Ranch, road systems were which had raised fodder for the famous 20-mule not the only ones teams, into the resort now called Furnace Creek interested in the Ranch. parks, however; the The connections between railroads and intermediate regional national park areas can seem limitless. The Alaska systems and even Railroad, built by the Department of the Interior short lines jumped itself, crosses Denali National Park, while a ride on board as well. In on the White Pass & Yukon Route enriches the Chinese coins Colorado, the narrow gauge Rio Grande visitor experience at Klondike Gold Rush discovered dur Southern Railroad and the Denver & Rio Grande National Historical Park in Skagway. A ing archeological excavations in Western promoted and offered tourist rates to Mammoth Cave Railroad once hauled tourists to support of stone Mancos, Colorado, for those wishing to visit the that underground wonder, and the little Mount culvert headwall famed Anasazi ruins at nearby Mesa Verde. The Tamalpais and Muir Woods Railway had a stabilization at Golden Spike Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad ran north to branch line down which a "gravity car" traveled National Historic south through the valley east of California's into Muir Woods. Site. NPS photo. Death Valley, and the narrow gauge Death Valley Urban and suburban parks have railroad Railroad actually reached over the Greenwater history in abundance as well. Lowell, Range into Death Valley itself. Beginning in Massachusetts, had a street railway, which the 1927, officers of the mining company that owned National Park Service has partially reconstructed these railroads, the Pacific Coast Borax Company, for the benefit of visitors to Lowell National began maneuvering to create a Death Valley Historical Park. The Cuyahoga Valley Scenic National Monument. By the time the monument Railroad is an important part of the cultural was established in 1933, the company had orga landscape at Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area in Ohio. The electric railroad at
CRM No 10—1999 5 Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore and the Still other sites deserve consideration by the Presidio Railroad at Golden Gate National NPS. The East Broad Top Railroad in southern Recreation Area in San Francisco are other examples. Pennsylvania, for example, is a wonderfully pre Furthermore, quite a number of parks have served slice of narrow gauge railroad, complete within them the abandoned grades of railroads with locomotives, cars, track, tunnel, bridges, a dismantled long ago. These include the narrow shop building complete with all its belt-driven gauge mining railroad between Searchlight, machinery, and other structures. Nevada, and the Colorado River, in Lake Mead The stories of many of these railroads are National Recreation Area, and the Hetch Hetchy covered in the pages of this issue of CRM. But Railroad (used for dam building) that once pene the history of railroads in the United States trated Yosemite. extends beyond the areas protected by the NPS, In recent decades, the National Park Service of course. As this special issue demonstrates, rail has acquired several areas that specifically com roads are a thread woven throughout the fabric of memorate and preserve railroad history. Golden American life, and their legacy—be it trains Spike National Historic Site in Utah preserves which are still operated, long-abandoned tracks, the place where, on May 10, 1869, the first archeological remains, works of art and architec transcontinental railroad was completed by the ture, or simply the stories of those who remember Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads. The the ways they changed lives—lives on all around rich history of the immigrants who built us. Americas railroads is reflected in archeological remains at the site. Immigrants are also key to the Susan Kraft is supervisory museum curator at Yellowstone story at Allegheny Portage Railroad National National Park. She is guest editor of this issue of CRM. Historic Site in Pennsylvania, where the railroad was part of a canal system. Steamtown National Gordon Chappell is the senior historian at the National Park Service's Pacific Great Basin Support Office in San Historic Site, also in Pennsylvania, celebrates the Francisco. era of the steam locomotive on American railroads.
Colin Divall Railroads as World Heritage Sites
he World Heritage Convention idea is that the criteria should command broad of 1976 allows the United assent globally. Nations Educational, Scientific To understand some of the challenges of Tand Cultural Organization coming up with such a list we need to grasp (UNESCO) to designate places of outstanding something of the complicated nature of railway cultural or natural significance around the world history. By the standards of most modern indus as World Heritage Sites. The possibility of desig tries, railways have unusually deep historical nating industrial locations has always been roots. Railways of a kind arguably existed as far implicit in the Convention but it is only recently back as the sixth century B.C. Certainly by the that much attention has been given to the task of 15th-century European miners were making identifying likely candidates. The International extensive use of lines with wooden rails and vehi Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) is cles. We can date the mechanically worked rail responsible for advice on these matters and, in road to the first two decades of 19th-century 1997, it commissioned Great Britain's Institute of Britain. British engineers rapidly gained employ Railway Studies to recommend guidelines about ment across Europe, building many of the conti the kinds of qualities that the World Heritage nent's earliest and most important lines. By 1907 Committee should look for in railroad sites. The there were about 200,000 miles of railways there.
6 CRM No 10—1999 The European monopoly on railways was short How can we possibly extract from such a lived, though. By the mid-1820s, entrepreneurs complex—and often contested—history a single in the United States were planning the Baltimore set of criteria for World Heritage status? Since all & Ohio Railroad, an enterprise on an entirely heritage is intimately bound up with the creation new scale. In 1907 there were about 237,000 of collective identities—be these at the local, miles of route in the U.S., making it by far the regional, national or global level—it is clearly largest single network of railroads in the world. impossible to expect an easy answer. But our fun One critically important aspect of these damental assumption is one common to all mod developments was their economic impact. In the ern historiography of large-scale technologies: 19th century, steam railways were the dominant that railways are above all sociotechnical systems form of inland transport for any but the shortest in which it is ultimately impossible to separate of journeys. Railways rapidly developed as the out "social" and "technical" aspects. A proper largest and most complex examples of sociotech- appreciation of the significance of any particular nical systems that the world had known; their railway site will only be gained by seeing it in the political, financial, business and managerial struc round, as both the product of, and an influence tures later influenced the growth of large-scale on, wider social circumstances. This perspective corporate business, particularly in the United stands in sharp contrast to that of many rail fans, States. The railways' advantages of speed, capacity who too often see locomotion as being all-impor and economy made them more than mere instru tant while the specialist infrastructure, the social ments of industrial and business development, organisation, and the wider historical context of however. Culturally, their impact was huge. railways' development are given less weight than The railways' influence was not only felt in they deserve. those countries that industrialized first. By 1907, Working from this sociotechnical perspec there were 168,000 miles of railway outside tive, and having due regard for the kinds of crite Europe and North America. Most of these rail ria that ICOMOS has used in the past with ways were part of the spread of European imperi regard to industrial sites, we have come up with alism before World War I. In European-settled the following proposed guidelines: parts of the world, most communities desired the A Creative Work Indicative of Genius. A simi coming of railways as the key to prosperity, while lar criterion has long been applied in the infor every government wanted them for national mal ranking of railways around the world. It development. But railways were expensive, and fits well with the long-standing approach to many states fell into financial dependence on the history that seeks to identify "great men." European banks, mortgaging lands and taxes to Modern scholarship suggests that the criterion pay for lines. Nor did contemporaries often draw should be interpreted more widely, however. attention to the social and environmental down While not wishing to deny the great skills and side of the technological triumph of the world abilities of individual engineers such as George wide spread of railways: the exploitation of and Robert Stephenson, scholars tend to stress humans and natural resources to an unprece the co-operative nature of railway building. dented degree. Perhaps, then, sites should be taken as memo The "great" or "golden" age of railways was rials not only to the engineers ultimately over in most countries by World War I. Certainly responsible for their design and construction, by the middle of the 20th century most of the but also to all those others—many of whom world's railroad network was in place and, on the will never be known—who had a hand in whole, the story since then has been one of slow bringing them to completion. Should we not decline, at least in terms of route mileage. But also look for genius in the financing and man development continues on existing routes, and agerial organisation of railways? In this way, new lines are still built. Although the materials, sites could come to symbolise the wider soci traction, and principles of management eties and cultures that gave them birth. employed almost invariably differ from those of the pioneering railways, the same basic technical The Influence of, and on, Innovative principles appear set to take the mechanically Technology. Railway's primary purpose is to worked railway into its third century. provide a transport service for goods or passen-
CRM No 10—1999 7 gers. But technology serves a critical role in all After all, railways were built to perform a of this, and thus it is proper that the role of transport function, and this basic function has innovative technologies should be acknowl served many political, social, economic and edged in any set of criteria. The technology of cultural purposes in addition to fulfilling peo the railway includes its course—the trackbed ple's desires to travel and trade. But this very and associated structures. The transfer of tech diversity brings its own challenges. The rail nologies from and to other industries and ways' influence on social and economic life has transport modes should also be borne in mind. not been the same around the world, a fact But such technical matters always need to be that presents us with the problem of identify taken in context. Modern historiography of ing just what it is about a particular site that technology typically requires an interdiscipli represents a universal experience. The difficulty nary approach; social, economic, environmen is made even more complex by the fact that tal and political factors, among others, influ there are many different opinions about the enced technical change and development on value of what the railways enabled. All this the railways. To exclude history from technol implies that the designation of sites on the ogy is to miss a vital part of the story. basis of this criterion needs to be justified by means of widespread consultation as well as Outstanding or Typical Example. There is a thorough historical studies. place for the designation of sites either because they have always been outstanding in some None of these criteria should be taken apart regard or because, although once common from the others. Since railways are sociotechnical place or typical, they have become special sim systems, all the criteria ought to be applied to any ply by virtue of their survival. Particular histor site nominated for World Heritage status. Of ical events and associations will help with the course, individual railways will often be deemed identification of outstanding locations; origi more significant on certain grounds than others. nality and authenticity might be factors justify One location might be of great technical signifi ing the designation of railways on the grounds cance, another of considerable social or economic of typicality. Specific structures or locales may value. How then can one weigh the two in the also be seen as typical. Something such as a balance? There can be no neat formula: by prefer steam locomotive servicing depot which ring one railroad site as a World Heritage Site remains complete with all its infrastructure over another we also choose, in some small way, may be worth designating as a symbol both of among different ways of understanding our own the technology of the railway and as a place of sense of ourselves. work. As such places become much rarer, the precise location of survivors becomes less Colin Divall is Professor of Railway Studies in the important than the power of what remains on Institute of Railway Studies, a unique venture run jointly the ground to stand as symbols for what was by the United Kingdom's National Railway Museum and once commonplace around the world. the University of York. Illustrative of Economic or Social Developments. Perhaps this is the principal For more information, visit the Institute of criterion by which sites should be judged. Railway Studies at
8 CRM No 10—1999 Kenneth C. Kraft and Lisa A. Kraft 19th- and 20th-century Potawatomi Culture and the Railroad The Rails of Change
ultural anthropologists are often new homelands in the Wabash River Valley of interested in patterns and themes Indiana. From Indiana, the Mission Band in human thinking; more specifi marched across four states (over 660 miles) to a Ccally, the relationship between new reserve in Kansas. Of the 850 Potawatomi personality and culture. Although most anthropol people forced to withdraw, more than 40 died ogists have rejected the discipline's earlier attempts along the way during the September-November to characterize populations utilizing a few psycho 1838 exodus. logical terms,' researchers are still interested in Until this point in modern Citizen dominant themes or values emphasized by a par Potawatomi Nation history, the tribe had not been ticular culture. Quite often, contradictory values directly influenced by railroad interests but rather and attitudes are manifest as well. An analysis of by government interests. All that would change the cultural values of the Citizen Potawatomi when the Potawatomi moved into Kansas and Nation and its stroll through the political trends in began to encourage entrepreneurship even if it American Indian "management" during the 19th meant a change in traditional culture. For the dis and 20th centuries are the topics of this essay. cussion at hand, it is most profitable to concen Special attention is afforded to the railroad compa trate on the personality traits that were encouraged nies operating in Kansas and Oklahoma, and the by Potawatomi culture rather than on blood-degree legacy they left with the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. or the history of intermarriage with French traders. The Citizen Potawatomi Nation epitomizes From 1846 to the 1860s, the Potawatomi the diversity and adaptability of any American were concentrated on a reservation along the Indian group currently residing in the United Kansas River containing approximately 568,223 States. A quick review of tribal history illustrates acres. While in Kansas, a prior rift between two this point. Actual first contact between Europeans groups of Potawatomi expanded due to the and the Potawatomi was established in 1634 by inevitable culture change associated with their French trader Jean Nicolet on the western shore of assimilation into the dominant American culture. Lake Michigan.^ At the height of the fur trading In 1861, the more acculturated Potawatomi era (1700s—1800s), the Potawatomi controlled a exchanged their communal ownership of reserva tribal estate that encompassed Wisconsin, tion lands for individual plots amounting to Michigan, northern Illinois and Indiana, and a approximately 28,229 acres while the other group portion of Ohio. Control was accomplished chose to retain a portion (about 77,440 acres) as through tribal democracy and savvy business common property. The remaining portion of the skills—personality traits encouraged by the cul Kansas reserve was to be sold to the Leavenworth, ture. The Potawatomi challenged the Ottawa as Pawnee and Western Railroad Company. In fact, "middlemen" for trade in the Green Bay area. a provision in the 1867 "Treaty with the Using their entrepreneurial skills, the Potawatomi Potawatomi" provides for the purchase of the began to hire their local tribesmen to collect and unassigned or surplus lands by another rail com trap the furs that they once procured themselves. pany if the original deal did not materialize. ^ This In turn, the middlemen-Potawatomi would sell or is exactly what occurred, with the Atchison, trade the furs to the French, thereby expanding Topeka and Santa Fe (AT&SF) Railroad Company their tribal control and tribal estate. purchasing the surplus lands at $ 1 an acre. The During the Removal Period of the 1830s, the railroad was to pay the Secretary of the Interior Mission Band of Potawatomi (today known as the over a five-year period after posting an initial Citizen Potawatomi) were forced to leave their
CRM No 10—1999 9 bond. The AT&SF later sold these lands at an Although actually part of the Kickapoo and average price of $4.41 an acre. Sac and Fox reservations, the town of Shawnee, To our amazement we discovered that Oklahoma was quickly becoming a major treaties for land acquisitions were often penned by Potawatomi community at the turn of the century. railroad companies who later solicited the local The townsite immediately emerged following the Indian Agents for support." Too late for the opening of the Sac and Fox and Potawatomi reser Potawatomi, the history of railroad pressure and vations for non-Indian settlement in September Indian removal in Kansas was becoming well 1891. A group of land speculators, bent on understood by American Indian strategists; the forming a city and making their fortune, estab common pattern being the United States govern lished the town along the North Canadian River, ment negotiating treaties which sold tribal lands the river forming the north-south reservation directly to railroad companies.7 This alliance coin boundary between the aforementioned tribes. cided with the railroad companies' recent entry Overall, many tribal citizens believed that railroad into the arena of national politics.8 construction would help industrialize Indian Many of the allotted Potawatomi later sold Territory thereby bringing prosperity.14 The their lands for individual profit or maintained Choctaw, Oklahoma and Gulf (CO&G) Railroad their ownership and developed entrepreneurial Company, approved by Congress in 1894, was the ventures such as blacksmith shops and ferry cross first railroad to cross the Potawatomi Reservation. ings. A measure of Potawatomi prosperity and However, in 1904 the line was leased to the hospitality is illustrated by several passages from a Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific (CRI&P) dragoon's journal dated 1849. After spending the Railway Company for 999 years.1' The first rail entire summer eating rations and wild meat the service arrived in Shawnee on July 4, 1895, and dragoons made contact with Joseph LaFramboise, the company began building its shops there in fourth chief of the Potawatomi, who supplied the 1896. The CO&G Railroad Company was the men with pig, pumpkin, cabbage and potatoes in first of five rail companies to pass through abundance. The soldier goes on to describe the Shawnee toward points beyond. Most of the rail Potawatomi as being well-behaved, well-clothed routes headed south, deeper into the Potawatomi and living comfortably in cabins.^ Nonetheless, reservation where there were few roads. both profiteer and entrepreneur fell destitute dur Once again the Potawatomi, and the non- ing this period of acculturation and assimilation. Indian residents of the Potawatomi Reservation, The complex dichotomy of culture change and experienced prosperity and failure at the hand of entrepreneurship was facing the Citizen outside influences. While drafting the state consti Potawatomi head-on. tution in 1906, delegates from Indian Territory Eventually the Citizen Potawatomi made asked for provisions to protect tribal allotments arrangements with the United States for a reserva from speculators and grafters. Railroad activity in tion in Indian Territory. Again the Potawatomi, promoting townsite development and in exploit during their direct and indirect intercourse with ing mineral and timber resources had long angered railroad companies, experienced both prosperity the Five Civilized Tribes.1" Settlers in western and failure. The Oklahoma experience had less to Oklahoma were also hostile to railroads because of do with railroad companies purchasing Indian discriminatory freight rates and schedules. In fact, lands and more to do with making or breaking some political analysts argue that the nine rail small Indian communities. Many of the early roads serving the Oklahoma Territorial capital of reservation towns missed by the railroad quickly Guthrie caused the city to lose its bid for the state conceded and moved to the nearest railpoint or capital. Guthrie symbolized the railroads' influ disappeared altogether.* * Moreover, railroad pro ence in the territory, and many constitutional del moters demanded that each community served egates charged that railroad and business interests must pay half of the value of the townsite in order would dictate the new constitution.17 to establish a railstop.12 Despite the influence the While some Indians and non-Indians railroad routes had on town survival, other reser claimed that a vast railroad conspiracy was under vation towns, named for prominent Potawatomi way, the more acculturated Potawatomi found jobs families such as Trousdale and Burnett, still survive in planning and construction of the new railroad today. In fact, many other towns in the Potawa routes. Potawatomi tribal member Henry Peltier, tomi Reservation, such as Harrah, Macomb, and an ancestor of one of the authors, served as a rail Maud, were established on Potawatomi allotments. road "bull" for the CRI&P Railroad Company fol io CRMNo 10—1999 lowing statehood in 1907. Bulls were responsible Notes for the safety of newly established routes, Peltier's 1 Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture. (Boston: area being all of the newly established Houghton Mifflin, 1934). Pottawatomie [sic] County, created from a portion 2 Marvin Harris, Our Kind: Who We Are, Where We of the Potawatomi Reservation. Most of the rail Came From, Where We Are Going (New York: Harper road routes in the Potawatomi Reservation crossed and Row, 1989). * David Edmunds, The Potawatomis: Keepers of the Fire the rivers at well-known crossings and followed (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978) 3-23. old trails such as the Osage Trail and the Arbuckle 4 Charles Royce, "Indian Land Cessions in the United Wagon Road. Perhaps the one factor that influ States," in Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of enced the survival or death of many of the towns American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian in Pottawatomie County was the railroads. Institution, 1896-1897, Part 2 (Washington, D.C.: U.S.Government Printing Office, 1899). With new towns springing up along the ' Treaty with the Potawatomi, 27 February 1867, routes, older communities either moved to the United States-Citizen Potawatomi Tribe, 15 Statute new towns or disintegrated. Some reservation S.531. towns prospered; the newly established town of ° Joseph Murphy, Potawatomi of the West: Origins of the Brooksville, for example, received its water supply Citizen Band (Shawnee, Oklahoma: Citizen Band from a lake constructed by the Santa Fe Railroad Potawatomi Tribe, 1994), 259. Craig Miner, '"Little Houses on Wheels': Indian Company to serve its engines. Oftentimes, railroad Response to the Railroad," in Railroads in Oklahoma companies avoided communities that they could (Oklahoma City: Oklahoma Historical Society, not force to pay tribute for service. Furthermore, if 1977) 7-18. rail lines did pass nearby an unsolicited town the " Joseph Murphy, Potawatomi of the West: Origins of the rail companies refused to stop. In the case of the Citizen Band, 220. town of Wanette, the railroad company laid out its ' Percival Lowe, Five Years a Dragoon ('49— '54): And Other Adventures on the Great Plains (Norman: own town a mile to the north, eventually luring University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 73-74. the residents to the new townsite. Conversely, the 10 Treaty with the Potawatomi. town of Pearson became a large activity center Phil Cannon and Glenn Carter, Tecumseh, when great quantities of freight were unloaded Oklahoma: An Illustrated History of Its First Century there for use in the Saint Louis, Oklahoma, oil (Inola, Oklahoma: Evans Publications, 1991), 107. 12 Ibid., 38-43. fields to the east. Saint Louis is the only remaining '* John, Morris, C. Goins and E. McReynolds, town in the county that has never had a railroad Historical Atlas of Oklahoma (Norman: University of nor recruited the companies. However, according Oklahoma Press, 1976), 50. to local residents, Saint Louis never really tried to " Craig Miner, '"Little Houses on Wheels': Indian be a town.18 Response to the Railroad," 7-18. '5 Preston George and Sylvan Wood, The Railroads of Culture change at the hands of the railway Oklahoma (Boston: The Railway and Locomotive companies and the federal government has been a Historical Society, 1943), 40-44. dominant theme in recent Potawatomi history. *° Wayne Morgan and Anne Morgan, Oklahoma: A Settlement patterns changed on the Potawatomi History (New York: W W Norton and Company, Reservation due to alterations in the physical and 1984) 81-88. 17 social environment brought on by the railroads. Ibid., 81. '° Phil Cannon and Glenn Carter, Tecumseh, Oklahoma: The appearance of trading posts and towns along An Illustrated History of Its First Century, 187. the rail lines introduced new and clustered resources, thus promoting concentrations of peo Kenneth C. Kraft and Lisa A. Kraft are co-tribal archeolo- ple in these locations. The Potawatomi, like other gistsfor the Citizen Potawatomi Nation in Shawnee, American Indian groups, were not mystified by Oklahoma. Kenneth Kraft is a doctoral candidate in the railroad or the magic of its financial opera anthropology at the University of Oklahoma, Norman, and has worked as a professional archeologist with the United tions. Intelligent and well educated, the States government, the state of Texas and the state of Potawatomi sought to play the game in hopes of Oklahoma. Lisa Kraft, a Citizen Potawatomi Nation turning an invasion into a boon for American tribal member, serves as tribal historic preservation officer Indian society. Railroads left their legacy on the and Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Potawatomi Reservation and the Potawatomi peo Act director and is pursuing a Master's of Liberal Studies ple and that legacy continues today. The Citizen degree from the University of Oklahoma museum studies program. Potawatomi Nation has prevailed throughout the "rails of change."
