FRONTIERS OF AMERICA THE STORY OF THE SANTA FE By GLENN D. BRA.DLEY THE GENTLE PIONEERS By R. H. BARNWELL THE AWAKENING OF THE DESERT. By Julius C. Braca TENDERFOOT DAYS By GEORGE R. BIRD OLD SEATTLE By GEORGE R. BIRD RICHARD G. BADGER, PUBLISHER, BOSTON ALBERT ALONZO ROBINSON THE STORY OF THE SANTA FE BY GLENN DANFORD BRADLEY Associate Professor of History, Toledo University BOSTON RICHARD G. BADGER THE GORHAM PRESS COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY RICHARD G BADGER All Rights Reserved We wish to acknowledge the courtesy of the Editor of The Santa Fe Magazine through whose kind per- mission the illustrations in this book are used Made in the United States of America The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. TO ALBERT ALONZO ROBINSON OP TOPEKA, KANSAS (MICHIGAN, '69), OCT. 1, 1844—Nov. 7, 1918 A GREAT ENGINEER, A GREAT RAILROAD BUILDER, A MASTER MAN. AND WITHAL A TRUE-HEARTED GENTLEMAN AND DEVOTED FRIEND— THIS VOLUME IS HUMBLY DEDICATED PREFACE The Santa Fe Railroad added an industrial empire to the United States. It has been mainly responsible for the colon- izing, development, and permanent occupancy of the greater portion of that vast region included within the present limits of Kansas, Southern Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and much of California. As is perhaps commonly known, the Santa Fe System ranks with the foremost of the transcontinental railroads, which lines have made possible the occupation and the reten- tion of the entire great West. For without the efficient and rapid transportation which these splendid railways have pro- vided, it is hardly conceivable that this Union of States as we know it could exist. Situated at a great distance from the older and more populous regions in the Missouri and Mississippi Valleys, that vast area beyond the Rocky Moun- tains, as well as the Pacific Coast, would almost inevitably have drifted away from the Union due to the mere force of sectionalism were it not for the tremendous cohesion which our Western railways have exerted. In fact it is not unrea- sonable to believe that the Pacific Coast might to-day be in the hands of some other power had it not been for the rapid development of American railway transportation. The story of the Santa Fe is fraught with romance, as I trust the subsequent pages of this book will prove. Follow- ing the route of the famous old Santa Fe trail, this railroad has pushed steadily onward until to-day it is one of the world's greatest railroad systems. And the Santa Fe is 8 Preface great because of the imagination and prophetic foresight of a very few leaders. In fact the phenomenal success of this corporation is directly due to four men: Cyrus K. Holliday, the projector and founder of the enterprise; William B. Strong, an indomitable and far-sighted leader; Albert A. Robinson, one of the greatest civil engineers and railroad builders of the age; and Edward P. Ripley, who has ably rounded out the ambitions of his predecessors, who has welded the Santa Fe properties into a powerful and compact system, and who is now one of the leading railway executives of the country. Commencing with the Santa Fe trail, I have brought this story down to the year 1887. From the reader's stand- point there are a number of good reasons for concluding the narrative in 1887. It was in this year that the Santa Fe built its line into Chicago and thereby became a transconti- nental system; it was in 1887 that the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act marked a new era. in railroad his- tory; and it was in this year that the Santa Fe completed the colonizing of its land-grant. In fact the really interest- ing and romantic history of the road ends with this eventful date when the system attained substantially to its present size. What follows after 1887 is largely a study in corpora- tion finance dealing so much as it does with the consolidation of properties, refunding of corporate debts, rate problems, State versus Federal control, taxes, etc. Hence my reasons for ending this story with the year 1887. Securing the materials and writing this book have been no easy task. My special thanks are due to Messrs. Geo. Root and Wm. Bacon of the Kansas Historical Society, to the staff of the Colorado State Library, to Mr. Edward L. Copeland, Secretary-Treasurer, and Mr. Wm. E. Bailey, General Auditor, respectively, of the Santa Fe Railway Co., IPreface 9 to Mr. John E. Frost, former Land Commissioner, and to Mr. Albert A. Robinson, former Vice President and Chief Engineer of this corporation, to Mr. Chas. Holliday, son of the late Cyrus Holliday, and to Professors C. H. Van Tyne and J. S. Reeves of the University of Michigan. Toledo, Ohio. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE OLD SANTA FE TRAIL 17 II. CYRUS K. HOLLIDAY: THE MAN WITH A BIG IDEA 50 III. THE BEGINNINGS OF A GREAT RAILROAD . IV. THE RAILROAD FRONTIER . ... 88 V. COLONIZING THE PRAIRIES . ... 107 VI. INTO THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS 139 VII. THE OPENING STRUGGLE FOR THE GRAND CARON 162 VIII. THE GRAND CARON WAR CONCLUDED 177 IX. AN OUTLET TO THE PACIFIC 204 X. VIGOROUS EXPANSION 227 XI. A DREAM FULFILLED 256 XII. SOURCE MATERIALS 272 INDEX 281 11 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE MR. ALBERT A. ROBINSON Frontispiece OLD SANTA FE 32 CYRUS K. HOLLIDAY 54 WHAT THE EARLY BUILDERS MET WITH 74 THE FIRST TRAIN INTO SANTA FE, TAKEN AT LOWRY, NEW MEXICO 92 BRIDGE OVER CANON DIABOLO IN ARIZONA 104 FIRST GENERAL OFFICE BUILDING ERECTED BY THE SANTA FE . 118 FIRST ROUND HOUSE BUILT ON THE SANTA FE, TOPEKA 134 CALIFORNIA LIMITED NEAR CAJON PASS, CALIFORNIA 150 STAGE STATION AT CANONCITO, NEW MEXICO 168 MT. SAN BERNARDINO FROM SMILEY HEIGHTS, REDLANDS, CALIFORNIA 184 MAIN BAY, MACHINE AND BOILER SHOP, TOPEKA, LOOKING NORTH . NO ROUND HOUSE, NEEDLES, CALIFORNIA e16 SHOWING THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE STEAM ENGINE ne SAN ANGELO, ONE OF THE MANY ATTRACTIVE STATIONS ON THE SANTA FE 250 GENERAL OFFICE, TOPEKA, KANSAS 66 13 THE STORY OF THE SANTA FE THE STORY OF THE SANTA FE CHAPTER I THE OLD SANTA FE TRAIL T the end of June, 1914, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company owned or controlled 11,262 miles of railroad, extending with numerous branches and feeder lines from Chicago to San Diego. It had term- inals at Denver, at El Paso on the Mexican border, and at Galveston on the Gulf of Mexico. Extending northward to Los Angeles and through the rich valleys of California, it had reached the Bay of San Francisco. Here its great expansive force had been retarded but slightly ; for crossing the Bay it had plunged into a wilderness, and in cooperation with the Southern Pacific a great but friendly rival had pushed beyond through the forests of Northern California nearly to the Oregon boundary. In the South it had crossed Texas three times and, advancing eastward into Louisiana, had arrived within striking distance of New Orleans. This Company, which represents a corporate investment of over $632,000,000, had for the year ending June 30, 1917, a gross income of over $156,000,000; for the preceding year under less favorable crop conditions its income was in excess of $133,000,000. The parent line of this great railroad was preceded more 17 18 The Story of the Santa Fe than fifty years by a Wagon road—the old Santa Fe trail. This remarkable highway, the forerunner of one of America's greatest railway systems, played a vital part in American expansion; for it opened the entire Southwest to traders and emigrants from the Missouri Valley and the more thickly settled districts farther east. It was along the Santa Fe trail that General Stephen W. Kearny's army marched in 1846 on its way to the conquest of New Mexico. Famed as an early trade route and as a route of military conquest, the importance of the Santa Fe trail did not cease with the occupation and annexation of New Mexico, where it first terminated. At once it became a highway of colonization. After the Mexican War came thousands of emigrant wagons with traders and land-hungry settlers, some to locate in Colorado and New Mexico; others to push on through the Gila and Mojave deserts to Southern California, there to help rear another great commonwealth. And finally it was the railroad of which this book will tell that transformed the trail into a modern steel thoroughfare that serves to bind to the Mississippi Valley one of our grandest geographi- cal divisions, the great Southwest. The Santa Fe trail crossed the Missouri River near the present site of Kansas City and took a southwesterly course through Council Grove, Kansas, to the Arkansas River. Reaching the Arkansas at its intersection with Walnut Creek, near the present town of Great Bend, the trail fol- lowed the Big Bend of the river west and southwest for one hundred and thirty-five miles, past the historic Pawnee Rock near the ,present village of that name, past the site of Lamed to a point on the Arkansas a little east of Dodge City, where, in 1864, Fort Dodge was erected. Here the road forked. One branch passed south and west directly across the plains to the Cimarron River, ascended that The Old Santa Fe Trail 19 stream for some distance, and, again striking across the plains in the same general direction, led past the Rabbit Ear Mounds, the Santa Clara and Moro Creeks, and entered New Mexico at Las Vegas.