CRM No 10—1999 11 Adrienne B. Anderson and Rick Wilson The Unheralded Resources of Golden Spike National Historic Site
olden Spike National Historic re-enactment ceremony and see replicas of the last Site was established in 1965 at gold and silver spikes driven into the replica last Promontory Summit, Utah, to tie of laurel. Most visitors leave the park awed by commemorate completion of the locomotives and with some sense of history the world'Gs first transcontinental railroad and the after seeing the very spot where this most historic consequential, far-reaching effects of that act. event took place. However, they don't often take This is considered to be among the most impor the opportunity to look beyond the "Last Spike tant events in the nation's history. The park cele Site" and find the wealth of real, tangible evi brates the May 10, 1869, joining of the rails built dence of construction and use of the railroad. by the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroad Replicas and symbols aside, Golden Spike companies. However, the paramount historical National Historic Site is among the very few significance of the completed railroad is its effect places where one can see the physical remains of upon the American far west, bridging the vast, this great, multicultural, cross-country effort. unknown spaces of the great American desert and Much has been written about the history of the uniting east and west. It resulted in decimation of world's first transcontinental railroad1 and analy the American bison and changed forever western ses of its history, economics, technology, politics 2 Famous Native American lifeways. It opened to the world and political machinations abound. But, in fact, "Champagne the great western lands of the United States, has even without this information, the Golden Spike Photograph," Promontory tening the establishment of western territories landscape actually tells the story of the final push Summit, Utah, and states. to complete the railroad. Here are the remains of celebrating com When most people think of Golden Spike, the infamous "race" and of the construction tech pletion of the first transcontinental they envision a railroad spike made of gold or the niques employed: incomplete cuts, partially-con railroad. Photo May 10, 1869 ceremony captured in the famous structed parallel grades, the Union Pacific's "false by Andrew J. Andrew J. Russell "Champagne" photograph. cut," terminus of the Central Pacific's "10 miles Russell, May 10, of track laid in one day," workers' campsites, 1869, courtesy Visitors to the park see the reproduction locomo the Oakland tives, the Union Pacific's No. 119 and Central blacksmithing workshops, and telegraph pole Museum. Pacific's Jupiter. They participate in the May 10th remnants. Park lands contain dramatic evidence of the infamous parallel grades with their partially-com plete cuts, fills, ramps for horse-drawn earth- movers, hand-hammered drill marks, size-graded spoils piles, borrow pits, partially-built stone cul verts, and abutments for hastily-constructed tres tles. The varied remains of construction worker campsites document the range of conditions under which the workers toiled. There are special function areas, such as blacksmith workshops, that mark the sites of various support industries. These are the character-defining landscape fea tures that, because of their integrity and the integrity of their historic setting, tell the story of one of this nation's major technological accom plishments.
12 CRM No 10—1999 Slaughter House However, tools for under showing con standing these remains are var struction worker campsite, east ied. Photographs, taken by "offi slope of the cial" railroad photographers dur Promontory ing the closing days of Mountains. The infamous Union construction, document and Pacific "Big help explain activities and events Trestle" is in the for which archeological evidence background. Photo by remains. Railroad records pro Andrew J. vide information about stan Russell, 1869, dardized culvert design, and courtesy the archeological excavations docu Oakland Museum. ment that the design was often modified. The illustrations, pho tographs, and written record, in conjunction with archeological investigations, historic structure investigation, and cultural landscape evaluation Subsequently, with repair materials on hand, the are providing new appreciation of the park's culvert is completely excavated, new information many resources and facilitating their effective incorporated into the architectural drawings, and management. Currently, the park is overseeing a the repairs completed in the most historically multidisciplinary effort to inventory, document, accurate manner possible. This effort has resulted assess the condition of, and evaluate its many in documentation of various episodes of past cultural remains. maintenance by the railroad and dating of these Management of Historic Structures events using artifacts and Southern Pacific Railroad date nails that were sometimes incorpo Golden Spike National Historic Site con rated into the structures. Similarly, stabilization tains what probably are the best-preserved and of stone culvert headwalls, also accompanied by among the most important segments and ele archeological excavations, has yielded artifacts of ments of the original 1,776 miles of railroad line significance to the 1869 completion of the rail completed between Omaha, Nebraska and road. All resultant information is being incorpo Sacramento, California. This grade and its asso rated into the park's Historic Structure Report. ciated features were designated a National Civil Engineering Landmark in 1969. Over 17 origi Archeological Evidence from 1869 At least 17 campsites established by the nal stone box culverts and seven original trestle numerous workers who built the railroad exist sites with stepped abutments of earth and dry- within the boundary of the park, each contain laid stone retaining walls remain. Nine wood ing a great variety of features that document culverts, including remains of a wooden stave individual habitation as well as community culvert, and two wood trestles that date from areas.3 Some campsites, such as depicted in subsequent, historic operation of the Russell's 1869 "Slaughter House" photograph, Promontory Branch Line still exist along the contain over 50 individual features that range 15-1/2 miles of parallel construction within the from small sleeping areas dug into the side of a park. shallow drainage to very large, community struc Over time, some of the wood culverts have tures assumed to be mess tents or storage facili deteriorated to the point of collapse, making the ties. The winter and early spring of 1869 were grade no longer usable and cutting short the visi extremely cold and harsh, and winds whipped tor experience. To facilitate accurate maintenance across the Promontory Mountains. The need for of these features, a systematic approach to repair shelter is reflected in the many features nestled in has been developed by the park that involves the lee of imposing limestone outcrops and in both archeological excavations and historic archi the rock-walled dugouts excavated into the hill tectural documentation. Initial, archeological sides. Most structures, whether they are pit fea "test" excavations sufficient to enable a historic tures in the open or rock walled lean-tos, retain architect to develop construction drawings for evidence of stone hearths and chimneys. In addi repair of the culvert are carried out. tion to group campsites, there are a number of
CRM No 10—1999 13 individual, isolated features, such as leveled tent thousands of men who toiled to make the rail or wagon platforms and distinct, special activity road a reality. structures. Russell photographically documents the use of small rock shelters as individual camp Notes 1 sites, the remains of which are obvious today. See Daggett 1922, Dodge 1965, White 1895, and Most of these archeological sites and fea Williams 1988. 2 See Davis 1894, Griswold 1962, Kraus 1969, Lewis tures have not been formally documented, have 1969, and Trent 1981. never been addressed in the abundant literature * Adrienne B. Anderson, "Ancillary Construction on on the transcontinental railroad, and are not well Promontory Summit, Utah: Those Domestic understood. Consequently, the park has imple Structures Built by Railroad Workers," Forgotten mented a multi-year archeological inventory pro Places and Things, Center for Anthropological ject, which is part of the National Park Service Research, Contribution 3 (1981). Systemwide Archeological Inventory Program. The focus of this effort is to investigate and to References develop an understanding of the common work Anderson, Adrienne B. "Ancillary Construction on Promontory Summit, Utah: Those Domestic ers who actually built the railroad. Structures Built by Railroad Workers." Forgotten Places and Things, Center for Anthropological NPS archeolo- Research, Contribution 3, 1981. gist Adrienne Daggett, Stuart. Chapters on the History of the Southern Anderson Pacific. New York: The Roland Press Company, inspecting exca 1922. vation of col Davis, John P. The Union Pacific Railway: A Study in lapsed, Railway Politics, History, and Economics. Chicago: Southern Pacific S.C. Griggs and Company, 1894. wooden box culvert in antici Dodge, Grenville. How We Built the Union Pacific pation of its Railway and Other Railway Papers and Addresses. repair. NPS Denver: Sage Books, 1965. [Reprinted from a pri photo courtesy vate edition issued in Council Bluffs, Iowa, with no Golden Spike date given but probably in the 1911 to 1914 National Historic period, or at about rhe same time as the other mem Site. oirs being republished in this series. The only mark upon the original book indicated publishing source was "The Monarch Printing Co. Council Bluffs Iowa."] Griswold, Wesley S. A Work of Giants: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad. New York: McGraw Integrity of Place; Cultural Landscape Hill, 1962. Evaluation Kraus, George. High Road to Promontory. New York: The numerous historic features that dot the Castle Books, 1969. park's landscape have left distinctive and remark Lewis, Oscar. The Big Four: The Story of Huntington, able evidence of a historic event: Indentations Stanford, Hopkins, and Crocker, and of the Building left by parallel railroad cuts notch the horizon; of the Central Pacific. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969. long-abandoned trestle abutments silhouette Trent, Logan D. The Credit Mobilier. New York: Arno against the sky; and the sinuous, parallel grades Press, 1981. snake their way toward Promontory Summit. White, Henry K. History of the Union Pacific Railway. The ongoing cultural landscape evaluation has Economic Studies of the University of Chicago, No. documented that the integrity of the setting 11. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1895. includes not only the expansive views of the Williams, John H. A Great and Shining Road: The Epic 1869 scene but also the numerous, contributing Story of the Transcontinental Railroad. New York: construction features, historic structures, and Times Books, 1988. archeological remains that document the com Adrienne B. Anderson, Ph.D., is an archeologist with the pletion of the world's first transcontinental rail National Park Service Intermountain Support Office, road. These are the unheralded resources that, in Denver, Colorado. fact, tell the story of the first transcontinental railroad and demonstrate the physical efforts of Rick Wilson is Chief Ranger at Golden Spike National Historic Site in Utah.
14 CRMNo 10—1999 Gordon Chappell A Grand Canyon Railway Project for a New Century-the 20th
he century was about to end. may have been feasible from an engineering No, it was not 1999, rather standpoint (although at great cost) was not prac 1899, and the talk of the north tical from a financial standpoint. No railroad ever ern Arizona Territory was a rail would run the length of the bottom of the Grand road Tthen under construction to the Grand Canyon. Canyon. It bore the name "Santa Fe and Grand Hauling tourists to the South Rim of the Canyon Railroad" because its purpose was to canyon seemed an entirely different proposition. connect the Santa Fe Pacific Railroad (a sub By the mid-1890s, financial interests in Flagstaff, sidiary of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe northern Arizona's principal city, proposed a (AT&SF) Railway), at Williams, Arizona, with Flagstaff and Grand Canyon Railroad and a des the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, roughly 63 tination health resort "spa" on the rim of the miles by the route of the survey to the north. It canyon, to be built and operated by the railroad. was typical for a railroad in that era to adopt as But that proposal, too, lapsed in the depression its name the names of each end of its line. of the mid-1890s. This was not the first time there had been In 1897, a Prescott, Arizona, citizen named talk of a railway penetrating the Grand Canyon William Owen "Bucky" O'Neill proposed build country. Some years earlier, Robert Brewster ing a railroad from Williams, a town some dis Stanton and his survey party took boats the tance west of Flagstaff on the Santa Fe Pacific, to length of the Colorado River in the Grand the Grand Canyon. At first, he had tried to inter Canyon to lay out his proposed Denver, est the Santa Fe System in building such a Colorado Canyon and Pacific Railroad, but that branch, which, based on 10 years of intermittent line through the bottom of the canyon never got prospecting in the canyon, he thought shipments off the drawing boards. It would have been feasi of mineral ore—especially copper—would sup In the winter of 1913, a double- ble, given enough time and treasure, to build a port. But both the AT&SF and the Santa Fe headed passen railroad through the canyon, but no cities, towns, Pacific had just emerged from bankruptcy, and ger train mines, industries, or sources of passenger traffic their boards of directors proved conservative and approaches the depot at Grand existed along the bottom of the canyon to offer reluctant to invest in any branch lines. O'Neill Canyon, Arizona. such a railroad freight and passengers. So, what finally interested a Chicago investment firm, Lombard, Goode & Company, in building the railroad, and it set up the Tusayan Development Company to handle the actual construction of the railroad and development of the copper mines (which, as it turned out, contained very rich copper but very little of it). Between 1897 and mid-1900, the company completed track to within about eight miles of the projected destina tion along the rim of the canyon before ending up in bankruptcy court. Over the objections of its president, who wanted nothing to do with this Santa Fe & Grand Canyon Railroad (SF&GCRR), the Santa Fe System board of directors had advanced the venture a lot of sec ond-hand rail for which it had not been paid. Then, in 1901, when the bankruptcy court put
CRM No 10—1999 15 the SF&GCRR up for sale, the Santa Fe System along any railroad in the United States. bought it as the only way to recoup the cost of Beginning with the opening of El Tovar in the 56 track miles of rail they had advanced the January 1905, the Fred Harvey firm took over line. Then, the Santa Fe System went on to com operation of the company's hotels, lodges, sou plete the SF&GCRR to the rim in mid- venir shops, and restaurants at the Grand September 1901, and reorganized it as a nearly Canyon. The railroad owned and maintained all wholly owned subsidiary, the Grand Canyon the buildings and structures; the Fred Harvey Railway. firm operated them. But while the railroad itself At the rim, in what the railroad called published the booklet on El Tovar annually from "Grand Canyon Station" and eventually simply 1905 until World War I, the Fred Harvey firm "Grand Canyon" (now Grand Canyon Village), began to issue its own parallel series of promo the railroad had acquired the old Bright Angel tional publications on the Grand Canyon. One Hotel. But, needing a more upscale hostelry, it such publication, "Trails, Drives and Saddle constructed between 1902 and January 1905, a Horses," was soon retitled "Trails and large, rustic log destination resort hotel called El Automobile Drives," as motor vehicles made Tovar. The company had intended to convert the their appearance on the roads around the Grand old Bright Angel into employee quarters. But, Canyon. with access by rail available, passenger traffic to But it was the railway that, in 1914, con the Grand Canyon escalated so fast that the com structed the West Rim Drive. Around the same pany needed a resort for less wealthy tourists to time, it improved and extended existing roads complement El Tovar. It converted the Bright stretching east to Grand View and ultimately to Angel Hotel into Bright Angel Camp, a lower- "Painted Desert View," then ran tours along both cost tourist facility at the rim, and constructed rims in coaches or buggies and later motor buses, new employee quarters elsewhere. and rented horses to groups staying at El Tovar. Then the railway began to promote travel By the time of American entry into World to the Grand Canyon. The Santa Fe System actu War I, the railway had developed Grand Canyon ally had begun doing so in 1891, publishing a lit as a destination resort to replace its failed destina tle booklet that year and the next called "The tion resort in New Mexico, the Montezuma Grand Canon of the Colorado River." Hotel (briefly renamed the Phoenix having been Bankruptcy interrupted its publication, which rebuilt after one of two major fires), at Las Vegas did not resume until 1897. It then continued Hot Springs. By then, Fred Harvey, if not the each year, with a change in title to "The Grand Santa Fe System, had begun to think in terms of Canon of Arizona," through 1901. Beginning in turning the Grand Canyon into a national park, 1902, after acquisition and completion of the and, in 1919, succeeded in getting Congress and line, the railway put out a much more impressive the president to create Grand Canyon National book on the Grand Canyon, available at first in Park. The railroad had already been in place for both hard and soft cover, and reprinted in 1906 18 years, and its design for the development at and 1909 in paperback editions. Beginning also Grand Canyon Station formed a core around in 1902, the railway published each year—some which the National Park Service has had to plan, times with multiple printings—a smaller pam including in the General Management Plan now phlet called "Titan of Chasms," which continued in progress. until interrupted by World War I. (The railroad For, in the century since its inception, the also issued an order in 1902 changing the railroad itself, its tracks, its hotels and lodges, its spelling from the Spanish "canon" to "canyon" in employee quarters, its mule barns, its tourist rest all publications and documents.) In later years, it stops and souvenir shops, its Phantom Ranch at published a pamphlet called "Grand Canyon the bottom of the Canyon, even its powerhouse Outings" which, between the two world wars, and laundry building, have all become historic. A superseded "Titan of Chasms." number of the buildings are National Historic The Fred Harvey Company had been allied Landmarks due to their distinguished rustic with the Santa Fe System for years, operating architecture, which set a model that inspired the depot lunch rooms and hotels and, later, dining National Park Service's own rustic designs. cars on the Santa Fe, and giving that railroad a After World War II, the automobile and reputation for the best food service and hostelries interstate highways cut so far into railroad pas-
16 CRMNo 10—1999 Grand Canyon senger traffic that it became a depot, April losing proposition for the 1915. Courtesy Interstate company. Finally, in 1968, Commerce the AT&SF, which had Commission. absorbed the Grand Canyon Railway in the 1920s, discon tinued the passenger train to the Grand Canyon. For a few more years, the railway oper ated freight trains, making a modest profit on the long haul of uranium ore from the Orphan Mine to Canon City, Colorado. The company ran its last train to the rim, a work train, in the summer of 1974. The tracks lay idle from 1974 until 1989, Since that time, the second Grand Canyon and several miles of track were even dismantled Railway has been a roaring success. The company and removed. put a second, and eventually a third steam loco motive into service, as well as several diesel-elec- But, beginning about 1984, one of several tric locomotives. For awhile it operated a won efforts to purchase and revive the railway, the one derful heavyweight Pullman green parlor lounge commenced by the firm Railroad Resources of car, leased from the Keokuk Junction Railway, on Phoenix with financial backing from Max the end of its trains. Perhaps most astonishing, it Biegert, started to make some progress. Railroad has accommodated modern passenger specials of Resources ultimately failed, but its principal the AT&SF (renamed the Burlington Northern investor, Biegert, took on the project himself. & Santa Fe Railway in 1996), pulled by the latest The company acquired three steam locomotives of diesel-electric motive power and featuring that had historically operated on the Lake streamlined, stainless steel cars which the railway Superior and Ishpeming (LS&I) Railroad near had saved for use by its board of directors and for the Great Lakes. In the summer of 1989, a sec other special purposes once it sold the rest of its ond "Grand Canyon Railway" company, resur passenger rolling stock to Amtrak. Even Amtrak recting the name of the Santa Fe System's original has run a special train to the rim on this resur subsidiary, undertook repair of 64 miles of tracks, rected Grand Canyon Railway. and clear-cut the trees which had grown like weeds in the passenger yard at Grand Canyon, Thus, the railway to Grand Canyon, which damaging the tracks and platforms. It rebuilt played a role in the establishment of Grand LS&I Locomotive No. 18, and reconditioned Canyon National Park itself, has reached the "Harriman"-style turtle-back-roofed commuter 100th anniversary of the beginning of its con coaches built for the Southern Pacific to operate struction and, within two years, will reach the on the peninsula south of San Francisco early in 100th anniversary of its completion. The rail the century. roads that served some national parks, such as Yosemite, have been long abandoned and dis Painted a most-appropriate Pullman olive mantled, but the Grand Canyon's historic rail green with gold lettering—calling forth memo road has survived and been resurrected to full ries of Santa Fe "heavyweight" passenger cars of operation. May it run for another century! the years between the world wars and before the introduction of the later, stainless steel "stream Gordon Chappell is the senior historian at the National lined" trains—these cars would make, behind a Park Service's Pacific Great Basin Support Office in San steam locomotive, an attractive train that evoked Francisco. He worked on the Historic Structure Report for memories of historic railroading in the United the Grand Canyon depot and yards in 1985 and worked States. The new Grand Canyon Railway sched closely with those who ultimately restored rail service to uled its first train to operate on September 17, the Grand Canyon. 1989, the 88th anniversary of the first train to reach Grand Canyon.
CRM No 10—1999 17 Susan Kraft Through "the Greatest Gateway to the Greatest Park" Dudes on the Rails to Yellowstone
"^ o-day I am in the Yellowstone reach the edge of Yellowstone. This feat was per Park, and I wish I were dead," haps the culmination of an intimate relationship, wrote a young and melodramatic dating back to 1871, between Northern Pacific JL Rudyard Kipling in 1889. "The (NP) and land that would become Yellowstone train halted at Cinnabar station, and we were National Park. Behind the belief that an area of decanted, a howling crowd of us, into stages, var such mystery and curiosity should be set aside for iously horsed, for the eight-mile drive to the first all to enjoy were some simple business goals. spectacle of the Park.... The young India-born According to A. B. Nettleton, office manager to a Englishman was not yet famous for his words, Northern Pacific promoter, one William Darrah but he nonetheless penned a memorable account Kelley suggested having Congress "pass a bill of an early trip to Yellowstone, beginning with reserving the Great Geyser Basin as a public park his arrival on a train. It was the fourth of July and forever. ..** Kelley was himself a member of Kipling had detrained a few miles from Gardiner, Congress and a NP investor. Others associated Montana, outside the north entrance to with NP would quickly join him in his thinking, Yellowstone National Park, with throngs of flag- seeing the potential for profit in delivering waving American "trippers." The 25-year-old tourists to the door of (if not directly into) this Kipling went on to describe a buggy ride through unusual area of growing renown. The the park with two "old people," including a hus "Wonderland of the World," as NP General Postcard show band who lamented the "dreffel waste of steam Passenger Agent Charles S. Fee would soon ing Northern power" represented by the park's geysers while his describe it, was big business. Pacific train, wife announced that she now had proof of hell to By the time of Kipling's visit, Northern depot, and pond in Gardiner, take home to an acquaintance who enjoyed danc- Pacific had been delivering Yellowstone-bound Montana, with ing2/ passengers to Cinnabar, Montana, several miles the Roosevelt The vessel from which Kipling had been from the park border, for six years. By 1903, the Arch at back. Courtesy "decanted" for his hellish trip through paradise railroad had worked through the litigation that Yellowstone was a train on the Yellowstone Park Line of the had prevented it from taking passengers to the National Park. Northern Pacific Railway, the first railroad to park's northern doorstep, Gardiner, Montana. When President Theodore Roosevelt visited Yellowstone early in the season in 1903, however, his train, including his own railway car, halted on a siding, as the new tracks were not yet ready for use. The rustic NP depot in Gardiner was in place, however, and would soon be joined by the edifice of which Roosevelt laid the cornerstone during his visit. The Roosevelt Arch, completed by the Army Corps of Engineers, represented an attempt to spruce up Gardiner, a town in which, not long before, most residents had lived in tents.' Other schemes aimed at beautification included a pond just outside the arch. The rail road even considered fashioning the pond in the shape of its logo, the monad, and stocking one
18 CRM No 10—1999 color offish on the "yin" side and another on the needed to make Cody the park's eastern gateway yang. and bring the dudes to Yellowstone wasn't com The NP branch line to Yellowstone pleted until several years later. In 1924, members stemmed south from Livingston, Montana. In an of the Cody family were photographed in front 1887 letter to her aunt in Dexter, Iowa, visitor of the railroad's Burlington Inn. Probably in Hattie Shober paused from her account of "pur town for the dedication or grand opening of the loin [ing] a few specimens" from the park when inn, they were relatives of William F. "Buffalo the "guards" were not looking to describe her ride Bill" Cody, the force behind the spur line that on the branch line. The train cut through now brought the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Paradise Valley, later creating a comparison in her Railroad to the town that took his name. mind between the sights en route to the park and However, before the east entrance road was the park itself. With impressive views of the ready for use, the Oregon Short Line, a sub Yellowstone River, a smorgasbord of geological sidiary of the Union Pacific Railroad, reached features, snow-tipped mountains, and a variety of Yellowstone's west entrance, just over the wildlife, Paradise Valley earned its name. Shober, Wyoming border in Montana, in November for one, could not help but note: "[J]ust think of 1907. The following June, the first passenger that we were in Paradise, but left it to visit a por train arrived on the new branch line, and a tion of his Satanic majesty's domain...."6 Union Pacific employee took "'3 dudes' to Old Although Shober found a different "hell" than Faithful and back."8 From this modest begin Kipling, place names like Devil's Thumb, Devil's ning, the west entrance gateway community Elbow and Devil's Kitchenette demonstrate that known as Riverside would grow into bustling she was not alone in comparing the park to the West Yellowstone, Montana, and, by 1923, underworld. Union Pacific would claim, in its corporate mag Early in Yellowstone history, visitors like azine, that "[t]hrough this entrance over 50 per Kipling were judged to be "dudes" by the park's cent of all park travel goes" and that, in the past concessions employees, while Shober might have year "[t]he Union Pacific System carried more been branded a "dudette" or "dudine." Wives of passengers [to and from Yellowstone] than all dudes might be saddled with the remarkably other lines combined." The author of the article unfortunate title "dude heaver." (In the parlance added, "auto travel during the past year going of park concessions employees, a "heaver" was a through the West Yellowstone entrance was waitress.)' Dudes were well-to-do individuals almost two to one greater than through any other who could afford the cost of an extended package entrance into the park...."" tour and who possessed ample leisure time. They Acceptance of the apparent inevitability of arrived by train, were ferried around the park on the rise in auto tourism did not come easy to the five- or six-day tours in comfortable stagecoaches railroads, on the whole. Until the late 1920s and and buggies (and later in top-of-the-line buses or early 1930s, the railroads went on as before, with touring cars), and stayed in hotels built and the assumption that passenger service would con owned by concerns backed by the railroads. The tinue indefinitely.10 In fact, two railroads that cavernous lobby of one such hostelry, the Old threw their hats into the Yellowstone tourism Faithful Inn, might have subtly reminded the ring did so only after the automobile was a com observant dude of trestles or other railroad archi mon site on Yellowstone roads. tecture. Small wonder; the inn's architect, Robert In a 1925 brochure, the Chicago and North C. Reamer, worked for Northern Pacific. Western (C&NW) Railway advertised an The north entrance, serviced by Northern "ENTIRELY NEW ROUTE to YELLOW Pacific and used by Yellowstone's first dudes, was, STONE PARK via Lander—The Southern of course, not the only way into the park. Then, Entrance." Lander, Wyoming, 150 miles south as now, Yellowstone had many entrances, and the east of Yellowstone, is one of the most far-flung potential for profit to be made by delivering visi towns to consider itself a gateway to the park. tors to or near those other entrances was not lost The 1925 brochure featured an American Indian on other railroad companies. in a war bonnet on the cover, and romanticized In 1901, the first train operated by the the long journey visitors would make "[t]hrough Burlington Railroad arrived in Cody, Wyoming, valleys and over plains [r]ich in Indian lore and 50 miles east of Yellowstone. However, the road traditions" in a "high-powered motor stage" to
CRM No 10—1999 19 Photo from last railroad to begin providing service to a Union Pacific Railroad pro Yellowstone gateway community, the Milwaukee gram advertising Road was also one of the last railroads to continue the opening of passenger service for Yellowstone-bound visitors, Yellowstone's discontinuing service only in 1961. west entrance for the 1928 But, years before Chicago & North Western season. abandoned its line to Lander in 1972, before Courtesy Union Pacific ended passenger service to West Yellowstone 1 National Park. Yellowstone in I960; " before Burlington stopped servicing Cody in 1956, and before Northern Pacific ran its last passenger train to Gardiner in 1948,20 the golden age of the dude had come and gone. After World War II it was clear, even to the railroads, that the automobilist was not only in Yellowstone to stay, but represented an ever- increasing percentage of park visitors. Even before the war began, motorists were outnumbering rail passengers by more than 12 to one at the West Entrance.21 And the world of the dude and that of the motorist had little in common. While the Yellowstone. Also included was the combination dude felt comfortable in lavish hotels, expected to warning and slogan: "Costs a little more, but change for dinner, and often selected a structured worth it."11 Indeed, rates for the 1926 season tour package, the automobilist wanted to feel reveal that, while the "American plan tour" that comfortable and to set his own schedule, and involved either entering or exiting via Lander cost often couldn't afford an extended vacation. But $86.00, including lodging, tours from Gardiner, gradually, in Yellowstone, the motorist has taken West Yellowstone or Cody cost only $54.00, over the dude's world, to the point where dress is including lodging and meals.12 casual in even the finest of park hotels and dining Another, somewhat closer, gateway to rooms, few Americans travel to the park on pack Yellowstone was southwest of Bozeman, Montana age tours, and scores of cars squeeze into areas and about 40 miles from the park. In 1926, the that once had to accommodate only a modest car Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway began avan of stagecoaches or buses. delivering Yellowstone-bound passengers to But the dude survives. In letters; in historic Salesville (soon to be renamed Gallatin Gateway), photos showing him carrying snowballs in his Montana. Aware of the competition it faced from stagecoach in July; in the survivors among those the other railroads and other park entrances, the great edifices designed to attract him—the Milwaukee Road boasted "the only electrified Roosevelt Arch, the Old Faithful and Gallatin transcontinental main line," promising "freedom Gateway Inns, and others; in enticing railroad from soot and cinders." An early brochure also brochures assuring prospective female travelers pointed out that Gallatin was the only park gate that " [f ] ully 60 percent of the Park visitors are way "offering a Regular Park Tour from a main women and a large percentage of them travel line transcontinental railroad station—Three unescorted";22 and in the memories and stories of Forks [Montana]" with "no branch line travel," those park employees who protected, educated, and proclaimed the terminus "The Greatest cared for, and entertained those visitors whose Gateway to the Greatest National Park!"1^ In experience in Yellowstone began with a train ride, 1927, the Milwaukee Road opened a stately hotel the dude lives, and will always be a part of of "semi-Spanish design," the Gallatin Gateway Yellowstone. Inn, describing it as "the richest achievement that the hand of Man has contributed to this Notes 1 Wonderland."14 Standard park buses (or, by spe Rudyard Kipling, From Sea to Sea: Letters of Travel 1 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1910). cial arrangement, Lincoln touring cars ') picked 2 16 Ibid. up dudes nicknamed "Gallagaters" for four-day 3 A. B. Nettleton to F. V. Hayden, 27 October 1871, tours beginning in the scenic Gallatin River Record Group 57, Records of the Department of the Canyon and ending in Gardiner or Cody.1'7 The
20 CRM No 10—1999 Interior, Geological Survey, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. Dale Martin 4 Alfred Runte, Trains of Discovery: Western Railroads and the National Parks (Niwot, Colo.: Roberts Reinhart Publishers, 1994), 13. ' Richard A. Bartlett, Yellowstone: A Wilderness Livingston Besieged (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985), 44. A Railroad Town 6 Hattie Shober to Mary Shober, 4 September 1887, Manuscript Files, Accession #92-47, Yellowstone National Park Research Library. and its Depot ' Aubrey Haines, The Yellowstone Story, vol. 2 (Yellowstone National Park, Wyo.: Yellowstone Library and Museum Association, in cooperation with Colorado Associated University Press, 1977), n the late-19th and early-20th cen 101-102. turies, railways dominated inland 8 Thornton Waite, Yellowstone Branch of the Union Pacific (Columbia, Mo.: Brueggenjohann/Reese; transportation and employed between Idaho Falls: Thornton Waite, 1997), 90. one and two percent of the United ° John Arnold Cannon, "A New Highway to StatesI population. Railroads were the economic Yellowstone," The Union Pacific Magazine, July impetus for hundreds of division point towns, 1923,6,9. located along main lines at intervals usually 10 Bartlett, 92. between 100 and 150 miles. In these communi 1' Teton Mountain Route to Yellowstone Park (N.p.: Chicago and North Western Line, 1925.) Railroad ties, railroads were a pervasive presence with their Brochures, Accession #97-67, Yellowstone National extensive properties, large work forces, and Park Research Library. around-the-clock activity, focused around passen 12 National Parks Circular No. 1: Rates and Service in ger stations. The depot in Livingston, Montana the National Parks for the Season 1926 (Washington, symbolizes the town's history as a major railroad D.C: U. S. Department of the Interior, 1926), 6. Railroad Brochures, Accession #96-69, Yellowstone town and gateway to Yellowstone National Park. National Park Research Library. The Northern Pacific Railroad (NP) com '3 New Gallatin Gateway into Yellowstone Park: The pleted its main line from Minnesota to Puget Historic-Scenic Route (N.p.: The Chicago, Sound in 1883. After following the Yellowstone Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway, 1926), 4. Railroad River westward for 340 miles, the NP's route Brochures, Accession #96-34, Yellowstone National diverged from the waters to ascend its first moun Park Research Library. 14 Yellowstone through the Gallatin Gateway (N.p.: The tain barrier, the Belt Range. Between river and Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway, 1928]). mountain, in 1882, the company platted the Railroad Brochures, Accession #96-34, Yellowstone townsite of Livingston and laid out a division ter National Park Research Library. minal: switchyard, roundhouse and repair shops; !5 Ibid. fuel and water structures; and passenger station *° Carlos A. Schwantes, Railroad Signatures across the with administrative offices. Livingston also Pacific Northwest (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1993), 282. became the operating base for several branches: !7 Yellowstone Thru Gallatin Gateway (N.p.: The the important line to the north edge of Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway [1929- Yellowstone National Park, the Cokedale spur 1931]). Railroad Brochures, Accession #96-34, west of town, and the Shields River branch to Yellowstone National Park Research Library. Wilsall, Montana. Helper locomotives assisted 18 David J. Stuefen (
CRM No 10—1999 21 Yellowstone- style. Reed and Stem bound train at the Livingston designed many depots Depot, c. 1904. used by the NP, includ Photo courtesy ing Union Stations in the Warren R. McGee Seattle, Tacoma, and Collection. Butte, Montana. While they won the design competition for the Grand Central terminal in New York City, profes sional rivalries and Reed's death pushed their plans aside.' The Livingston depot's main block had two stories and a mezza nine. Waiting rooms and the ticket office occu Chicago, Omaha, Kansas City, St. Louis, Denver, pied the ground floor and mezzanines, and the Seattle, Tacoma, and Portland. Montana Division headquarters were upstairs. A Gardiner, the north entrance to Yellowstone one-story satellite building on the east was a National Park, was 54 rail miles from Livingston. lunchroom open all hours, and a similar building From 1883 until 1908, the NP was the only rail on the west housed express and baggage rooms. A way to reach Yellowstone, a fact that the com roofed colonnade linked all three structures. The pany made an integral part of its corporate iden buildings' exteriors featured red common brick tity and promotion. NP's monad emblem had framed within pilasters and trim of yellow-brown "YELLOWSTONE PARK LINE" on its bottom pressed brick, with beige terra cotta ornamenta edge from the mid-1890s until 1953. In adver tion and pillow-like portrayals of the red and tisements, brochures, timetables, and the annual black monad, NP's recently adopted corporate publication Wonderland, the NP emphasized emblem. The station was completed in the sum Yellowstone National Park and its own impor mer of 1902 at a cost of just over $100,000.2 tance in getting people there. Every summer, Every day during the next 30 years, up to 16 trains left Livingston for Gardiner with coaches, trains stopped at the depot. sleeping cars from distant cities, and, at the end, By most measures, railroads in the U.S. an open-sided observation car called the "rubber reached their peak in the mid-1910s. In neck car" by train crews. Livingston, the approximately 1,000 railroaders The long American railway decline began comprised one-sixth of the town's population. after World War I. The rise of road transport and On the north side of town, the machinists, black laborsaving rail technologies resulted in perma smiths, boilermakers, and car repairers worked in nent cuts in operations and employment. The NP's largest repair facilities between Minnesota Great Depression accelerated changes. In 1932, and Puget Sound. In the station on the top floor, the Northern Pacific abolished the division head divisional supervisors, train dispatchers, telegra quarters in the Livingston depot, dividing its phers, and clerks oversaw operations from responsibilities between offices in Glendive and Billings, Montana on the east to Helena and Missoula, Montana. Main line passenger service Butte on the west. At train times, the platforms fell in 1932 to the four daily trains that operated swarmed with crews, workers tending locomo until 1971. The NP expanded the Livingston tives and cars, and station staff; carts stacked with shops for new diesel-electric locomotives in the baggage, express, and mail; and passengers sam 1940s and 1950s and then, as the displaced pling the mountain air. Six to eight daily main steam engines were retired, demolished the 44- line passenger trains ran through Livingston, stall roundhouse. After World War II, the trains with names like the North Coast Limited, Northern Pacific stopped regular passenger ser the Twin City Express, the Mississippi Valley vice to its trademark destination. Daily summer Limited, and the Atlantic Express. These trains trains to the edge of Yellowstone National Park carried cars to Minneapolis, St. Paul, Milwaukee, ceased after the 1948 season, replaced by busses. Rare chartered passenger trains ran to Gardiner until 1955.
11 CRM No 10—1999 Livingston's position as a railroad town and adapting it for museum use. The Livingston faded in the 1970s. In 1970, the Burlington Depot Center was formally dedicated on July 1, Northern Railroad (BN) absorbed the Northern 1987. The following year, the Advisory Council Pacific, moving Livingston in corporate rail geog on Historic Preservation and the U.S. raphy. Located for almost 90 years near the cen Department of the Interior awarded the center a ter of NP's main line, Livingston found itself on a National Historic Preservation Award for the peripheral secondary line in the larger BN sys accuracy and quality of restoration. tem. Amtrak took over most passenger trains in The museum ended its affiliation with the the U.S. in 1971, reduced service through Buffalo Bill Historical Center in the early 1990s Livingston to just six trains per week, and ended and became an independent railroad museum. service in October 1979. BN ceased freight ser Every summer since 1993, the depot has housed vice to Gardiner in 1975 and dismantled the "Rails Across the Rockies: A Century of People south end of the Yellowstone branch. The last and Places," combining artifacts, photographs BN workers vacated the Livingston station in from retired conductor Warren McGee and 1982. After BN employment at Livingston Montana Historical Society collections, and an reached a peak of 1,150 in the late 1970s, work HO-scale diorama of Livingston's shops, yard, at the locomotive shops declined until their clo and depot. A variety of accompanying exhibits sure in May 1986. Montana Rail Link began has also been mounted. In addition, the Depot operations over Burlington Northern's former NP Center hosts arts and crafts sales, an annual rail- main line across southern Montana in October roadiana swap meet, and blues concerts. 1987, and moved the Livingston train crew base The Livingston Depot Center sits in an to Laurel, 100 miles to the east. One positive active railway setting. The east satellite building development, in June 1988, was the Livingston still is a cafe. On the north side of the Depot Rebuild Center's reopening of the shops to over Center, Montana Rail Link's mountain railway haul locomotives and freight cars. hosts freight trains, helper locomotives, and yard As Livingston experienced rail decline, the switching. Occasional summer tour passenger community considered the acquisition of the for trains pause by the depot. Across the switchyard, mer passenger station. In 1982, Burlington a 176-foot tall brick smokestack dominates the Northern announced its decision to donate the Livingston Rebuild Center shops. Although station to Livingston. Within several years, the Livingston's economy is now largely dependent Livingston Depot Foundation leased the station upon automobile-based tourism and outdoor buildings from the city and arranged a five-year recreation, the town's railway heritage remains contract to serve as a summer-season satellite alive in the station overlooking the busy tracks Railroad station museum of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, in and the shops complex. at Livingston, Montana. Photo Cody, Wyoming. The extensive renovation, byE. V. requiring over $700,000 of government grants, Notes Steadman, local contributions, and BN money, included the ' Deborah Nevins, general ed., Grand Central 1895, courtesy Terminal: City within the City (New York: The reversal of mid-century alterations, strengthening Yellowstone Municipal Art Society of New York, 1982), 12-16, National Park. the structure to current seismic requirements, 23, 28, 142. 2 L. P. Schrenk, "A New Depot for Livingston" (Paper prepared for the Livingston Depot Center, Livingston, Montana, 23 March 1993), 1-5.
References Renz, Louis Tuck. The History of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Fairfield, Washington: Ye Galleon Press, 1980. History of Park County, Montana, 1984. Livingston, Montana: Park County Historical Society, [1984].
Dale Martin is a historian, archeologist and cultural resources consultant. A life-long resident of Northern Pacific Railway country, he now lives in Bozeman, Montana.
CRM No 10—1999 23 Robert C. Hoyle Anthony, in June of 1906, and the line was extended to the West Entrance of Yellowstone National Park (to a town that would soon be re named West Yellowstone), by late 1907. To the Tetons by Train Passenger service to the park began the following season.^ It was this Oregon Short Line branch that was ultimately to lead to a close rail connec A Shoshone Indian lit a signal fire on the banks of tion to Jackson Hole. the Wind River in Wyoming. A trapper made the Conant Pass, at the extreme northern end rounds of his oval of traps and brought back a of the Teton Range, had long been an entry route fortune in bear and silver fox. A little handful of into Jackson Hole used by numerous American pioneers blazed a way through the lodgepole pines. Indian tribes for their seasonal journey into the valley. By the 1830s, when Jackson Hole had A cowboy cantered across a free range and sang to become an important crossroads of the fur trade, his cattle at midnight. Then across the last page of trappers entering the valley from the northwest the frontier, through its color of romance and often used this old Indian trail. With the comple adventure, came the railroad. 1 tion of the rail line to the West Entrance of Yellowstone, rumors soon surfaced concerning a y the time this introduction to a railroad over this historic entry into Jackson Hole Chicago and North Western to provide service to the South Entrance of Railway travel brochure advertis Yellowstone. These rumors were fueled in part by Bing the "Teton Mountain Route" U.S. Forest Service reports of railroad surveys to Yellowstone National Park was written in headed toward Conant Pass. Also, by 1909, the 1922, the railroad had indeed crossed most of the Chicago and North Western Railway had reached last pages of the frontier. However, a railroad had Lander, Wyoming, about 150 miles east of never entered Jackson Hole, Wyoming and the Jackson Hole, with speculation that the line Teton country, and even a close rail connection would be extended westward toward Togwotee to the valley often called "the last of the old Pass.7 Abundant rumors also told of railroad sur West" had been a reality for only a few years. vey crews heading toward the town of Jackson The possibility of a railroad for Jackson from the south. Without a doubt, many such sur Hole can be traced back to many early rumors— veys did occur, but were either purely speculative some based in fact, others purely fictional. The or done to maintain rights to potential routes; they Yellowstone Park Branch Line of the Northern were not an indication of intended construction. Pacific Railroad reached Cinnabar, Montana, 51 Finally, early in 1909, survey crews in the miles south of Livingston, in 1883, and was Teton Valley on the west side of the Teton Range extended to the North Entrance of the park in proved to be the serious beginning of the exten 2 1902. Local newspapers reported that the initial sion of the Oregon Short Line south from surveys for this line had actually extended along Ashton. The railroad reached Driggs, Idaho, on several different routes through Yellowstone into August 27, 1912, and, with financial help from the Jackson Hole country to the south.^ the town of Jackson, reached Victor, Idaho on Additional reports alluded to the possibility of a July 1, 1913.8 This end-of-line on the west side branch line of the Union Pacific Railroad extend of Teton Pass would be as close as a railroad ing from its transcontinental main line across the would ever get to Jackson Hole. The hauling of continental divide at Togwotee Pass, west into freight from the rapidly-growing economy of the Jackson Hole, and then north to the South Teton Valley had been a primary consideration in Entrance of Yellowstone National Park.* Many the building of what was to become known as the objections to the building of railroads inside Teton Valley Branch, but an act of Congress in Yellowstone and difficulties associated with 1929, combined with the developing tourist Togwotee Pass contributed to the failure of these industry in Jackson Hole, would add another initial schemes. A few years later, the Oregon dimension to the importance of this rail terminus. Short Line, a subsidiary of the Union Pacific Even prior to the completion of the Teton Railroad, began construction of its Yellowstone Valley Branch, dude ranching had become an Park Railroad from St. Anthony, Idaho. The first important industry in Jackson Hole, and Union train arrived in Ashton, Idaho, 17 miles from St.
24 CRM No 10—1999 Pacific Railroad pas in the years before World War II, had grown to senger service to include refrigerator cars of potatoes and peas, car Victor was to become loads of grain, and hopper cars of coal, decreased a primary means of with the improvement of roads and the resultant travel to the valley's shift of freight to trucks. Passenger service to many ranches. Up to a Victor continued until 1965, when a daily pas dozen ranch cars senger train and daily mixed train last appeared would often meet the in the Union Pacific timetable. (Passenger service train at Victor for the to West Yellowstone had ended five years 20-mile trip over earlier).12 With the continued decrease in freight Teton Pass into traffic, the Interstate Commerce Commission Jackson Hole. For finally granted permission, in 1981, for the rail many years, the rail road to abandon the 15 miles from Tetonia, a road published an small town north of Driggs, to Victor. annual travel brochure Abandonment of the remaining 30 miles from touting the easy acces Ashton to Tetonia followed in 1990, and the rails sibility of Jackson were pulled up shortly afterward. Hole dude ranches by Today, the Victor depot, converted to apart its daily service to ments, still stands at the end of the Teton Valley Victor. Branch. The old roadbed is easy to follow across With the estab the rolling land of the Teton Valley, with the lishment of Grand peaks of the Teton Range forming the eastern Teton National Park horizon. The section of the line from Driggs to by an act of Congress Victor has become a hiking and biking trail, pre With a gateway in 1929, the Union Pacific Railroad began to serving at least one small part of the experience at both Victor, advertise this "new-old" way to Yellowstone via once enjoyed by the many who traveled to the Idaho, and West Yellowstone, its Oregon Short Line subsidiary to Victor and Tetons by train. Montana, the bus service over Teton Pass, heralded as "one of Union Pacific the most spectacular observation points in the Notes could offer trav 1 West."10 Yellowstone National Park visitors were Teton Mountain Route to Yellowstone Park (Chicago: elers a package Chicago and North Western Railway, 1922). that included given the option of entering the park via Jackson 2 Yellowstone (St. Paul: Northern Pacific Railway, both Grand Hole and Grand Teton National Park and leaving 1933). Teton and via the West Entrance and railhead at West Yellowstone ' Livingston Daily Enterprise, 3 September 1883. National Parks Yellowstone. Early Union Pacific brochures * Livingston Daily Enterprise, 27 October 1883. with a minimum described in colorful detail the scenic and historic ' Thornton Wake, Yellowstone Branch of the Union of retraced grandeur of the Jackson Hole country and urged routes. Courtesy Pacific (Columbia, Mo.: Brueggenjohann/Reese, the author. that "those planning a tour of Yellowstone should n.d.), 22. 6 by all means arrange, if practicable, to allow the Targhee National Forest (St. Anthony, Idaho: U.S. small additional time required for a visit to Department of Agriculture, U.S. Forest Service, 1907). Grand Teton National Park, located close to it 7 Jackson Hole Courier, 28 January 1909. and possessing beauties differing in character but ° Don Snoddy, Union Pacific Museum, Omaha, no less magnificent and inspiring than those of Neb., personal communication with author, 1999. 1 its sister park." * Many colorful railroad publica ° Dude Ranches out West (Omaha: Union Pacific tions and railroad-sponsored Grand Railroad, 1948). Teton/Yellowstone package tours combined to 10 Grand Teton National Park (Omaha: Union Pacific produce a good passenger business for the Union Railroad, 1930). 11 Pacific's Victor terminus. Ibid. 12 Don Snoddy, Union Pacific Museum, Omaha, Passenger traffic remained brisk until after Neb., personal communication with author, 1999. World War II, when vast improvements in area roads, the growing popularity of the automobile, Robert C. Hoyle, an astronomer by profession, has worked and the ease and speed of air travel gave visitors for 25 summers as a seasonal park ranger in Grand Teton to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks National Park, Wyoming, and is an amateur railroad several other travel options. Freight traffic which, historian.
CRN! No 10—1999 2
eginning with McCartney's Hotel, Park Service, formed the Utah Parks Company to the first in Yellowstone National provide transportation and related visitor services Park, providing visitor services has to the new southern Utah parks—Bryce Canyon, Bbeen an integral function of any Zion, and Cedar Breaks National Monument— national park's infrastructure. As more and more as well as to the North Rim of the Grand visitors began coming to parks, more and more Canyon. With a line to Cedar City, Utah, the services were required. From the grand lodges to company then planned to use buses to conduct the simple comfort station, thousands of build park tours. Expanding upon experience gained at ings have been erected in the parks in a variety of West Yellowstone (as the town at the West architectural styles. Early styles were rustic and Entrance of Yellowstone had come to be called), matched the parks' surroundings, and most of the the Union Pacific began offering a variety of smaller structures were meant not to distract tours to the new parks, with some packages from the parks themselves. Later styles are more including Yellowstone. The company would also utilitarian in design, much like today's post finance the construction of new buildings within offices. the parks. Railroads played a defining role in the early Gilbert Stanley Underwood, an emerging history of national park architecture; the architect who had already designed buildings for Northern Pacific Railroad came to Yellowstone concessionaires, was recommended to Union and Glacier National Parks, and the Union Pacific to design the new facilities needed in Pacific Railroad came to Zion and Bryce Canyon Utah. This recommendation came from Daniel National Parks and the North Rim of Grand Hull, a principle planner and designer with the Canyon National Park, as well as to the West National Park Service's landscape division who Entrance to Yellowstone National Park. These are had met Underwood when both attended the but two of the railroads historically associated University of Illinois. Hull's recommendation led with national parks, and their legacy of early to a relationship between the Union Pacific and national park building development has left the Underwood that lasted throughout the 1920s nation and the world a truly outstanding collec and early 1930s. This association would lead to tion of architectural works. the design and construction of buildings in Bryce The Union Pacific Railroad began its rela Canyon and Zion National Parks, on the North tionship with the western national parks on a Rim of the Grand Canyon, and in Cedar Breaks large scale with the construction of a branch line National Monument. Underwood also designed of the Oregon Short Line Railroad. This line the cafeterias at Kanab, Utah (a hub town for extended from Ashton, Idaho to the west bound Bryce, Zion and the North Rim), and West ary of Yellowstone Union Pacific National Park in Dining Lodge in Montana. Begun in West Yellowstone, 1905 and completed in Montana, built in November of 1907, the 1925. line saw its first visitors arrive at Yellowstone National Park on June 11, 1908. In 1923, Union Pacific, at the request of the National
26 CRM No 10—1999 cafeteria on the North Rim, like that at Bryce Canyon, is still in use as a store with camper ser vices but not as a cafeteria. The Kanab dining facility is perhaps the most unusual of the six cafeterias designed by Underwood. The outside is not of rustic design, and the only resemblance to the other cafete rias is the rockwork on the exte rior of the fireplace. Overall, the building looks like a giant rail road barn, and is tied into an Zion cafeteria, Yellowstone, Montana. One of his most out existing house that was built in 1904. built in 1934, standing works, constructed in 1926 (although From the start in West Yellowstone, the now serving as not for the Union Pacific), was the Ahwahnee the Zion Nature need to provide meal services to tourists was Center. Hotel in Yosemite National Park. apparent. Arriving in the early morning, rail pas It is easy to overlook Underwood's smaller sengers required breakfast before proceeding into buildings—dorms, comfort stations, garages, Yellowstone for their tours. In the late afternoon, powerhouses, and such—but one type of build outbound passengers would require dinner before ing that has been most neglected is the cafeteria. boarding the southbound train. In 1908, before Underwood designed six cafeterias for Union there was a town, the Union Pacific built the first Pacific between 1925 and 1934. These buildings of three restaurant facilities. As traffic increased were constructed to handle the need for meals on the line due to an aggressive promotional when no overnight lodging was necessary. campaign, the first facility, a tar paper shack, was Cafeterias constructed for the Utah Parks replaced in 1913 by a larger and more elegant Company were small in scale, due to the lower structure. This facility would also prove too small numbers of visitors to the Utah parks. The archi to handle all the traffic and, by 1922, an accom tecture was nonetheless fitting for each site. panying Rest Pavilion was built to provide a place At Zion, Underwood designed a small, for passengers to wait for a table. At that time, it pleasing, rustic structure with rock corners and was decided to build a large enough structure to large windows. The exposed rafters are of a handle the volume of passengers and also, proba squared scissor-truss design, and complementary bly, to make a statement about the Union Pacific to the main lodge at Zion. The meals provided Railroad's standards of first-class travel. were in the cafeteria style, without waitresses or Gilbert Stanley Underwood's design for the waiters. Today, the building houses the Zion new Union Pacific Dining Lodge in West Nature Center and provides some quarters for Yellowstone was monumental in size—some park employees. The main kitchen area has been 17,000 square feet, with about 6,400 square feet closed off and remodeled, and the fireplace is in the dining area alone. The main dining area enclosed by a wall. could seat up to 350 people at a time, although At Bryce Canyon and on the North Rim of usually it sat between 250 and 300. Included in the Grand Canyon, cafeterias similar in design the dining area is an arrowhead-shaped fireplace were located at the campgrounds and included large enough to accommodate built-in seats for camper services such as grocery stores, showers, those wanting to get closer to the fire. Additional laundry and the ever-present curio shop. The facilities included a kitchen large enough to pre cafeteria at Bryce is no longer used for its original pare some 1,000 meals per day, a separate bakery, purpose, and the building has been modified to a a butcher shop, an employee dining area, a great extent: both fireplaces are enclosed behind scullery, a linen room, a coal room, the manager's walls. It has the same exposed square scissor-truss office, and several large walk-in refrigerators and system seen in the Zion cafeteria. The exterior freezers. mimics the lodge at Bryce Canyon and only the Recent research has led to the discovery that large fireplace at the back shows the rock struc the 1922 Rest Pavilion was incorporated into the ture common to Underwood's rustic designs. The
CRM No 10—1999 27 Kanab, Utah, cafeteria, built in 1928 and tied into 1904 house on right.
design by Underwood. The pavilion, which sat West Yellowstone was formed to oversee rehabili on the site chosen for the dining lodge, was tation of the Dining Lodge and other railroad rotated 90 degrees and incorporated into the new buildings located in the Oregon Short Line building. The side entrance doors of the pavilion Terminus Historic District. Engineering and were taken out and a fireplace installed in their needs assessment studies are currently being done place. New doors were added at the ends, a rock on the Dining Lodge and other structures in facade was placed around the existing columns, cooperation with the National Park Service's and restrooms were added. The old Rest Pavilion, Cooperative Program For Architectural now called the Firehole Room, is located on the Conservation (Barry Sulam, Program Manager at east end of the dining lodge. Montana State University), and the National Operated from mid-June through the first Trust for Historic Preservation (Barbara Pahl, week of September by the Union Pacific Dining Director of Mountains and Plains Region). Car Division, the Union Pacific Dining Lodge Photos by the could not have made money. Surely, its intent References Markoff, Dena S. An Administrative History: Decision author, courtesy was to make a statement of pride for the Union West Making that Shaped Zion National Park, 1909- Yellowstone Pacific Railroad. 1981. Arvada, Colo.: Western Heritage Historical Over the years, all these cafeterias provided Conservation Inc., 1982. Society a needed service and contributed to the overall McClelland, Linda Flint. Building the National Parks: Archives. impression that visitors received of the national Historic Landscape Design and Construction. parks. As railroad travel declined in the late Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. 1950s, the Union Pacific started to scale back its McDonald, James R. Historic Structures Report: Bryce services in national park areas. As tours were dis Canyon Lodge Historic District. Bryce Canyon, continued, cafeterias were no longer needed and Utah: National Park Service, 1999. were slowly closed down. The cafeteria buildings Union Pacific Railroad Archives, Omaha, Neb. in Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks have Correspondence files,Wes t Yellowstone Station 2- 22-1922-5-1-1937, box 104. been transferred to National Park Service owner Waite, Thornton. "The Cedar City Branch and the ship, but the facility on the North Rim of the Utah Parks Company." The Streamliner12:3 Grand Canyon is still owned by the concession (1998): 17-32. aire. The cafeteria at Cedar Breaks was taken Waite, Thornton. Yellowstone Branch of the Union down, the facility in Kanab is privately owned, Pacific: Route of the Yellowstone Special. Idaho Falls: and the Union Pacific Dining Lodge is now Brueggenjohann/Reese and Thornton Waite, 1987. West Yellowstone Historical Society Archives, West owned by the town of West Yellowstone. With Yellowstone, Mont. Union Pacific Dining Lodge the exception of interior changes, the remaining blueprints. cafeterias designed by Underwood for the Union Zaitlin, Joyce. Gilbert Stanley Underwood: His Rustic, Pacific Railroad are still in good shape. They are Art Deco, and Federal Architecture. Malibu: Pangloss available for viewing and open to the public (and Press, 1989. you can get a good Chinese dinner at the one in Paul Shea is the Executive Director of the Yellowstone Kanab). In West Yellowstone, the Union Pacific Historic Center and the historian for the West Yellowstone Dining Lodge is available for conventions. Historical Society, both in West Yellowstone, Montana. Recently, the Yellowstone Historic Center in
28 CRM No 10—1999 Terry E. Maze Petrified Wood and Railroads
While I am writing, I want to say a word to you in Albuquerque west, reaching the area of the petri regard to the Petrified Forest. When we went to the fied wood deposits east of Holbrook, Arizona. Petrified Forest from Santa Fe and left the train at Completion of the railroad allowed scien tists and visitors access to this wood turned to Adamana, there was only one other person stopped stone. Scientists would examine specimens and off there to see the Petrified Forest.... As I consider write reports, visitors would take home samples it one of the most marvelous things I have ever seen to show to their friends. More and more scientists and am thoroughly enthusiastic over it, I am and visitors would come. In the early years they spending a good deal of time in telling all my friends mostly arrived by train, getting off at Adamana or about it.... Billings, Arizona, two Arizona whistle stops on Excerpt from a letter written by Dr. G. C. G. Watkins, 1929. the railroad. Often renting a horse from Adam Hanna, who had a ranch near the railroad, they would ride north to the Black Forest in the ecause of Dr. Watkins's letter, Painted Desert, or south to Chalcedony Park, as Hunter Clarkson, director of the the Petrified Forest was then sometimes called. Santa Fe Railway auto tours, But these "forests" and "parks" had few living scheduled trips to the Petrified trees. Scattered on the ground, instead, were con ForestB and Painted Desert in Arizona. These centrations of petrified wood pieces, creating a tours would never rival other auto tours of the natural carpet. In 1891, Charles L. Lummis Southwest and signaled the beginning of the end wrote that, from the railroad, "...one soon of the 50-year relationship between petrified reaches the northern edge of the forest, which wood and the railway company. This connection covers hundreds of square miles... you seem to began in the 1850s when surveys along the 35th stand on the glass of a gigantic kaleidoscope, over parallel for a railroad were undertaken. Whipple's whose sparkling surface, the sun, breaks in infi survey, in 1853, brought public awareness of the nite rainbows " Descriptions like this soon existence and uniqueness of petrified wood. began attracting more scientists, curiosity seekers, Further development of a railroad would wait vandals, and businessmen. The railroad had given Stagecoach until after the Civil War, when the Atlantic and these people easier access to the fossil logs. In departing Pacific Railroad Company (later part of the Adamana, search of quartz and amethyst crystals, eastern Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad) was Arizona, for the jewelers hired men to dynamite the logs while Petrified Forest, chartered to build along the earlier survey lines. others made petrified wood popular for home 1925. By the early 1880s, tracks had been laid from decorations, paperweights, etc. Loads of petrified wood were shipped by rail to the West Coast and the Midwest for cutting, polishing, and sale. When it became obvious that cutting petrified wood was akin to cutting peanut brittle without shattering it, the market dropped. However, one company planned to erect a stamp mill to crush the petrified wood into industrial abrasives. By this time, Arizonans living near Chalcedony Park were becoming more concerned about the destruction of the fossil forests. A reso lution passed by the Arizona Territorial Legislature in 1895 caused two townships con taining petrified wood to be withdrawn from set tlement. The railroad continued bringing scien tists and visitors to the area, while commercial
CRM No 10—1999 29 Adamana, take a leisure tour to the nearby forest, and return at dusk. Those with more time could stay over and visit the forests farther south or those outside the boundaries of the national monument. Back on the next train, they traveled to the next scenic attraction in the Southwest. The proximity of the railroad and Adamana to the petrified wood sites guaranteed this increase in visitors. With it came a growing prob lem that continues to this day. By 1907, between 1,500 and 2,000 people visited the area annually, with each person allowed to carry away about eight pounds of specimens as souvenirs. Through its initial advertising, the Santa Fe Railway added to the problem by inviting visitors to help them selves. Protest from the General Land Office interests attempted to find a way to mine the pet resulted in a change to the brochure warning of Campbell's Hotel the consequences of removing a protected In Adamana, rified wood and ship it out by rail. By 1899, the Arizona served amount of petrified wood being shipped had resource. patrons of the dropped; however, without protection, visitors, After World War I, the increase in accessi Atchison, bility by private vehicles brought a decline in Topeka and vandals, and businesses would continue the ever- Santa Fe increasing destruction of the forests. The railroad train passengers. However, the hotel at Adamana Railroad. The had been a mixed blessing. It allowed scientists was modernized and a fleet of vehicles now trans proprietor was ported guests to various petrified wood sites. In also custodian of access to study the wood but also permitted oth the monument ers to carry off whatever they could manage. 1926, the highway just north of Adamana was from 1912-1918. Increased efforts at preservation resulted in 95 officially designated U.S. Route 66. Nearly all square miles containing petrified wood sites visitors entered the national monument via being set aside in 1906 as a national monument. Adamana with many, after fording the treacher President Theodore Roosevelt, using the author ous Puerco River, venturing only to First Forest. ity recently granted him in the Antiquities Act, Despite more visitors enjoying the Southwest by created a Petrified Forest National Monument auto, in 1925 the Santa Fe Railroad and the Fred deemed worthy for its "scientific interest." Harvey Company initiated their Southwest "Indian Detours." Tourists would travel by train The result was more and more visitors arriv to certain stops, spend one or more days visiting ing by train (and later car). A hotel opened in several area attractions, return to a train and go Photos courtesy Adamana, the stop closest to the monument, to Petrified Forest on to another stop. In 1930, the first tan and serve the train passengers who disembarked there. National Park. brown Packard "Harveycar" delivered a single Following a tour of the national monument, they California tourist to the Petrified Forest. Those boarded the next train heading toward their des who followed would be treated to views of the tination. Eager to build on the increased leisure Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest. After time of American families in the 1890s and early enjoying a basket lunch, they would later dine at 1900s, the Santa Fe Railway began actively pro Harvey's La Posada, Winslow, or another of the moting Western wonders. Paintings of the Harvey inns along the railroad. Among those Petrified Forest and other natural wonders deco arriving by train were Albert Einstein and his rated their stations and business offices. People wife. He was so fascinated by the petrified wood could now visit the places seen previously only in that the railroad officials had trouble getting the paintings or photographs Einsteins back to the train on time. The tours to An alliance, of sorts, between business and the Petrified Forest were never profitable, how preservationists resulted. Railroads wanted to ever, and within a few years were dropped alto protect the scenic attractions for their customers gether. while preservationists wanted to protect the same areas for future generations. For Petrified Forest In the 1920s, the Stone Tree Inn was built National Monument, the Santa Fe advertised along Route 66, overlooking the Painted Desert. "stop-overs" where tourists could get off at Builder Herbert D. Lore purchased several sec-
30 CRM No 10—1999 tions from the Santa Fe Railway Company. The and lost cars in the quicksands of the Puerco competition between Adamana and this new River. business resulted in a portion of the vast Painted Desert being added to Petrified Forest National References Monument in 1932. (The monument became a Granger, Byrd H. W C. Barnes's Arizona Place Names. national park in 1962.) The railroad's interest in Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1960. Lubick, George M. Petrified Forest National Park, A providing stopovers further diminished. Wilderness Bound in Time. Tucson: University of By the time of America's involvement in Arizona Press, 1996. World War II, the train did not stop near the Lummis, Charles F. Some Strange Corners of Our monument at all. Fewer and fewer people rode Country: The Wonderland of the Southwest. New the train and, after 70 years of involvement with York: Century Company, 1891. petrified wood, the railroad quietly ended its con Thomas, D. H. The Southwest Indian Detours. nection. Adamana soon became a place of van Phoenix: Hunter Publishing Company, 1978. ished memories of wagonloads of petrified wood, Terry E. Maze served as the cultural resource specialist at famous people like John Muir and Albert Petrified Forest National Park for over 16 years. He is Einstein, scientists abuzz over natural curiosities, currently lead park ranger at Casa Grande Ruins visitors struggling with bags of petrified wood, National Monument in Coolidge, Arizona.
Laurie V. Slawson Copper Mining, Railroads, and the "Hellhole of Arizona"
or almost 30 years, various individ The Arizona Southern Railroad initially was uals and companies attempted a constructed to more efficiently and economically series of unsuccessful mining ven move the mined copper and silver ore to Douglas tures in the Silver Bell Mining for reduction. By 1907, however, there was suffi DistrictF, located 35 miles northwest of Tucson, cient ore being produced that, to save expenses, Arizona. In 1903, however, William F. Staunton, the Imperial Copper Company constructed a E. B. Gage, and Frank M. Murphy played an smelter about 15 miles northeast of Silverbell important role in the ultimate development of under its affiliate, the Southern Arizona Smelting the district through their formation of the Company, for which the town of Sasco was Imperial Copper Company, a subsidiary of the named. Development Company of America, headquar In 1905, two years after the Silverbell min tered in Tombstone. The Imperial Copper ing camp was established by the Imperial Copper Company was incorporated on May 15, 1903, Company, the camp's population had increased and soon began systematic mining and develop to 1,000 residents. By 1910, Silverbell was a ment of its property. On January 20, 1904, booming town, with a population of 1,118 resi incorporation papers were filed for the Arizona dents.2 The Imperial Copper Company contin Southern Railroad Company, with all stock held ued to be the primary mining operation in the by the Imperial Copper Company.1 Although the Silver Bell Mining District until 1911, when the actual date of completion is unknown, the rail company went bankrupt and sold its holdings to road began operations on September 10, 1904, the American Smelting and Refining Company, and by the end of the month had assisted in known today as ASARCO, Incorporated. transporting several thousand tons of ore to the After the 1912-1915 copper depression, Copper Queen smelter at Douglas, Arizona. Asarco began developing its holdings in the dis-
CRM No 10—1999 31 trict. By 1920, a revitalized Silverbell was popu Construction of the standard gauge railroad lated by about 1,200 miners, shopkeepers, other began with grading at Red Rock on February 17, workers, and family members. In addition to a 1904, and took seven months, with 600 to 700 variety of dwellings, the community had the men working day and night shifts. The first Imperial Hotel, the Imperial Store, a school, a nine miles of the line from its junction with the post office, a hospital, two saloons, the Chase Southern Pacific Railroad at Red Rock were and Oeltjen Dairy, a Wells Fargo office, a gro across essentially level desert terrain that pre cery, a Chinese bakery, three barbers, a shoe sented no engineering or construction difficulties maker, a justice of the peace, and a notary other than the occasional installation of small public* Law enforcement was provided by sev trestles to handle flash floods; however, the eral officers over time, including Deputy Sam remaining 12 miles of the line posed a problem. McEuen, who took cover behind an ore car while Continuing toward Silverbell, the grade increases he successfully chased Ramon Castro (who had to more than two percent just north of Jesuit Hill murdered Grazio Manzo) down an abandoned and Imperial Creek (now Silver Bell Wash). At mine tunnel. The town of Silverbell had a noto that location, a wye was constructed for turning rious reputation for lawlessness, from which it the locomotives. The construction of the railroad gained its nickname, "The Hellhole of Arizona." grade up Jesuit Hill and into the camp was With the cessation of major mining activi accomplished through the means of one-and- ties in the district in the 1920s, Silverbell one-half switchbacks (i.e., three switches), where declined in population to the point that only 45 a maximum grade of 3.4 percent was reached.' residents remained by 1931, of which only 10 Although the switchbacks solved the problem of resided within the town proper. ^ The historic the climb into the camp, they created another townsite was abandoned in 1954, when Asarco problem: the uneven number of switches meant began open pit operations and established a new that the train either had to back into Silverbell, town of Silver Bell, four miles to the southeast. or, after leaving the mining camp, it had to back All surviving company-owned buildings from the into Red Rock, more than 20 miles away. Thus, old town were moved to the new location. if the train were short enough, the wye was used Since 1988, archeological and archival to move the locomotives to the front after leaving investigations of the Silver Bell Mining District Silverbell. have been ongoing. In 1991, excavations were In addition to the grade problems caused undertaken at three sites that were identified as by the elevation of the camp, Imperial Creek had the historic Silverbell townsite, the town dump, to be crossed in two places. Just before reaching and the Arizona Southern Railroad. The goals of Jesuit Hill, a 76-foot-long, five-span trestle was this phase of the project were not only to investi built across the wash. Although the locations of gate the recorded sites and mitigate anticipated both ends of this trestle have been identified, no impacts from mining expansion, but also to pro remains have been found of any portion of it. A duce a comprehensive history of the Silver Bell second trestle, measuring 106 feet in length, was Mining District. One of the primary questions to built across Imperial Creek within the camp's be answered was: How were the development boundaries, and a wagon road was built under and growth of the Silver Bell mining industry, neath it. No evidence remains of this six-span the Arizona Southern Railroad, and the town of trestle, which is now buried by a mine dump. Silverbell related? Besides transporting ore to the Douglas and As early as May 1903, existing railroads Sasco smelters, the railroad also provided passen made attempts to establish a line to the Silver ger and mail delivery service between Silverbell Bell Mining District, but with no success. After and Red Rock, from where a connection could the incorporation papers for the Arizona be made to Tucson on the Southern Pacific Southern Railroad Company were filed on Railroad. This service continued after the closure January 20, 1904, it became General Manager of the Sasco smelter in 1910. During its boom Staunton's task to build the railroad between years, tours to Silverbell were offered to Tucson Silverbell and Red Rock, on the Southern Pacific residents, with passengers riding either on the line. By the end of the month, a contract was train itself or in converted Cadillac, Oldsmobile, awarded to Grant Brothers of Los Angeles, an Buick, or Buda automobiles that ran on the experienced railroad contracting firm. tracks. The Oldsmobile track car was known as
M CRMNo 10—1999 ous was the adverse environment in which it was located. The lack of locally available drinking water was the single most prohibitive factor in the growth and expansion of Silverbell, which was a borderline town at best. Even though the railroad was able to provide water for the small community that lived there, the opportunity for a true town to flourish never existed. Thus, the main question of the historic phase of this ongo ing research project was answered. The historic mining town of Silverbell and the Arizona Southern Railroad represented an intercon nected, interdependent system. The mining com munity could not have developed as it did with out the railroad, and the railroad had no reason to exist once the town and the mines were aban doned.
Notes 1 the "Speeder" by Silverbell residents, and was pri David F. Myrick, Railroads of Arizona, vol. 1 Unidentified (Berkeley: Howell-North Books, 1975), 384. woman and marily used for emergencies and special deliver Arizona State Business Directory, 1911-1932 dog watching ies. Arizona (Denver: Gazetteer Publishing Co., n.d.); Laurie V. Southern com The initial rolling stock for the railroad, Slawson and James E. Ayres, Copper Mining, ing into town, which was leased from Southern Pacific, included Railroading, and the Hellhole of Arizona, Southwest 1907. Train is two locomotives, two cabooses, a commissary Cultural Series No. 12 (Tucson: Cultural & moving forward car, a cook car, three dining cars, four bunk cars, Environmental Systems, 1992); U.S. Bureau of the on the middle Census, Enumeration Schedules for Young America and two water cars. Private cars also were used switchback on and Silver Bell, Arizona, 1910 (microfilm). Jesuit Hill just occasionally, including Car No. 14 and the ' Arizona Business Directory, 1910 (Denver: Gazetteer prior to backing Michigan, which later was renamed the into town on the Publishing Co., 1910); ASARCO, Inc., The Silver upper switch Silverbell. Bell Mine (N.p., 1975), 1; Myrick, 384. back. Courtesy The water cars were of special importance 4 P. A. Lewis, Silver Bell: The Hell Hole of Arizona Special to the residents of Silverbell. Because of the high Collections (Manuscript on file, ASARCO, Inc., 1980), 66. Division, mineral content of the local water, all drinking ' Arizona State Business Directory, 1931 (Denver: University of water had to be brought into the town. At first, Gazetteer Publishing Co., 1931), 44. Myrick, 394. 6 Arizona Library, this was done by freighters on wagons and mule- Myrick, 379. Tucson, William back. However, once the Arizona Southern Donald B. Robertson, Encyclopedia of Western F. Staunton col History (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1986), lection. Railroad was in operation, water was brought in 75. on the train and offloaded into the camp's water ° Lewis, 60. storage tank to be sold to Silverbell residents. 9 Myrick, 386. The level of impurities was so high in the local 10 Lewis, 60. water that the train also had to carry a sufficient 1' Robertson, 74. amount to supply its engines for the round-trip between Red Rock and Silverbell. The Arizona Laurie V. Slawson, Ph.D, is President ofAztlan Southern Railroad continued to operate under Archaeology, Inc., an environmental consulting firm located in Tucson and Denver. Since 1988, she has served Asarco's ownership, although not on a continu 1 as the principal investigator for the Silver Bell project, ous basis, until December 30, 1933. At that which involves a 5,000-acre land exchange between time, the tracks were removed and sold, and the Asarco and the Bureau of Land Management. Sasco smelter was dismantled. The establishment, growth, and eventual abandonment of Silverbell and the Arizona For more information on Aztlan Southern Railroad were tied closely to the price Archaeology's projects, visit the firm's Website of copper and the national economy. Making the at
CRM No 10—1999 33 Geoffrey Bleakley The Copper River and Northwestern Alaska's Bonanza Railway
nce Alaska's longest and most exploring the Kennicott Valley in 1900. Pausing important railway, the Copper for lunch near the mouth of National Creek, the River and Northwestern partners noticed a green outcrop high on a dis (CR&NW) is now largely for tant hillside. When they scrambled up to the gottenO. Following its closure in 1938, its running spot, they found a fabulously rich deposit, which stock was sold, its track was salvaged, and much they accurately dubbed the "bonanza."2 of its roadbed was reclaimed by nature. A young mining engineer named Stephen Nevertheless, the CR&NW remains one of the Birch soon purchased a controlling interest in the region's more significant historic features. Not property and established the Alaska Copper and only did this line facilitate the development of Coal Company to develop it. After transferring the Kennecott copper property, Alaska's single control of his firm to the Alaska Syndicate, most valuable mineral deposit, but it also helped largely financed by the Guggenheim family and J. focus a national debate over the control of nat Pierpont Morgan, Birch reorganized as the ural resources which ultimately changed the very Kennecott Mines Company, the predecessor of course of the country.1 the Kennecott Copper Corporation.^ Few Americans reached the Wrangell Pack horses and sleds were able to haul suf Mountain region until the late 1890s, when the ficient materials to build and equip the mine and international publicity surrounding the Klondike mill site, but a railway was necessary to move the discovery lured thousands of prospectors to the ore. One would have to be built. north. While primarily attracted by gold, some The Alaska Syndicate considered four possi also searched for other metals. ble routes from tidewater into the Copper Basin. Jack Smith and Clarence Warner made The two beginning in Valdez planned to use Alaska's most important copper discovery while either Thompson or Marshall Pass to reach lower tributaries of the Copper River. Both, however, Trestle construc tion in precipi possessed steep grades. Two more direct routes up tous Wood the Copper started in Eyak (soon renamed Canyon. Hegg Cordova), and Katalla. Collection, PCA 124-66, courtesy The company initially rejected the Cordova Alaska State route because it required bridging the Copper Library, Juneau, River between two glaciers and laying track across Alaska. several miles of shifting, rubble-covered ice. A route from Katalla looked promising, particularly as it would provide the easiest access to the Bering River coalfields. Katalla, however, was sit uated on an unprotected beach rather than a sheltered, deepwater bay like both Valdez and Cordova. Construction first started from Valdez, but company officers eventually moved their opera tion to Katalla. Engineers were certain they could build a breakwater to shelter ships and a wharf sturdy enough to withstand the violent squalls which regularly swept the north Pacific.
34 CRM No 10—1999 Michael Heney showed better judgment. By comparison, erecting the wooden trestle More familiar with Alaska conditions due to his over the Gilahina River probably seemed down earlier experience building the White Pass and right easy. Despite requiring over a half-million Yukon Railway, he recognized the advantages of board feet of lumber, this massive, 880-foot-long the Cordova route and started his own line there. and 90-foot-high structure was completed in just He also claimed the only feasible passage up the eight days.10 Copper River. ^ The Syndicate initially planned to extend the Recognizing its error, the Syndicate bought CR&NW all the way to Fairbanks, often referring Heney's holdings in 1906, but continued working to its Chitina-Kennecott section as only a spur. from its original site until November 1907, when a That effort, however, relied on it gaining access to massive storm destroyed most of its facilities at the Bering River coalfield, which the company Katalla. The company subsequently relocated to meant to develop as an inexpensive source of fuel. Cordova and hired Heney to construct its grade." Unfortunately, the government had imposed a Although only 195 miles long, the CR&NW 160-acre limitation on coal claims and, when large was an engineering marvel. On a scale similar to concerns like the Syndicate tried to circumvent the the later Alaska Highway and Trans-Alaska law by consolidating groups of individual hold Pipeline, the project took a peak crew of 6,000 ings, President Theodore Roosevelt withdrew all men nearly five years to complete and cost the Alaskan coal lands from entry. This development, then staggering sum of $23,500,000.7 of course, was a major blow to the company, To overcome the valley's precipitous terrain, which consequently shelved its entire expansion the CR&NW elevated much of its track, placing plan. about 15 percent on either bridges or trestles. In 1910, Richard Ballinger, the Interior While many such structures still stand, three are Secretary appointed by Roosevelt's successor, especially striking monuments to the skill of their William H. Taft, attempted to reopen several of builders. the coal tracts that had earlier been withdrawn. The Miles Glacier Bridge, often called the Ballinger's action angered conservationists, particu "million-dollar" bridge despite the fact that it actu larly Gifford Pinchot, the nation's chief forester. ally cost nearly a million and a half to complete, Pinchot took his objections to the press, publicly was the route's single most ambitious feature. accusing Ballinger of conspiring with the Located between the termini of the Miles and Syndicate to steal Alaska's wealth. Taft responded Childs Glaciers, this 1,550-foot-long, four-span, by firing Pinchot, an action which so riled steel structure not only had to withstand the Roosevelt that he attempted to unseat Taft in the Copper River's eight-mile-per-hour current, but an Republican primary, and, when he lost, challenged endless barrage of floating icebergs. the incumbent as an independent. Needless to say, In order to save time and money, the con this split the Republican vote and ultimately led to tractor built this bridge during the winter of 1909- the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson.'' 10 on a wooden falsework, erected on top of the Little remains of the CR&NW today. The frozen river. As the third span neared completion Miles Glacier Bridge still crosses the Copper River, that spring, the temperature rose and so did the although its northern section partially collapsed water, causing the ice to drift downstream. Faced during the great Alaska earthquake of 1964. with losing their whole season's labor, the steel- Current plans favor converting this part of the workers managed to drag the 450-foot section route into a scenic bike path. back into position and bolt it permanently into The Kuskulana Bridge still stands as well. place. They finished just in time. One hour later, Now adapted for automobiles, it is part of the state the ice went out, taking all of their scaffolding of Alaska's Chitina-McCarthy Road, which follows with it.8 that portion of the abandoned railway grade and The CR&NW overcame another serious provides the main vehicular access into Wrangell- obstacle 17 miles east of Chitina when it success St. Elias National Park and Preserve. fully spanned the canyon of the Kuskulana River. The original Gilahina Trestle burned in Built in two months during the bitter winter of 1916, but was quickly rebuilt. While now derelict, 1910, this 525-foot-long, 238-foot-high structure its looming presence just north of the McCarthy was, on completion, the seventh highest bridge in Road adds tremendous character to the route and the United States.9
CRN! No 10—1999 35 provides an ideal site from which to interpret the National Park and Preserve (Anchorage: National remarkable story of Alaska's bonanza railway. Park Service, 1991), 140-41. 5 Hunt, 141; Elizabeth A. Tower, Big Mike Heney. Notes Irish Prince of the Iron Trails (Anchorage: Elizabeth 1 Tower, 1988), 32-35. For a more thorough analysis of the railways 6 regional impact, see Lone E. Janson, The Copper Tower, 35-37. Spike (Anchorage: Alaska Northwest Publishing Howard Clifford, Rails North. The Railroads of Company, 1975). For more on its construction, see Alaska and the Yukon (Seattle: Superior Publishing Alfred O. Quinn, Iron Rails to Alaska Copper Company, 1981), 148. 8 (Wilmington, NY: D'Aloquin Publishing Company, E. E. Swergal, "History of Alaska's Longest Railway," 1997). Alaska-Yukon Magazine 11: 2 (March 1911): 17-18; 2 Johansen, 30. William Douglass, "A History of the Kennecott 9 Mines," typescript, Douglass Collection, University William Alley, "Steel Rails and Ice: Alaska's Copper of Alaska-Fairbanks, 4. The Kennicott River was River and Northwestern Railway," Railroad History 168 (Spring 1993): 65. named for Robert Kennicott, one of the first 10 Americans to explore Alaska. Kennicott's name was Ibid., 67. 1 eventually given to the region's largest copper pro ' George E. Mowry, The Era of Theodore Roosevelt and ducer as well, but was spelled "Kennecott," the style the Birth of Modern America (New York: Harper later adopted by the Kennecott Copper Torchbooks, 1962) 250-57. A later, more complete, Corporation. and better-reasoned examination of the issue in the ' Elizabeth A. Tower, Ghosts of Kennecott: The Story of 1940s cleared Ballinger of any wrongdoing. Stephen Birch (Anchorage: Elizabeth Tower, 1990). 4 Woodrow Johansen, "The Copper River and Geoffrey Bleakley, Ph.D., is the historian at Wrangell-St. Northwestern Railroad," Northern Engineer!':2 Elias National Park and Preserve and teaches local and (N.d.): 20; William R. Hunt, Mountain Wilderness. regional history at Prince William Sound Community Historic Resource Study for Wrangell-St. Elias College in Glennallen, Alaska.
Ann Kain Frontiers in Transportation Denali and the Alaska Railroad
enali National Park and rise, that any effort was made to improve trans Preserve is one of the oldest portation into interior Alaska and the Mount units in the national park sys McKinley region. tem in Alaska, having been des The Act of 1912 granting Alaska full territo ignateDd in 1917 as Mount McKinley National rial status also authorized President Taft to Park. Renamed Denali National Park and appoint a commission to "examine railroad routes Preserve in 1980, the park is located in Interior from the seaboard to the coal fields and to the Alaska and encompasses a large section of the interior and navigable waterways.. .which will Alaska Range, including Mt. McKinley, North develop the country and the resources...." The Americas highest peak at 20,320 feet. Alaska Railroad Commission (ARC) was Transportation and communication have appointed by the President to conduct this initial always been among the biggest challenges facing survey, and Secretary of the Interior Franklin Alaska. The geography and climate of the state are Lane established the Alaska Engineering major impediments to the development of trans Commission (AEC) to select the final route. portation and communications systems. Overland Based on the information provided by the travel is extremely difficult in Alaska, with its AEC, the route would run from the coastal town rugged, mountainous terrain, deep river gorges, of Seward to the south and terminate at the min glaciers, permafrost, tundra and marshlands. ing community of Fairbanks in Interior Alaska; as Subzero temperatures and the deep snow of win it passed through the Alaska Range, its route par ter compound the geographic obstacles. Due to alleled the eastern boundary of the present-day these conditions, it was not until the early 1900s, park. Several railroads, running short distances, when interest in resource development was on the were already in existence along this route and
36 CRN! No 10—1999 Another difficult section of track to lay was through the Nenana River canyon at the parks eastern boundary, north of Riley Creek. The steep walls of the canyon required a great deal of rockwork, which included blasting rock for the construction of three tunnels and chiseling a level roadbed on the canyon walls. By the end of 1921, the railroad clung to the canyon walls 200 feet above the rushing Nenana River.-' As segments of the railroad were completed, passenger, mail, and freight service were offered. In 1922, the first tourists to arrive by rail entered The Alaska would eventually be incorporated into the Mount McKinley National Park, having taken Railroad train as Government Railroad. it approaches the train from Fairbanks, ferried across the the train station The railroad route was built, for the most Tanana River at Nenana, and continued again by in Denali, sum part, through undeveloped territory requiring the train to McKinley Park Station. The last connec mer, 1999. creation of an extensive infrastructure to support Photo by the tive set of tracks was the Tanana River Bridge at author. the construction activity. Supply terminals, Nenana, completed in early 1923. President shops, and freight yards had to be built; commu Warren G. Harding drove the golden spike at nication lines, construction camps, commissary Nenana on July 23, 1923, signifying the comple and medical services also needed to be developed tion of the railroad. A month later, the along the route to serve the needs of the employ Government Railroad was designated the Alaska ees. Several railroad camps erected along the Railroad. route, such as Anchorage, grew into prosperous The railroad had a tremendous impact on communities. Talkeetna, south of the park, and Interior Alaska and Mount McKinley National Cantwell and Healy, along the park's eastern bor Park. It was the catalyst for the tourism boom. As der, are other former camps that continue to pro historian William Brown has noted, the line con vide a sense of community in the park region. nected "Alaska's interior with Seward's ice-free Although the U.S. involvement in World port; to Seattle and the rest of the world by ocean War I pulled manpower away from the project ships; increased communication via telephone and cost increases took a toll, 229.8 miles of rail lines constructed along the route and provided way and 30 miles of siding were completed by mail service; stimulated mining in isolated dis 1 the end of 1918. Construction progressed so tricts; spawned towns and agricultural enterprise; that, by the end of 1920, 456 miles of track had and revolutionized interior river transportation." been laid with an 80-mile gap remaining over Among the railroad communities develop some of the most difficult terrain. Construction ing along the route was McKinley Park Station. of three major bridges and negotiation of the By the early 1920s, entrepreneurs Maurice sheer wall canyon of the Nenana River would be Morino and Pat Lynch constructed roadhouses at required to close the gap. Hurricane Gulch of the the eastern entrance area of the park, anticipating Chulitna River and Riley Creek—very deep the influx of both railroad workers and, eventu gorges to bridge—would require length as well as ally, tourists. By 1923, Morino's homestead height. Of the two, Hurricane Gulch was included a large roadhouse on the present site of undoubtedly the most dramatic bridging effort. Morino Campground. Morino allowed others to The AEC hired the American Bridge Company construct cabins on his property, expanding his to erect the bridge over Hurricane Gulch. Using homestead into quite a complex. Duke Stubbs the cantilever method of construction, crews built a trading post there and established a fox worked from both sides, meeting in the middle, farm by 1925. With the completion of the rail approximately 400 feet above the Chulitna River. road in 1923, the park was finally directly accessi Despite the difficulties of moving steel building ble by rail. Dan Kennedy, a McKinley Park material from one side to the other, anchoring Station resident, obtained the first concession and building backstays, and ensuring precise contract for the park. He established the Savage measurements so the two ends would meet River Tourist Camp, 12 miles west of McKinley exactly as planned, the project was completed in Park Station. Tourists were taken to the camp by 60 working days.
CRM No 10—1999 37 Administration. Ohlson arranged for the railroad to transport the building materials free of charge and the Alaska Steamship Company agreed to reduce its shipping rates by 35%. The hotel opened in time for the 1939 tourist season. 5 Tourism came to an abrupt halt with the U.S. involvement in World War II. After the war, the park was once again on track as a tourist des tination. Wartime construction of the Alaska Highway through Canada (Alcan) and the Glenn Highway connecting the Alcan to Anchorage provided an overland transportation route from the "Lower 48" states to Alaska. Slowly, tourists began to arrive in Alaska via automobile. But it Riley Creek pack train where they enjoyed the natural won was not until the Parks Highway opened between Trestle spans ders of the park. In 1925, the Mount McKinley Fairbanks and Anchorage in 1972 that tourists one of the two began to arrive at the park via automobile in sig most difficult Tourist and Transportation Company took over gorges to be the Savage River Camp, expanding it to include a nificant numbers. bridged by the large dining hall and kitchen as well as a recre Today, tourists arrive at the park in cars, AEC. Photo by ation hall complete with a dance floor, in addi trucks, recreation vehicles, and buses to make the Grant Pearson, 1933-1934, tion to the wall tent accommodations. trek into the wilderness of Denali. Travelers are courtesy Denali Stagecoaches and eventually buses were used to treated to spectacular vistas and an abundance of National Park provide transportation to the camp from wildlife as they slowly make the trip to the and Preserve. McKinley Park Station. The McKinley Park Eielson Visitor Center along the winding gravel Road, constructed between 1923 and 1938, ran road. With the increase in automobile traffic, the 90 miles from McKinley Park Station west to the National Park Service has found it necessary in Wonder Lake area and provided access deep into recent years to restrict the park road traffic to bus the park. The road connected the mining com transportation as a means of maintaining the munity of Kantishna to the Alaska Railroad and primitive condition of the road in order to pro allowed for the development of a second tourist vide the visitor with a true frontier experience. camp at Copper Mountain (now Mt. Eielson), However, the Alaska Railroad remains a favorite some 60 miles into the park. mode of transportation to the park. Tourist com The Alaska Railroad was truly the lifeline of panies include rail transportation as part of their the park. Everything came to the park by train. travel packages, with hundreds of travelers arriv All supplies, equipment, mail, livestock, stage ing daily via the Alaska Railroad throughout the coaches, buses and automobiles arrived on the summer tourist season. train. Local residents, park employees, territorial Notes and federal officials, and tourists depended on 1 Joshua Bernhardt, The Alaska Engineering the train to access Interior Alaska. Commission: Its History, Activities and Organization The tourist accommodations at Savage (New York: D. Appleton Company, 1922), 33. 2 River and Copper Mountain (Eielson) were E.G. Amesbury, "Erection of Hurricane Gulch Arch rather primitive, and by the 1930s pressure began Bridge in Alaska," Engineering News-Record HA (1922): 144. to mount for hotel construction. ^ William H. Wilson, Railroad in the Clouds: The Recommendations were made for a lodge to be Alaska Railroad in the Age of Steam, 1914-1945 built at Wonder Lake, in the heart of the park. In (Boulder: Pruett Publishing Company, 1977), 79. the 1930s, the Alaska Railroad proposed a hotel 4 William E. Brown, A History of the Denali—Mount at the park entrance. Plans for Wonder Lake were McKinley Region, Alaska (Atlanta: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991), 104. eventually abandoned. 5 William H. Wilson, "Ahead of the Times: The Otto F. Ohlson, General Manager of the Alaska Railroad and Tourism, 1924-1941," The Alaska Railroad, began discussions with the Alaska Journal'7:1 (1977): 23. Interior Department for a hotel at the park entrance. In 1937, construction was finally begun Ann Kain is the Cultural Resource Manager at Denali using a $350,000 grant from the Public Works National Park and Preserve in Alaska.
38 CRMNo 10—1999 Frank Norris Alaska Tourism, Skagway, and the White Pass and Yukon Route
oday, tourism rules supreme of spectacular White Pass or perhaps continue on throughout southeastern Alaska. to Bennett, British Columbia. More than 300,000 cruise ship Towns elsewhere in southeastern Alaska passengers take the well-known often seem overwhelmed by all the summertime "InsidTe Passage" route each summer, and more commotion, because large-scale tourism is a rela than a 100,000 other tourists see the state's "pan tively recent phenomenon. In Skagway, however, handle" by air, ferry, and road. Visitors over tourism is as old as the town itself. Tourists have whelm residents for weeks at a time in the down been visiting Skagway for more than 100 years. town areas of Skagway, Juneau, Ketchikan, and In 1900, as today, tourists have been admiring Sitka, attracted as they are by the region's justifi the town's quaint architecture, wandering its ably world-famous scenery, wildlife, Native cul streets and avenues, drifting into its gift shops, ture, and both Russian and early American history. and riding the remarkably scenic White Pass rail At Skagway, located at the northern end of road. the Inside Passage, summertime tourism is clearly Skagway's history is inseparable from that of big business. Several days per week, four or even the world-famous Klondike gold rush. In the five large cruise ships plus a ferry and innumer summer of 1896, when gold was discovered near able small planes descend on the village, and the the Klondike River in the Yukon River basin, town's population can swell to four or five times Skagway was only a homestead occupied by one its normal size. Tourists browse the gift shops or family. A wild-eyed visionary, "Captain" William take a town tour and, as a highlight of their visit, Moore, and his family had settled there in 1887 they hop aboard the well-known White Pass and because he firmly believed that the Yukon basin Yukon Route railroad and head north to the top would eventually yield large amounts of gold.
Shortly after the first tracks were laid for the White Pass and Yukon Route railway, in the summer of 1898, the first locomotives arrived in Skagway. Not long afterward, the line hauled its first load of tourists—on flat cars—on a four- mile excursion to the end of track.
CRM No 10—1999 39 Few believed him, but 10 years later, the onset of winter—grim even by Alaskan stan Moore's dreams came to fruition—in spades— dards—which brought subfreezing temperatures, when tens of thousands of "stampeders" waded a shortened workday, and more than 30 feet of ashore and began streaming north to the Yukon. snow at the higher elevations. Railroad officials, By the fall of 1897 more than 3,000 people had however, pressed on, and on February 4, 1899, engulfed his homestead, and by the spring of the crowd—and a railroad train—gathered at 1898 Skagway was Alaska's largest city. White Pass summit (20 miles north of Skagway) Throughout the mad winter of 1897-98, the to celebrate. The horrors of White Pass and the route over the mountains north of town was tor infamous "Dead Horse Trail," where more than tuous and slow; to improve the route, some 3,000 horses had perished just a year earlier, had entrepreneurs built wagon roads or tramway lines finally been overcome. while others ran pack trains. Skagway, the base of The celebration having concluded, con the White Pass trail, was involved in a desperate struction resumed—slowly at first due to the race for survival with nearby Dyea, at the south frigid, snowbound conditions, then more quickly ern end of the Chilkoot Trail. For most of that as signs of spring began to emerge. North of winter, the towns along the Chilkoot clearly had White Pass, the line was in Canada, and railroad the upper hand, and Dyea poised on the verge of officials, having obtained legal access from the victory. Interior Ministry, began laying track north But in April 1898, a chance meeting in a toward the Yukon River. On July 6, 1899, Skagway hotel radically tipped the balance another celebration was in order when rails were between the two port towns. Thomas Tancred, a laid another 20 miles to the shores of Bennett London financier, visited the area in hopes of Lake. Here, at the northern end of the Chilkoot bankrolling a railroad, but he quickly became and White Pass trails, thousands of miners had convinced that building a route over either pass gathered just a year earlier to begin a long boat was technically impossible. (Several others before journey to the gold fields. Before the rails reached him had reluctantly come to the same conclu there, Bennett was still an active trail town; the sion.) But Mike Heney, a contractor familiar with completion of the railroad to that point, however, the verities of railroad construction, was also in rang the death knell to traffic on both trails. town. Heney had recently returned from a recon By July 1899, steel rails had conquered the naissance of the two trails and, unlike the others, rugged Coast Mountains, and the worst obstacles was certain that a narrow gauge railroad could be had been overcome. But less than half of the 110- built from Skagway to the top of White Pass. mile route had been constructed. To complete Legend has it that Heney and Tancred met, quite the line, railroad officials divided their forces in coincidentally, one afternoon; they talked all two: one group of workers built north from evening and well into the wee hours, and by the Bennett City (at the south end of Bennett Lake) following dawn they had cemented a deal to to the far end of the 25-mile-long lake, while the finance and build what would become known as other group headed north to the line's projected the White Pass and Yukon Route railroad. terminus, along the Yukon River, and started lay Construction of the railroad began in late ing rails to the south. Neither crew encountered May 1898, and by mid-June, crews of workers substantial difficulties, and by late July 1900, the were laying rails down the center of Broadway, remaining 70 miles of track had been completed. Skagway's primary north-south street. Fueled by a On July 29, 1900, a railroad official drove a readily available work force running into the "golden spike" at Carcross, at the northern end of thousands and by ample supplies of cash from Bennett Lake. The White Pass and Yukon Route British investors, the rails quickly advanced up (WP&YR) railroad—a line that many swore Skagway Valley. By July 21, the line—now two could never be completed—was now an accom miles long—opened to passenger and freight traf plished fact. fic, and a month later, rails extended an addi The Klondike gold rush, in full swing when tional two miles toward White Pass. Soon after, railroad construction began, was over by the however, construction was slowed by a combina summer of 1900. Those attracted to the fervor of tion of factors: steep grades, precipitous terrain, gold rush riches had migrated, by this time, to news of a mining strike in nearby Atlin, B.C. Nome in far-off western Alaska, while in the (which siphoned off hundreds of workers), and Klondike gold fields, the claims of individual
40 CRM No 10—1999 The White Pass and Yukon miners were rapidly being Route, built from bought out by corporations Skagway north which were intent on mass to Whitehorse beginning in production methods. In the 1898, was Klondike, there was no easy headquartered gold for the taking. in these build ings for more The railroad was, how than 70 years. In ever, perfectly positioned to 1981, before reap the harvest of another restoration efforts began, "gold rush" that promised they were rapidly even greater rewards. Alaska deteriorating. tourism, in 1900, was still a small-scale industry; less than 20 years old, it was the exclu sive province of steamship carriers who operated several excursions each summer manding view of gold rush ghost towns, trails, through the straits and inlets of southeastern and other resources included within the park. Alaska's "Inside Passage." Before "Klondike fever" The railroad, once the mainstay of the town's had transformed the north country, the tourist economy, is now operated only in the summer route had wound north to Juneau, then headed time. It remains, however, a defining element in off to Glacier Bay. But the gold rush, and the the tourist's Skagway experience. publicity it engendered, made tourists as well as the rest of the gold rush tide want to visit Suggested Readings Skagway. Several tourist parties, therefore, visited Two excellent histories of the White Pass Skagway during the summer of 1898, and at least and Yukon Route railroad, both of which include one of those groups rode the new railroad (in extensive passages about Skagway and the chairs placed on open flat cars) to the end of Klondike gold rush, are Ed Bearss's Proposed track. Tourists, Skagway, and the White Pass rail Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park: road have been intertwined ever since. Historic Resource Study (Washington, DC: Tourism to Alaska and to nearby Yukon National Park Service, 1970), and Roy Minter's Territory remained modest until World War II. The White Pass: Gateway to the Klondike Since then, the construction of the Alaska (Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1987). Highway, the commencement of regular ferry Readers should also see Hard Drive to the service through southeast Alaska, and the advent Klondike: Promoting Seattle During the Gold of the modern cruise ship industry have all Rush at
CRM No 10—1999 41 Gordon Chappell The Curious Case of the Buried Locomotives—or Railroad Archeology with a Vengeance
he White Pass & Yukon Route ated stern-wheel steamboats on the upper Yukon consisted of a transportation River and Lake Atlin in Canada; and the complex including a railway first American Yukon Navigation Company, which Torganized in 1897, before the operated boats on the lower Yukon River in Yukon gold rush led to the building of a narrow Alaska Territory. Eventually, the WP&YR gauge line from Skaguay (as it was then spelled), included a bus line, an airline, and a number of across the mountains into Canada to the Yukon the world's first container ships. River, below a number of portages at a point that The river and lake boats, bus line, and air would come to be named Whitehorse. line are long gone today, but the railway still Construction extended from 1898 to 1900, operates in Alaska and British Columbia resulting in about 110 miles of three-foot gauge (although it is idle in the Yukon Territory), and railroad divided into three companies. The hauls thousands of tourists off cruise liners out of Pacific and Arctic Railway and Navigation Skagway (as it is now spelled) each summer. Company operated the 20.4 miles of railroad in For much of its history, however, the rail Alaska Territory, the British Columbia Yukon way had to struggle to exist, eking out only mod Railway operated the 47.1 miles of railroad in the est profits. In 1949, the Skagway River began Canadian province of British Columbia, and the chewing into the edge of the grade or roadbed of White Pass & British Mining, Trading and Transportation the track just outside of Skagway, and the railway Yukon Route out Company (later renamed the British Yukon needed to dump some impediment to this ero side-frame nar row gauge 4-6-0 Railway), operated the 43.2 miles in Canada's sion. No easy source of large hunks of rock came locomotive No. Yukon Territory But all three railways operated to mind. However, the company had a number 60, excavated under the umbrella name "White Pass & Yukon of retired and long-obsolete 40- or 50-year-old from use as Route" (WP&YR); note "Route," not "Railway." locomotives cluttering the Skagway Yard, and riprap along the Skagway River in The WP&YR umbrella later encompassed the decided to dump five of these locomotives, along Alaska. British Yukon Navigation Company, which oper- with a rotary snowplow, along the edge of the grade to serve as riprap and protect the bank. Thus, in 1949, the railway dumped the first two locomotives at Milepost 2.5: Nos. 60 and 61, both built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works. No. 60 had been built in May, 1900, as a narrow gauge, outside-frame 4-6-0 type or "ten- wheeler," typically used for passenger traffic. No. 61, built in June of the same year, was a 2-8-0 or "consolidation"-type freight locomotive. The rail road had "retired" No. 60 in 1942 and No. 61 in 1944, and both of these worn-out locomotives had been cluttering the Skagway Yard ever since; no local scrap dealers existed, and it would have cost more to ship the hulks to Vancouver or Seattle than they were worth as scrap. Also in 1949, the railway dumped Locomotive No. 62,
42 CRM No 10—1999 In addition to dumping the locomotives, the railway dumped seven bodies of tenders in a little hollow below the Skagway City Cemetery on the side of the tracks away from the river, opposite the hulk of Locomotive No. 62, which lies on the river side. Perhaps one of these tender bodies was of the type needed for a 4-6-0. It would undoubtedly need a new wooden frame and new trucks. Restoration of the original physi cal appearance of one or two of these locomotives would not be easy or cheap, but it is feasible, and, in view of their rarity, highly desirable. The story of the White Pass & Yukon Route—and especially of the Pacific and Arctic White Pass & another Baldwin 4-6-0, built in June, 1900, and Railway and Navigation Company, which oper Yukon Route retired in 1945, at Milepost 2.3. In 1951, the ated that part of the line that lay within the narrow gauge United States—is a part of the history of the 2-8-0 locomotive railway dumped yet a third outside-frame No. 61. Baldwin 4-6-0, No. 67, built in May, 1901, and Klondike gold rush of 1898-1900. That history is retired in 1945, at an unknown location along commemorated and preserved today at Klondike the Skagway River. Subsequently, the railway also Gold Rush National Historical Park in Skagway. dumped a second-hand rotary snowplow as Here lies a rare opportunity for the National Park riprap. In time, the railroad bulldozed gravel or Service and the City of Skagway to resurrect and earth over the locomotives, and they became, restore to their early appearance a couple of the truly, "archeological sites" of a railroad nature. early locomotives of the railroad that played a key Outside-frame narrow gauge locomotives role in a part of history they seek to preserve.* were not a common type; the drive wheels were mounted on the axles inside the frames, with the Note bearings in the frames beyond the outer side of * The railroad renumbered its locomotives in the wheels, and with the driver counterweights 1899 beginning with the number 51 for old located at the ends of the axles outside the No. 1, so Nos. 60 and 61 actually were the frames. This arrangement gave the larger narrow 10th and 11th of the 51 steam and 26 diesel- gauge locomotives better balance, but smaller, electric locomotives the company eventually earlier narrow gauge locomotives did not have owned (a total to date of 77 locomotives). outside frames, and comparatively few outside- Thus, Nos. 60 and 61 were not the 60th and frame "ten-wheelers" or 4-6-0 types ever operated 61st locomotives on the railroad, as one would in the United States. Thus, the three outside- assume. Furthermore, the railway started oper frame 4-6-0s dumped as riprap along the ation with a variety of second-hand locomo Skagway River are fairly rare locomotives. tives, some of them short-lived. Nos. 60 and Locomotive Nos. 60 and 61 were retrieved 61 actually were only the fourth and fifth loco from the river and dumped on the ground on motives built new to the order of the railroad their sides outside of Skagway about a decade and put in service the year the railroad reached ago. It seems desirable to retrieve the other two completion. Some of the later steam locomo 4-6-0s as well. All built by Baldwin within about tives actually were owned and operated by the a year, the three locomotives would have inter Army but used on the railroad during World changeable parts. It would be possible to do a War II. "cosmetic" restoration of at least one of the loco motives to its original appearance, cleaning it of Gordon Chappell is the senior historian at the National Park Service's Pacific West Regional Office in San mud and rust, applying a new boiler jacket of Francisco. He first rode the White Pass as a child in the sheet metal over hardwood lagging on top of the 1950s and has been interested in it ever since. boiler, building a new wooden cab and a new wooden pilot or "cowcatcher," and providing a Photos by Carl Gurcke, 1999. tender. It would be desirable to restore the one 2-8-0 as well.
CRMNo 10—1999 43 Diane M. Garcia and Nancy L. Smith Allegheny Portage Railroad New Support for Old Arches
rom 1834 to 1854, a technological National Engineering Landmark, the park is workhorse stepped back and forth among the lesser known of National Park Service over the Allegheny Front using 11 railroad sites. Models, industrial artifacts, demon levels and 10 inclined planes to strations, and documentary evidence are obvious connecFt the Juniata and Western Divisions of the devices used to present aspects of constructing, Pennsylvania Main Line Canal. Two railroads and operating, and traveling on the Allegheny Portage three canal divisions comprised this statewide Railroad to today's visitors, but the parks best- transportation system which connected kept secret is the systematic stabilization of rem Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, ultimately reducing nants of the lines permanent stone masonry and that trip from three weeks by wagon to four days earthwork now hidden along the reforested right- by rail and water. For its part, the Allegheny of-way. Portage Railroad hoisted and hauled not only By hand labor, the mostly immigrant work passengers and cargoes but the canal boats them force grubbed and cleared the 36-mile corridor selves to overcome a rise and fall of 2,570 feet. designated by engineers and surveyors, cut Allegheny Portage Railroad National through landforms, and filled gaps. They put Historic Site, a unit of the national park system, together culverts and drains, bridges and was created to preserve and illustrate the history viaducts, retaining walls and water supply sys and remains of this, the first railroad to cross the tems, and blasted through a rock escarpment to Allegheny Mountains. Although designated a open what Appleton Contractors called the first railroad tunnel in America.
Dismantling For construction purposes, the line was process—coping divided into sections varying from 2,600 to course, culvert 5,900 feet and stations of 100 feet. All levels and 1733. inclines were numbered from west to east, but the Johnstown and Hollidaysburg, Long and Short, and Summit Levels also acquired geo graphically characteristic names. Culverts span ning from 5 to 20 feet were numbered by section and also by station, indicating their distance from the western terminus. The National Park Service owns the extant top of Incline 1, together with a two-mile seg ment of the Long Level and most of the Summit Level, together with Incline 6 through the foot of Incline 10. Engine house foundations at the heads of Inclines 1, 6, 8, and 10; 18 original cul verts and drains; and one historic tavern are stud ied and preserved. The historical data section of the Historic Structure Report for the Allegheny Portage Railroad recommended preservation, stabiliza tion, and rehabilitation of historic structures and foundations. In 1993, the architectural data sec tion described existing conditions. The following
44 CRM No 10—1999 sides, the sideward thrust of the arch will push the top up, and the sides will cave in. When sup porting its own weight and the weight of crossing traffic, every part of the arch is under compres sion. Several of the remaining culverts of the Allegheny Portage have supported the weight of many tons of earth fill and the weight of not only the traffic they were built to carry but of addi tional fill and traffic of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) where that company's line coincided with the historic alignment. Constructing an arch is tricky since the structure is completely unstable until the two spans meet in the middle. One technique is to build elaborate scaffolding, called centering, below the spans to support them until they meet. Stonemasons start at the bottom of the arch and Splitting sand year, the Williamsport Preservation Training place voussoirs on the centering. The centering stone slabs for Center, now the Historic Preservation Training supports the voussoirs until the keystone is culvert 1656 Center (HPTC), began emergency stabilization inserted. using feathers and wedges. work on two culverts. In 1995, a task directive Mortar is generally used in building an was approved for the phased preservation and sta arch, with more than one type and more than bilization of various culverts. Since then, a prior one way to apply it. Modern builders use a vari ity order of culverts endangered by time, the ele ety of techniques, generally having a joint 10 mil ments, re-vegetation, and re-engineering has been limeters thick. With the lime/water mix common established and preservation treatment is under historically, the joint can be as fine as 1.5 mil way. limeters. The trouble with this traditional mix is Training goals for these projects range from that the lime is soluble in water and does not preparation of condition assessments and treat adhere strongly to the stone. In time, the jointing ment recommendations for a historic stone struc material may perish and the block may slip out of ture to documenting and disassembling the struc position. ture (identifying, documenting, and tagging the The first duty in working with the culverts stones), constructing cut stone arches and relay is to reveal the arch itself. Trees and other vegeta ing and repointing stones in the original posi tion tend to grow over the historic fabric, both tions. obscuring it and doing actual damage. To appreciate the scope of the work, one Overburdening loads are concerns at culverts, as must understand the character of an arch. An are erosion and weathering. arch is a structure built to support the weight The culvert at station distance 1656 offers a above an opening. It consists of wedge-shaped successful case study. Its inlet had been buried by stones or bricks called voussoirs put together to erosion decades ago and slope drainage was cut make a curved bridge which spans the opening. ting a new channel across the historic trace. The The keystone, the central locking stone, bears the inlet was located by tracing it through the outlet weight of the stones pressing down from above. ruin and the mostly intact barrel vault. Removal The pressure from above in turn pushes on the of the alluvial overburden in 1996 revealed the stones next to the keystone on both sides. This inlet with 50 percent of its face stones intact. pressure, or thrust, is relayed from stone to stone Reconstruction of the missing features was deter down both sides of the arch until it reaches the mined to be a worthwhile effort and that work bottom blocks, called springers, and then is car was undertaken in 1997. ried down the piers to their foundation and into Stone for the reconstruction was obtained the ground. If the arch is too long or if the piers from the Briar Hill Quarry of Glenmont, Ohio at the ends are too light, the outward thrust will because it is working stone from the same geo push the sides out and the top will cave in. If the logic formation as is found at the Portage arch is too light at the top, or too heavy at the Railroad. Freshly quarried stone is preferred
CRM No 10—1999 45 because its performance in cutting and shaping is A centering constructed of three three-quar more predictable than recovered or re-used stone. ter-inch thick plywood ribs was cut to match the Stone came from the quarry in large slabs of radius of the arch. The three ribs were connected thickness defined by the existing coursing of the by a pair of two-by-fours laid flat to act as bear culvert wall. Weighing over 1,200 pounds, these ing points for four bottle jacks that supported the slabs were five to six feet long, 22 to 36 inches centering once it was set. Bottle jacks allowed wide, and 11, 13, and 15 inches thick. From the adjustments to fine-tune the plumb and level slabs, stones of random lengths were cut and position of the centering and allowed for the cen faced using traditional hand tool methods. tering to be easily removed after the work was A short assignment of using traditional complete. feather and wedge tools to cut the large slabs into Mortar was used in the re-assembly of individual stones demonstrated to the HPTC 1656. The mixture chosen was one part gray crew the labor-intensive and often frustrating Portland cement, one part hydrated lime, and six methods their 19th-century counterparts likely parts CI44 masonry sand. Archeology on the used. For the most part, however, the stones were Portage remains suggested that some stone work cut using a gas powered masonry saw outfitted was laid with little or no mortar, while other con with a dry cut diamond blade, then split using tractors chose to use their favorite mixture of wedges from the feather and wedge sets. adhesive. With the culvert's historic function of Stonemason Rene Laya was the instructor, routing water under the railroad trace restored, demonstrating and reviewing masonry methods conservators decided that the use of mortar for the HPTC crew. Various size handsets, bull would improve maintainability. points, toothing chisels, and tracers were used to Once the voussoirs and keystone were in dress the new stone. In two and a half days, three place, the related backfill and drainage concerns masons dressed approximately 30 linear feet of addressed, and the mortar set, the centering was 11-inch-thick stone blocks with both curved and removed. The inlet area was regraded and seeded straight faces. and the continued functioning of 1656 ensured. To speed production, the crew switched to A considerable amount of work went into pneumatic stone carving tools that would still the building of the Allegheny Portage Railroad; replicate historic textures. Use of a four-point preservation of its features often requires a similar brush chisel and a machine point was an accept kind of persistence. Using a combination of his able alternative to a hand point method. toric and modern tools and construction meth Instead of the wooden stone sleds the ods, today's conservators can safely and efficiently portage workers used to move rock, the HPTC match the fabric of historic masonry while crew used cranes and a skidsteer loader. The strengthening and repairing the historic structure. stones were cut at the park maintenance area, Additional benefits in the form of interpre Dismantled cul vert—backer loaded onto a stake body truck and taken to the tive material accrue with each repair. Project- wall exposed, culvert. Cranes and a loader offloaded the truck related research has the potential to add to what culvert 1733. and helped to place the stones into culvert 1656. is known about the people associated with the line and with industries, commercial ventures, and communities affected by the line.
Diane M. Garcia is an interpretive park ranger at Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site and a 15-year veteran of a variety of national park areas.
Nancy L. Smith is the cultural resource management spe cialist for Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site, Fort Necessity National Battlefield, Friendship Hill National Historic Site, and Johnstown Flood National Memorial.
Photos by NPS Historic Preservation Training Center, 1996. Courtesy Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site.
46 CRMNolO—1999 R. Patrick "Pat" McKnight "Paint and Park" The Lehigh & New England Railroad Caboose 583
teamtown National Historic Site in collection had a "Paint & Park" report done in Scranton, Pennsylvania, has over early 1999. The caboose was in need of stabiliza 100 locomotives and other pieces of tion. The past paint job done during the mid- rolling stock in its care, requiring 1980s was beginning to deteriorate. varyinSg levels of work. Time and resources do not History of the Line 583 Caboose permit a full Historic Structure Report (HSR) The Lehigh & New England 583 caboose and restoration for each piece at present. Even if was one of a fleet of five (series 580-584) steel time did permit a full HSR, with recommenda cabooses rostered by the LNE. Constructed for tions for complete restoration, the park's the LNE during 1937, in the Reading, Restoration Shop does not have the resources to Pennsylvania, shops of the Reading Company, restore all the railroad locomotives and cars in a this style of caboose proliferated in the Northeast. timely manner before others would completely The LNE, created in 1895 from the rem deteriorate. In the interim, a brief Cosmetic nants of the Poughkeepsie & Boston Railroad Painting and Stabilization Documentation, or Company, operated until 1961. The Central "Paint & Park," report allowing for painting and Railroad Company of New Jersey (CNJ) then stabilization of the structure is produced. The formed the Lehigh & New England Railway (also "Assessment of Action" (Section 106 compliance) referred to as the LNE) to operate the still prof has concurrence for the projects. itable parts of the LNE. In addition to the tracks, The "Paint & Park" report includes a brief the CNJ acquired much of the LNE rolling stock historical study researching the ownership and at a cost of $10.1 million.1 The CNJ operated revenue service history of the rolling stock to the line until 1974, when it pulled out of determine historically correct colors and mark Pennsylvania. Shortly thereafter, the CNJ sold ings for its home railroad during steam revenue three of the five cabooses to Vermont-based service. Armed with this report, the Restoration Steamtown USA.2 The CNJ sold the fourth Shop is able to provide basic maintenance and caboose to MCP Fabricators who had taken over stabilization to the equipment, and a new coat of the rail yards at Tadmor, Pennsylvania. ^ This paint. The paint is a stabilizing agent that will caboose was later relocated to a suburban back allow the car to remain in the yard with a mini yard in Bath, Pennsylvania. The fifth caboose mal amount of deterioration. The correct cos remained in service and was incorporated into metic painting will allow the equipment to fit Conrail. Conrail donated this caboose to the Tri- into the park's theme. State Railway Historical Society in 1988. 4 Painting is a common way of preserving Limited references appear about the 583 railroad equipment. While in service, most cars caboose until the summer of I960. Synthesizing and locomotives were repainted as often as once the history of this car required reviewing the his every five years. Much of the equipment at tory of the five constructed for the railroad. The Steamtown has been painted over the years. In LNE made an early modification to the original most cases its current appearance does not reflect caboose design high-mounted grab irons on each how it appeared when under steam revenue ser end that were horizontal rather than the more- vice. It is this period of time that Steamtown is common vertical^ During the 1940s, three of trying to interpret. The Lehigh & New England the cars, 580, 583, and 584, received an addi Railroad (LNE) 583 caboose in the Steamtown tional stove, resulting in two smokejacks, one on
CRM No 10—1999 47 markings added yet.8 In 1988 it received cleaning on the interior and exterior, including repainting. In reviewing the history of the LNE cabooses, there seems to be a distinctive differ ence between the modifications of the steam era and post-steam era. Images available indicate the caboose maintained its simple, assembly-line look from 1937 and into the early 1950s. The car's appearance of this period needs to be preserved. Images dating after 1960 (the post-steam era) indicate significant changes. Window awnings and kickboards appear in these photos as well. Recommendations Using the results of the research from the "Paint & Park" report it was determined that the LNE580 each end of the cupola. The LNE also added caboose, handhold loops to the top of the ladders similar caboose retained a similar appearance throughout November to its older cabooses. its operating days in the steam era. This could be 19,1967, after done with relative ease and little effect on the his replacement of During the late 1950s, additional modifica the "fried egg" tions took place. Small awnings were added to toric fabric. All bad paint and rust were removed, herald with the the windows and kick plates put on the end plat with some rusted-out sections replaced. The letters "LNE." Restoration Shop primed and repainted it Courtesy form railings. The car markings also changed. Michael The herald (unique marking for a specific rail caboose red with white markings and lettering as DelVechio. road) and car number were moved off-center. documented in historic photographs. Plexiglass The appearance of the caboose number switched windows were replaced with regular glass where from the traditional Railroad Roman to a style possible. Kick plates and awnings (post-steam era resembling New Courier. modifications) were also removed. It was sug The Lehigh & New England Railway made gested that a cover over one of the windows be more changes, adding a high visibility iridescent removed, as well as a second smoke jack be added orange disc on a black field to the cupola ends. to reflect its 1940s appearance. The latter two During the late 1960s, the CNJ replaced the recommendations were not followed at this time. 'fried egg' herald with the letters LNE, simplify One of the most significant changes made ing the markings. They also filled in the window to the caboose was numbering it as the '583' as next to the stove on car 583 and removed the sec opposed to the '580.' At some point, the caboose ond smokejack at this time. Initially the 583 was repainted with an incorrect number. retained the LNE colors, but was ultimately Numbering of locomotives and rolling stock repainted into CNJ's colors during the early within the railroad industry is very systematic. 1970s. Research tied to the "Paint & Park" report, and Shortly after pulling out of Pennsylvania, physical evidence on the caboose indicated '583' the CNJ offered the Steamtown Foundation the is the correct number. That change, and the cen opportunity to bid on four of the old LNE tering of the herald and the number has brought cabooses. They accepted Steamtown's bid of the caboose back to a steam era appearance. $6,200, plus $1,508 each for freight charges.7 It Final Product is not definitively known what happened to the The work that results from a "Paint & other three cabooses purchased from the CNJ. Park" report is by no means a full-scale restora No documentation exists confirming any transfer tion. It is a better approach than allowing the from Steamtown USA to another entity. Only structure to deteriorate for want of basic stabiliza one caboose, the 583 (though notes refer to it as tion work. Researching the appearance of the the 580 at this time), made its way to Scranton, structure during the steam era makes the result PA, when Steamtown USA relocated around ing product more significant to the site. Had the 1984-1985. In 1987 a video clip of Steamtown park decided to repaint the '583' as it appeared shows the caboose being repainted red, but no before the report, the caboose would have had a non-steam era appearance, as well as an incorrect
48 CRM No 10—1999 number. Now that the car is stabilized, a HSR 3 Doug Lilly, "Wood, Steel and Fried Eggs: Cabooses and full restoration will be undertaken in the of the Lehigh New England," Flags, Diamonds and future. Statues, 6:1, Issue 21, Lehigh New England, Nostalgia Series, Videotape (VHS) (Chalfont, PA: A number of "Paint & Park" reports have Stewart Hobbies, Inc., 1990), 45. been completed on other pieces of railroad equip 4 DelVechio, Michael ([email protected]),"Re.: ment over the last year at Steamtown. Two box Questions about LNE caboose 580." E-mail to cars, a flatcar, a gondola and two switcher loco Patrick McKnight ([email protected]). motives have received reports. Most of these have [8 December 1998]. received stabilization and cosmetic painting. If ' Dick Steinbrenner, "The Ubiquitous Northeastern the Restoration Shop had to wait for a full HSR Caboose," part 3 of 3, Railroad Model Craftsman, to be generated, only one or two of these might (September 1982): 83. 6 Ibid. have received needed work. It must be noted, Central Railroad of New Jersey "Invitation to Bid" however, that the "Paint & Park" reports are an to Steamtown Foundation. STEA 3287. interim measure, and are not intended to replace 8 Lehigh New England, Nostalgia Series. the HSR. R. Patrick "Pat" McKnight is the park historian and Notes archivist for Steamtown National Historic site, where he 1 Christopher T. Baer, William J. Coxey, and Paul W. researches various aspects of Steamtown, including its Schopp, The Trail of the Blue Comet, A History of the rolling stock, and oversees an extensive archival collection. Jersey Central's New Jersey Southern Division (The Kutztown Publishing Company, Inc., 1994), 371. 2 Bank checks information for stub numbers 2582 For more information on the LNE 583 or and 2584. Steamtown National Historic Site Steamtown's other restoration projects, visit the Archival Collection—Steamtown Foundation park's website
R. Jay Conant and R. Patrick "Pat" McKnight The Rutland Railroad's Caboose No. 28
teamtown National Historic Site in Corresponding through email from Montana Scranton, Pennsylvania, has a collec with park staff in Scranton, Pennsylvania, he has tion of over 100 pieces of railroad been able to put together a reasonably accurate rolling stock, including locomotives, representation of this caboose using computer variouSs types of freight cars, passenger cars and aided drawing (CAD) tools. The resulting docu cabooses. These pieces represent dozens of rail ment will aid Steamtown National Historic Site road companies that operated in the past. One of (NHS) staff in interpreting and preserving the these companies was Vermont's Rutland Railroad, caboose, and provide the Rutland Railroad which ran from 1860 to 1961. One piece of Historical Society with previously unavailable equipment at Steamtown is the Rutland Caboose information. #28, which has been fully restored and is on Caboose #28 is one of a group of suppos exhibit at the park. edly identical wood cabooses, numbered 25 Author Conant, a member of the Rutland through 37, built in 1920 at the railroad's shops Railroad Historical Society, discovered that no in Rutland, Vermont. However, comparison of line drawing of the #28 exists today. the length and height of #28 with caboose #36,
CRM No 10—1999 4') which currently is located in Bellows Falls, regarding railroad history with railroad museums, Vermont, indicates that the body of #28 is one- historical societies and individuals with railroad and-one-half inches shorter in length and one ing interest. Steamtown is situated in the former inch taller than #36. Window placement is also Delaware, Lackawanna & Western yard in slightly different. The cupolas on the two Scranton. The yard was once a major transporta cabooses differ markedly. The #28's cupola is tion hub in the Northeast. Now Steamtown is a fairly short and has straight sides, while #36's is hub for railroad history. taller and the sides have a noticeable slope out ward. According to a former Rutland Railroad R. Jay Conant is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Rutland Railroad employee, cupolas were subjected to quite a bit of Montana State University, He is originally from Rutland, Caboose #28, stress because of the jostling the caboose received Vermont, where his father worked in the offices of the drawn by R. Jay Rutland Railroad. Conant with during operation and, as a result, needed to be assistance from replaced fairly often. R. Patrick "Pat" McKnight is the park historian and Pat McKnight, The staff at Steamtown NHS hopes to con 1999. Scale: archivist for Steamtown National Historic Site. 3/16"= V. tinue to take part in the exchange of information
Rutland Railroad Caboose #28
Drawn by* R. Jay Conant Da-tei 6/28/1999 Scalei 3/16' = 1'
ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Many of the dimensions used In this drawing were provided by Mr. Pot McKnight, Historian, Steamtown National Historic Site, Scranton, PA. His help with this project Is greatly appreciated.
50 CRM No 10—1999 Gordon Chappell The Sacramento Locomotive Works of the Central Pacific and Southern Pacific Railroads, 1864-1999
hreatened by floods in recent which began construction eastward in 1863 from years, a change in corporate the navigable waters of the Sacramento River ownership, and obsolescence, the which connected with San Francisco Bay and, Sacramento Locomotive Works through the Golden Gate Strait, with the Pacific of theT Southern Pacific Railroad has potentially Ocean. These shops and nearby waterfront track the highest level of historical significance. The age in Sacramento constituted the original west new owner of this industrial complex, the Union ern terminus of the Central Pacific. The Central Pacific Railroad, has moved the few remaining Pacific had built eastward over the most difficult active functions of this shop complex to mountain construction that any railroad in the Roseville, California. Standing on 119 acres of world had yet attempted, reaching a junction prime real estate immediately north of the down with the westward-building Union Pacific at town business district in Sacramento, California, Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869. it is an attractive area for both city government The Central Pacific thus formed half of the and real estate interests for residential or com nation's first transcontinental railroad. Brick and mercial development, or both. Meanwhile, the timber buildings still stand in this complex of shops stand almost entirely vacant, and the city shops, which was constructed and in service and real estate interests plan to demolish most of before completion of the railroad. While the the complex. The Union Pacific has agreed to structure, reputed to be the earliest—built in lease two buildings plus a transfer-table pit and 1864 while the Civil War still raged—burned in the turntable to the California State Railroad February 1996, other portions of the complex Museum, a part of the California State Park sys that date as early as 1867 or 1868 remain. These Sacramento Locomotive tem. But that is a small fraction of the shop com are the last surviving buildings of the first Works, showing plex. The significance of the complex cannot be transcontinental railroad dating from its years of boiler shop built overstated. construction! c. 1888 with additions in 1905 This complex of railroad shops originated as The history of this complex began when the and 1914. the main shops of the Central Pacific Railroad, railroad was deeded a wetland known as China Slough for its shops, and built its first shop build ings—wood frame ones—in the vicinity of Sixth and H streets in Sacramento around the fall of 1863. The railroad prepared for the present com plex of buildings by driving pilings in four feet of water until the tops were at the water line, then filled around the pilings with granite riprap from Rocklin, California, then sand and silt from the nearby Sacramento and American rivers. The rail road then laid four feet of solid granite on top of the piles and riprap, and began construction of brick and timber buildings. The last of these reached completion and was occupied in 1869. By 1869, a total of 20 acres had been reclaimed from the slough and filled to four feet above the
CRN! No 10—1999 51 Southern Pacific, which stretched from Portland through San Francisco and Los Angeles to Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and ultimately, New Orleans. They served one of the nation's greatest railroad systems. Most American railroads purchased their locomotives from a gradually shrinking number of locomotive builders, such as Burnham, Parry, Williams and Company's Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia; the Rodgers Locomotive Works in Paterson, New Jersey; the Schenectady Locomotive Works in Schenectady, New York; H. K. Porter & Company in Pittsburgh; the Mason Machine Works in Taunton, Massachusetts; and the Lima Locomotive Works in Lima, Ohio. Most of these concerns became consolidated dur ing the 20th century into the Baldwin Locomotive Works and the American Locomotive Company, though the number Sacramento water line, a job that kept more than 100 teams would proliferate again briefly with the advent of General Shops, of animals at work. Southern Pacific diesel-electric locomotives before again shrinking Railroad. Interior The buildings in this complex with Central to a minimum. But, as far back as the 1870s and of locomotive Pacific associations are also associated with the 1880s, a few major railroads undertook to design machine/erect "Big Four" of California entrepreneurs: Collis ing shop. Note and build their own locomotives, generally while Potter Huntington, Mark Hopkins, Charles California still buying others from established locomotive- Northern Diesel- Crocker, and Leland Stanford. The latter was des building firms. The Central Pacific and later electirc locomo tined to become a California governor and tive no. 201. Southern Pacific railroads were among those few founder of a great university named for his late which built their own locomotives, and it was at son, Leland Stanford, Jr. the Sacramento Shops that they undertook loco Having built the Central Pacific (which in motive design and construction, principally 1870 was extended to the shores of San Francisco under the direction of a talented staff of mechan Bay and, by ferryboats, to San Francisco itself), ics headed by General Master Mechanic Andrew the Big Four in subsequent years began another J. Stephens. This activity lent the Sacramento project, the Southern Pacific Railroad. The Shops its later name: the Sacramento Locomotive Southern Pacific built first to southern California, Works. Thus, this shop complex was one of the then eastward across Arizona and New Mexico few railroad-owned and operated shops in the Territories in the 1870s and 1880s to a junction nation in which a railroad company designed and in Texas with a new subsidiary of the Southern built its own locomotives. It started with effi Pacific, the Galveston, Harrisburg and San cient, standard 4-4-0s, of which it began 10, the Antonio Railway. Through that railway, the first completed in July, 1872. It went on to build Southern Pacific eventually acquired trackage all 4-6-0s, 2-8-0s, and many other types, but also the way to the Gulf Coast via the Mississippi built experimental locomotives such as No. 229, River at New Orleans. Similarly, through con an 1882 4-8-0 that proved so successful that the struction by subsidiaries operating under other railroad ordered 20 more to the same specifica names, and by buying up independent short lines, tions from a commercial locomotive builder, the Southern Pacific extended itself northward to Cooke. A less successful experiment was No. 237, the Columbia River at Portland, Oregon. Because El Gobernador (Spanish for "The Governor," its corporate structure was more flexible and use referring to Leland Stanford, Sr.), a massive 4-10-0. ful for the purpose of such expansion, the Between 1872 and 1937, the shops built more Southern Pacific eventually even swallowed up the than 200 steam locomotives. Thus, the old Central Pacific Railroad. Thus, the shops in Sacramento Locomotive Works is a rare surviving Sacramento became not merely the main shops of example of a railroad shop complex in which the Central Pacific (stretching from San Francisco to Ogden, Utah), but also the main shops of the
^1 CRMNo 10—1999 locomotives actually were designed and built, not The northeast corner of the Erecting Shop, merely repaired and remodeled. constructed in 1868 as a machine shop, remains, According to Walter Gray, a recent director enlarged to the west by construction of a later of the California State Railroad Museum, the sys third shop bay and also extended further south. A tem shops of the Southern Pacific Railroad consti transfer table was installed to the west of it, and tuted at one time the single largest industrial the pit of that transfer table still is in place today, complex on the Pacific Coast, and probably west with its rails. The transfer table itself was donated of the Rocky Mountains, for a number of to the California State Railroad Museum and has decades. It employed as many as 7,000 people at been dismantled and stored. It could easily be one time. Here, the railroad not only built, reinstalled. Transfer tables are far more rare than repaired, remodeled, and maintained railroad turntables! locomotives and passenger and freight cars, but Also built in 1868 and later used as a wheel undertook many other activities. The railroad had shop, the Car Shop Mill was erected of brick and its own glass manufacturing plant, the products of timbers. Adjacent to it, the railroad built a paint which can be seen in the older rolled glass in shop, also a brick building, where cars from the many of the shop buildings. It had a sawmill and car shop were painted. Nearby, in 1868, the rail planing mill in which logs from Oregon and road built a blacksmith shop, in later years used northern California railroad timberlands were as a rod shop, a welding shop, a machine shop, milled into bridge timbers and finished lumber and to house a repair gang. A car machine shop for construction of railroad bridges and buildings built in 1888 later served as a locomotive wheel across the system, and probably also for use in shop annex. A car shop built in 1872 served dur passenger and freight car construction or repair. ing the 1980s as a rotating shop and air room. In The railroad had both brass and iron foundries to this building, mechanics worked until recently on turn out car wheels, wheel bearings, and other electric motors and generators of diesel-electric components. It manufactured the drive shafts and locomotives, and locomotive airbrake equipment. other machinery of San Francisco Bay ferryboats The railroad built the Passenger Car Truck owned by the company, and did job work for Shop in 1888 as an extension of the Car Shop; it many other companies. In fact, there was little of may have incorporated a hayloft for the horses a mechanical nature that these shops did not do. once used to move the original car transfer table As of the beginning of 1999, the shops still adjacent to the building between 1872 and 1895. Interior of loco possessed much integrity. The 29-stall round In 1873, the railroad erected a new paint shop, motive machine/erect house built in 1868 unfortunately was torn down which it enlarged in 1892 and later used as a car ing shop, built in the late 1950s to make room for a new build shop. 1868-1869, with ing, but the last of several turntables that served At the western edge of the complex, the additions in 1875, 1888 and that historic roundhouse is still in place, a rare railroad in 1888 tore down its 1872 boiler shop 1905. survivor. in order to install a second transfer table, and built along its west side a truly massive new boiler shop. This is the building, largely of corru gated metal exterior on a massive timber frame, whose clerestory today carries in large letters on its west side the designation "SACRAMENTO LOCOMOTIVE WORKS." These are some of the key historic buildings which constitute the shop complex today, although there are others: the stores building, to the northeast; the sawmill and planing mill, far ther east; a number of buildings along the south edge of the complex; and various historic build ings interspersed among those already men tioned. The whole complex consists of 198 acres and 30 major buildings. As late as 1953, the shops employed 4,130 people, including 947 machinists, 233 boilermakers, 353 blacksmiths,
CRM No 10—1999 53 323 sheet metal workers, and 1,382 carmen. The (March 1939): 26-31, and photographs opposite 13 whole atmosphere and feel of the shop complex is and 17. that of late-19th- and early-20th-century indus Ground Plan of Shops at Sacramento, California, Southern Pacific Company, January 15, 1988. try. While machinery has come and gone, and the California State Railroad Museum Library. shops dealt in later years with diesel-electric and "Iron Work at Sacramento." Mining and Scientific Press even diesel-hydraulic locomotives, the buildings 25:25 (December 21, 1872): 394. themselves did not experience much change. It is "The Late General Master Mechanic of the S.P.R.R." as if, architecturally at least, the complex had Mining and Scientific Press 55:9 (March 3, 1888): 137. "The Pacific Railroad Terminal Shops at Sacramento." frozen in time. Mining and Scientific Press 19:5 (July 31, 1869): 72. But, without some intervention now, this "The Railroad Works at Sacramento." Scientific Press resource which has potential for National Historic (February 10, 1872): 86. Landmark status will largely be gone unless the Sacramento Shops [Map], Showing Buildings, January case can be made for its preservation and adaptive 20, 1920. Office of the Division Engineer, use rather than demolition. Southern Pacific Railroad.
References Gordon Chappell is the senior historian at the National Park Service's Pacific Great Basin Support Office in San "History of the Sacramento Shops." In A Moment in Francisco. He has been closely following the fate of the Time. N.p.: Southern Pacific, 1986. Sacramento Locomotive Works for the past five years. Joslyn, David. "History of the Sacramento Shops." The Railway and Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin 48 Photos by the author.
Robert A. Rowe Pardon Me Boys, Is That the Naval Ordnance Choo-Choo?
ocated in northern San Diego massive flooding. The abandonment of the line County, California, the Naval through Temecula Canyon in 1891 and the loss Ordnance Center, Pacific Division, of the transcontinental connection wete major Fallbrook Detachment's railroad setbacks of the community, which as late as 1915 systemL played several key roles in the develop continued to press the State Railroad ment of the area and in the Allied victory in the Commission to force the Atchison, Topeka and Pacific during World War II. The contributions of Santa Fe Railroad (AT&SF) to rebuild the line. this small railroad line are just coming to light, The Temecula cut-off was never restored, and were in danger of being erased completely. but the following year another major flood wiped Homesteading in the Fallbrook area began out the remaining branch line, and, by 1917, in the 1870s. The initial impetus for the develop Fallbrook at least had a better branch route that ment of what would become the town of ran directly into town. This route enabled the Fallbrook was the arrival of the California community to export a vatiety of goods: olives, Southern Railroad in 1882. Fallbrook Station was citrus and deciduous fruits, vegetables, honey, and located on the southern bank of the Rio Santa poultry. In addition, a cannery was built in 1920. Margarita, whereas the town itself was established Throughout the next two decades, the Fallbrook on the high ground to the south. The Rio Santa Btanch, which linked local products to markets, Margarita has a long history of violent flooding was a critical factot in the atea's development. episodes; sections of the Fallbrook line were In 1940, when the eastern portion of the erased four times between 1882 and 1916 due to Rancho Santa Margarita Land Grant was selected
54 CRM No 10—1999 as the site of the U.S. Navy's new ammunition port the Navy's mission on the West Coast during depot, the presence of the AT&SF Fallbrook World War II, a mission that ranged from supply Branch was a key factor, because rail transport ing ammunition for coastal defense to supporting was considered essential. The initial contract for the large operations in the Pacific theater. By the the depot required, in addition to 77 magazines end of 1945, the U.S. Navy had constructed 171 and various support facilities, a locomotive shed magazines and 19.5 miles of rail routes. and a standard gauge railway system for side The Fallbrook Detachment discontinued tracking, sorting, and routing freight cars to the use of the railway route in 1993 when, once magazines and a transfer depot. As construction again, a flooding Rio Santa Margarita wreaked progressed, the depot was required to have a large havoc on the line. At that time, the Detachment Location of pro quantity of diverse material on hand at all times. initiated the dismantling of the tracks so that the ject area in Shipments into the depot were by rail transport, rails and ties could be sold for recycling. More southern as were shipments from the depot of explosives; than three-quarters of the rail and a third of the California. Courtesy Aztlan motor transport was used for other deliveries. ties had been removed when the detachment was Archaeology. The depot and its rail system were used to sup notified by the California State Historic Preservation Office that the railway routes constituted a historic property, as Segment C of CA-Sdi-l4005H, a linear historic site. Segment C had been included in the historical and architectural evaluation of the detach ment as part of the proposed Fallbrook Detachment Historic District, which appears to be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). Because dismantling the tracks could be considered to have an adverse effect on the property, the Fallbrook Detachment decided that a compre hensive inventory and evaluation was required in order to determine the property's eligibility. The purpose of this project was to inventory the prop erty, evaluate the significance and integrity of the property for eligibility, and provide recommendations for miti gation and management of the prop erty. Within a 50-foot right-of-way, 25 miles of railway routes were subjected to an intensive pedestrian survey. In addition to the fieldwork, historic pho tographs were viewed so that the prop erty's historic appearance could be doc umented. During the survey, 27 con tributing components of the property were identified and recorded; these include 10 railway features, one railway feature type, and 14 individually desig nated railway routes within the system. One major resource element associated with the property, the remains of an AT&SF railway section headquarters,
CRM No 10—1999 SS was identified and recorded as a separate archeo- of the tracks did constitute an adverse effect, the logical property. Also identified, as a contributing property has retained sufficient integrity to property, was a wooden trestle bridging a large appear to be eligible for the NRHP as a signifi drainage. The ties on the trestle all have date nails cant contributor to the proposed historic district. from 1936. Below this trestle are the remains of The recommendations for mitigation proscribed posts from the original trestle that was con further removal of rails and ties to avoid further structed in 1916. A large concrete structure, disturbance of the railway routes. identified as a huge set of scales, was discovered Even though paved roads and trucks have beneath the rails in the ammunition area of the replaced the Fallbrook Detachment Railway sys tracks. The outgoing freight cars could carry tem, its memory lives on in the Fallbrook more weight than the tracks could bear, so each Community. After being recognized by the U.S. car had to be weighed individually to ensure that Navy as a site that needed to be studied, pre the train would not exceed the capacity of the rails. served, and added to the historic district, the With regard to the basic components of future of the remains of this small and relatively rails and ties, the remaining rails, mostly 90- unknown chapter of U.S. Naval history seems pound, date from the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s secure for now. and were manufactured by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Corporation in Pueblo. Tie dimensions Reference are six by nine inches by eight feet long; this size Reider, Morgan. Historic Evaluation and Eligibility tie is now used only on older branch lines. All of Survey of Railway Routes within the Naval Ordnance Center, Pacific Division, Fallbrook Detachment, San the rails, except for those in pavement, have been Diego County, California. Technical Report 97-19. removed. Eighty percent of the ties remain in Tucson: Aztlan Archaeology, 1997. place, although some disturbance occurred when the rails were removed. Robert A. Rowe is the field manager for Aztlan The survey confirmed the property's signifi Archaeology, Inc. in Denver, Colorado, and is currently cance and found that, although the dismantling working on a master's degree at Denver University.
Sam Tamburro Independence, Ohio, to Akron, Ohio, is listed in the National Register of Historic Places (1984). As the nomination argues, the line was never double-tracked for expanded traffic and the The Valley Railway right-of-way remains virtually unaltered. Within the CVNRA's boundaries, the Valley Railway also A Tale of Two Landscapes traverses four National Register Historic Districts and is a contributing resource in all four. The CVNRA staff is currently in the he Cuyahoga Valley Scenic process of preparing a Cultural Landscape Report Railroad (historically known as for the Valley Railway. Research findings suggest the Valley Railway) bisects the that the "common" landscape of the Valley 22 miles of the Cuyahoga Valley Railway extended beyond the immediate track NationaTl Recreation Area (CVNRA) in north grade to include adjacent buildings and distant eastern Ohio. The railroad is an important com views. In other words, what passengers were able ponent of the rich and multi-faceted cultural to view from rail car windows during the landscape of the CVNRA because it combines resource's period of significance must be consid the agricultural and industrial heritage of the ered part of the cultural landscape. As a result, Cuyahoga Valley. The vistas of the valley and the the Valley Railway's cultural landscape can be built resources associated with the railroad's best described as "zones" of broad pastoral and period of significance (1870-1920) merge to cre natural vistas with narrower sections of industrial ate a "layered" cultural landscape. resources in close proximity to the tracks. Due to its high degree of historic integrity, Moreover, at crossing points between county the northern section of the Valley Railway, from roads and the railroad line, crossroad commer-
56 CRM No 10—1999 cialism characterizes the landscape, demonstrat From its beginning, the Valley Railway has ing the economic nexus that once existed been recognized for its scenic landscape. Nearly between valley communities and the railroad. all of the initial advertisements for the Valley Although Ohio's railroad building boom Railway emphasized the pastoral and natural occurred in the 1850s, the Cuyahoga Valley landscapes between Cleveland and Akron that would remain without a railroad line until the were visible from the railroad. Furthermore, pas early 1870s. The Ohio & Erie Canal had served sengers were encouraged to take "day trips" to the the transportation needs of the Cuyahoga Valley country to escape their urban environment. since 1827 and, in many ways, the canal pre However, by the early-20th century, an industrial vented railroad expansion into the area. However, landscape began to extend into the valley. the rapid industrialization of northeast Ohio that Fortunately, two primary sources exist that occurred after the Civil War created a "new and describe the landscape of the Valley Railway at infinite" need for a new railroad through the valley. two different times during its period of signifi In 1869, Akron's David L. King secured a cance: John S. Reese's Guide Book for the Tourist charter for the Akron & Canton Railway, which and Traveler over the Valley Railway (1880), and became the Valley Railway in August, 1871. King the 1920 Interstate Commerce Commission's originally owned a significant amount of stock in Valuation Records. the Cleveland, Zanesville & Cincinnati Railroad Reese's guidebook provides a "snapshot" of and realized the financial potential of linking the the Valley Railway's cultural landscape in the rail rich coalfields of Stark and Tuscarawas counties road's initial year of operation. Historically speak to the industrial centers of Akron and Cleveland. ing, the motive of the Guide Book is apparent: The proposed Valley Railway would parallel the attract urban riders to the new line. Reese's work Cuyahoga River Valley, stretching the railroad emphasizes the agricultural/pastoral landscape line a total of 75 miles from southeast Cleveland that dominated the Valley Railway's viewshed, as to Akron and then on to Canton and Valley if to evoke the memories of a simpler time before Junction in Tuscarawas County, Ohio. the introduction of railroads and heavy industry. In 1890, the Baltimore & Ohio (B&O) The Guide Book helped to define the elements of acquired the controlling interest in the Valley the Valley Railway's broad historic landscape, Railway in order to gain important access to the especially the distant viewsheds. Port of Cleveland. During the early 1890s, the Historic photographs exist of several sites U.S. economy suffered a severe depression that along the line, and historic property atlas maps affected most railroad companies, including the have been compared to Reese's description to Valley Railway. The line fell into receivership in determine the viewsheds historic integrity. Since 1892 and eventually declared bankruptcy in building development in the valley remains near 1895. A reorganized company, the Cleveland the peripheries, the distant views from the rail Terminal & Valley (CT&V) Railroad, also under road most likely have stayed the same. The initial the control of the B&O, acquired the Valley landscape assessment identifies approximately 16 Railway's assets in 1895 and began to make views and vistas that maintain moderate to high improvements to the system. By 1915, the B&O historic integrity. Even though much of the over completely controlled the CT&V. all land patterns and views from the line are During the 1920s, traffic on the railroad intact, they are endangered by unmanaged began to decline as new forms of transportation, growth of trees and other vegetation. such as automobiles and buses, provided new Valley walls that once were harvested for competition. Route traffic revived briefly during lumber and fuel are now reforested. In addition, World War II, but steadily declined afterward. In fields that were historically in agricultural pro January 1963, passenger service on the Valley duction are rapidly going into succession. In Railway ceased entirely. In 1985, CSX 1999, approximately 450 out of 33,000 acres of Transportation abandoned the line and, by 1987, park land remain in agricultural production. As the National Park Service purchased 26 miles of the railway's Cultural Landscape Report treat the track. Since 1975, the Cuyahoga Valley ment recommendations are being developed, Scenic Railroad, a nonprofit corporation, has resource management decisions will need to be operated the line to provide scenic railroad excur made regarding the possibility of re-introducing sions through the valley. historic views by selective clearing.
CRM No 10—1999 57 In addition to the views and vistas, the Cuyahoga Valley had limited industrial opera Valley Railway's structures and objects are signifi tions, the two bag factories (Cleveland-Akron cant components of the cultural landscape. The Bag Company and Jaite Paper Mill) located in track grade and the placement of depots, freight the area significantly affected the landscape. Both houses, and other railroad buildings serve as mills were founded in the early-20th century, and expressions of the circulation patterns of the pas their factory buildings emphasized horizontal senger stations, creating "footprints" on the land massing. The Cleveland-Akron Bag Company's scape. factory was razed in the 1930s, and fire destroyed The built elements of the Valley Railway the Jaite Paper Mill in 1992. However, the Jaite were evaluated by analyzing the Interstate Company Town, which consists of a cluster of Commerce Commission's (ICC) Valuation four "kit" bungalows, three folk Queen Anne Records for the line. As a result of the Valuation buildings, a passenger depot, and a freight house, Act of 1913, the ICC and railroad employees is extant and communicates the close physical inventoried all of the buildings and other prop relationship between the industrial and railroad erty of every railroad system in the U.S. to deter built resources. Jaite's proximity to the railroad mine the net worth of each. The net "value" of tracks illustrates the synergy that existed between each railroad system was used to calculate passen industry and the railroad line, and the resulting ger and freight rates for individual railroad lines. connection is a shared cultural landscape. The Valuation Records include building notes and The primary sources that exist for the site maps that provide detailed information on Valley Railway provide important information building size and the spatial relationship of pas beyond the context of the Cultural Landscape senger stations. Report. The materials contain significant inter Because of the maintenance-intensive pretive possibilities. Reese's Guide Book allows for nature of a railroad operation, much of the built "visual access" to the 1880 landscape, much of environment directly related to the operation of which still exists. In addition, the Valuation the railway has been removed or replaced since Records enable an understanding of the historical the line's period of significance. Of the nine origi context of the built environment and the physical nal passenger depot areas in the valley, only two connection between the railroad and the indus remain. However, there has been virtually no new trial heritage of the Cuyahoga Valley. The development adjacent to the tracks on the former research could result in an interpretive train ride depot sites, and several of the structures that that focuses on the 1880 historic landscape fronted the tracks survive today. For example, in description and explores the industrial landscape the Village of Boston, the Cleveland-Akron Bag wrought by the "machine in the garden." Company's store and its accompanying houses are extant and convey the sense of crossroad com References mercialism that developed near the intersection Marx, Leo. Machine in the Garden: Technology and the of railroad tracks and roads. Pastoral Ideal in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964. Historic photographs exist for every depot Reese, John S. Guide Book for the Tourist and Traveler site, and when they are compared to the maps in over the Valley Railway. Canton, Ohio: John S. the Valuation Records, it is possible to identify the Reese, 1880. historic location of each station. As the park Stilgoe, John R. Metropolitan Corridor: Railroads and plans to construct contemporary-but-compatible the American Scene. New Haven: Yale University boarding shelters in areas along the line, this Press, 1983. information will be of assistance when siting the structures and developing interpretive waysides. Sam Tamburro is a historian with the Technical Assistance and Professional Services Division in the Industrial resources also interplay with the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area. Valley Railway's cultural landscape. Although the
58 CRM No 10—1999 Deloris Jungert Davisson 3,000 feet from Culdesac, up Lapwai Creek Canyon, negotiating a three-percent grade, through seven tunnels and 17 bridges. Outstanding is the "Half Moon" bridge with its On Track through a one million board feet of timber. From one van tage point, a person can see a lower bridge, two distant trestles and several tunnel entrances. This Beautiful Country portion contains sharp curves, the greatest being 15 degrees. Elevation on top of the Winchester he Lewiston Historic Live Steam Hill reaches about 4,000 feet then drops across Railway, a non-profit volunteer Camas Prairie through Craigmont, crossing organization, is moving "full Lawyer's Canyon Bridge—over 1,500 feet long steam ahead" with its project to and 291 feet above the streambed. The tracks operatTe a cultural tourist train on the Camas leave reservation land at Cottonwood and go on Prairie RailNet tracks in north central Idaho. another 12 miles to Grangeville. Plans call for operating a live steam locomotive, a The area, historic and present-day home Railroad Diesel Car (RDC), and a self-contained land of the NiMiPoo Nez Perce, saw an influx of "Mobile Museum on the tracks" on the 272 miles Europeans after members of the Lewis and Clark of track, tunnels, trestles, and bridges. The tracks Corps of Discovery traveled the Clearwater River traverse rugged mountainous terrain and rich in September, 1805, and June, 1806. The mis prairie land, much of which lies within the sions at Lapwai, Kamiah, and Slickpoo, and espe boundary of the Nez Perce Indian Reservation. cially the discovery of gold in the Orofino hills, The tracks follow the route of Lewis and Clark, created immigration interest in the area. It was who trekked north and west along the Clearwater not until the Nez Perce Reservation was defined River some 200 years ago on their Corps of in 1855, redefined in 1863, and after Old Joseph Discovery. At Spalding, the tracks run through died, that white settlers, lumbermen, and ranchers the grounds of the Nez Perce National Historical moved into the valleys in ever-increasing num Park. bers. After the Nez Perce Indian War of 1877, the The Mobile Museum and live steam loco Nez Perce were moved to reservation land. The motive's future headquarters will be Lewiston, Allotment Act of the 1890s enabled the sale of Idaho. Leaving Lewiston at about 720 feet eleva "unalloted" Indian lands to settlers, thus permit Bridge # 40 on tion, the Camas Prairie RailNet runs on tracks ting the establishment of homesteads, villages and the Camas built and operated by competitors, the Northern towns. Lumbermen, ranchers and farmers sought Prairie Railroad's Pacific (now Burlington Northern) Railroad and a way to ship out cherries, wool, timber, cattle, Spalding- Grangeville the Union Pacific Railroad. The first RailNet sub and grain. Laying the tracks for the Camas Prairie branch line. division leaves Lewiston moving east 11 miles to Railroad followed. The Camas Prairie Railroad Photo by C. the old Joseph station at Spalding. From continued to serve the area with passenger service Douglas Smith courtesy Smith & Spalding, the tracks run upriver through the through the 1960s and still serves a declining tim Smith, Inc. Clearwater Canyon to Orofino, Kamiah, Kooskia, ber and agricultural economy with freight hauling. and Stites. The second subdivision climbs over The tracks offer spectacular views from the bridges, and trestles. One can watch freight trains crossing Bridge #40, an all-timber structure which is 493 feet long. At Cottonwood, grain elevators and wooden trestles overshadow the town. As the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery approaches, the area is turn ing its attention to the use of the railroad as a cul tural resource. A train ride on the Mobile Museum will interpret the natural and cultural resources of the region. Visitors will learn of Nez Perce and settlers' traditions: hunting deer, elk, moose and wild fowl; and fishing for salmon and sturgeon.
CRM No 10—1999 59 The train tracks run through groves of The Lewiston Historic Live Steam Railway native trees along the Clearwater River, uplands Company (LHLSRC) has had a dream since it of sagebrush, and riparian areas rich in plants and began, in 1984, to plan for the restoration of a wildlife, many of which Meriwether Lewis docu cultural tourism train running on the tracks and mented and recorded with drawings and notes on a railway museum engine house at the foot of the return trip of the Corps in June 1806. Today, Fifth and Railway streets in Lewiston. Funding visitors find the same flora and fauna, albeit from foundations and members, as well as visi invaded by exotic yellow-star thistle, knapweed, tors' fees, will finance this cultural and educa and cheat grass. tional venture. Working on enrichment projects The train will make a stop at the Nez Perce with area schools, the LHLSRC's project will National Historical Park's Visitor Center, where offer a program through use of its Mobile one can see a film on the culture and history of Museum to teach youth further appreciation of the Nez Perce people. There are also exhibits that their heritage. include women's hats of woven dogbane hemp, During the first half of the 20th century, beaded clothing, native dried foods, and informa Idaho's Camas Prairie "Railroad on Stilts" was the tion on how to make a flute. integral transportation nerve connecting people The Mobile Museum of the Lewiston with the natural, cultural, and economic Historic Live Steam Railway Company will run resources of the region. It can again serve that regularly to the park's visitor center for an orien function. tation on area cultural history. A brochure covers 38 park sites, many of which are visible from the Deloris Jungert Davisson, a retired college professor, vol train tracks. At the visitor center, scholars have unteers at the Nez Perce National Historical Park archives in Spalding, Idaho, and writes grants for the Lewiston access to archival materials pertaining to the his Historic Live Steam Railroad Company in Lewiston, Idaho. tory and resources of the area. The cultural tourists will ride the Mobile For further information about this project Museum train to the park site at Kamiah to see contact C. D. Smith, Chairman of the Board of the Nez Perce creation story site, "The Heart of Directors of the Lewiston Historic Live Steam the Monster." Kamiah was built on land pur Railway Company, 610 1/2 Main Street, Lewiston, Idaho 83501, or email chased in 1905, after the allotment, from the
This is the final issue of CRM for 1999. Watch for our next issue in January 2000.
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