THE GIFT OF MAY TREAT MORRISON IN MFMORY OF ALEXANDER F MORRISON CONTEIiTTS 2 757 CHAPTER PAGE XIII.— The Grand CaSJon war 135 xrv.— Incidents of the early days . . . 158 XV.— The Denver and Rio Grande . . .171 XVI.— The Northern Pacific 179 XVII.— The Canadian Pacific 197 XVIII.— Road making in Mexico 213 XIX. — The opening of Oklahoma .... 223 XX. — The railroad engineer 231 XXI.— At the front 241 XXII.— The railroad and the people . . . 254 XXIII. — The beginnings of the express business . 261 XXIV.— The West to-day 271 The BaUroad. II. l\CL Builders of the Nation OR From the Indian Trail to the Railroad National Edition Complete in Twelve Volumes o ^ CD LIST OF ILLUSTEATIOIS'S Scene in a railroad camp — Making a tenderfoot DANCE Frontispiece From an Original Paintiag by Frank T. Johnson PAGE Holding the caSJon 143 The Royal Gorge, Colorado 177 "S "-Trestle on Cceur d'Alene branch . . .181 Viaduct construction 193 A phase of bridge construction . . , . 210 In the mountains 231 The rush for dinner 243 Monument to Oakes Ames at Sherman, Wyoming . 260 Map—Transcontinental railroads, 1898 . . . 272 The Railroad. II. THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. CHAPTER XIII. THE GRAND CANON WAR. Because the same conditions can never exist again, there will probably never be another railroad war in this country to compare with the battle between the Denver and Eio Grande Railroad and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Company for the possession of the Grand Canon of the Arkansas — the Royal Gorge. To be sure, this war was only an incident in the mak- ing of the railroad, and was not taken into considera- tion by the projectors of either of the roads that after- wards became so actively interested; but it did take place, has gone into the history of the West, and is therefore a part of the story of the railroad. There is no evidence that either company contemplated the building of a line through the Grand Canon of the Arkansas until the mineral resources of Colorado began to attract the attention of the mining world. The discovery and development of the silver mines in and about Leadville, and the consequent increasing business between that region and the East, determined the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Company to ex- tend its road to that city. The rates on freight were a deciding temptation to this expenditure, being four cents per pound by team from Canon City to Leadville, 185 136 llTBi: STORY .0;PTHB RAILROAD. a distaiiceiaf oae. hiindred and-tv^enty miles^ amounting to a iittie 'more than 'the • charges from Kew York to Canon City, a distance of over two thousand miles. The Denver and Eio Grande Company woke up to the importance of this connection at about the same time, and decided to push its rails from Caiion City into the great mining region. As there was but one available route through the mountains, the caiion cut by the Arkansas Kiver in its wild dash from the summit of the Eockies down to the Kansas prairies, it was a matter of importance to each of the contestants to secure its possession. There are canons and caiions, some barely the width of a railroad track, and some broad enough for the traffic of a country, but the caiion of the Arkansas for twelve miles west of Canon City was of the first character, especially through the Koyal Gorge, where for miles the rocks rise thirty-five hundred feet, making an absolutely perpendicular wall on either side of a river which finds less than fifty feet for a passage at their base. Consequently the possession of this pass was a condition of success, and to hold it was the object of the struggle now begun. No move was made for some time by either party to take actual possession of the caiion, until on the 17th of April, 1878, Mr. Strong, concluding that longer delay would prejudice the plans of his company, if not render tlieir accomplishment impossible, directed Mr. A. A. Eobinson, chief engineer, to take immediate action. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe was then building from La Junta, on its main line, southerly through Colorado, and over the Eaton Mountain, as filn-ady deBcribed, into New Mexico, on its way to the THE GRAND CANON WAR. 137 Pacific coast, then many hundred miles distant. The nearest engineering station was at Deep Kock, a point on the new line some fifty miles south of Eocky Ford on the main line, its nearest railroad or telegraph point. A messenger was dispatched on horseback from Eocky Ford, bearing to the engineer in charge at Deep Eock the order to leave whatever work he had on hand and go direct to Canon City, with men enough to take pos- session of the canon and hold it, and to do this without a moment's delay. W. E. Morley, the engineer in charge of construction at El Moro, in Colorado, was sent to relieve the Deep Eock engineer, but, upon reaching Eocky Ford, found that the other man had failed to receive, or at all events to carry out, his instructions. Not a great deal had been said to Mr. Morley. His instructions were to go to Deep Eock, and the canon had been discussed only incidentally, but he instinc- tively comprehended the situation and turned west- ward. He asked for an engine to take him back to Pueblo, reaching that place late in the evening of April 18th.* Here he learned that a large force of Denver and Eio Grande men, with a complete construc- tion outfit, had gone west by the night train, under orders to take possession of the canon on the following morning. If he could reach Canon City, where the people were in sympathy with the Santa Fe, as they were at Trinidad and other small places that the Eio Grande had ignored, establishing new ones, he could * These dates are important only to those who care to follow the legal arguments and decisions of the courts based upon the dates of possession of the canon. 138 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. raise a force sufficient to hold the caiion against Gen- eral Palmer's men. But Canon City was forty miles away, and the Eio Grande was the only line that reached there. It was striking midnight in the dance hall. There was a livery stable close by. Fifteen min- utes later Morley was leaning forward in the seat of a stout mountain buckboard, behind the best team that could be had in Pueblo, uncertain whether his trip would end at his wished-for destination, or under the torrent of the Arkansas Eiver, by the bank of which his rough road lay. He did not spare the horses nor carefully pick his way. Not knowing that they were being pursued, the Eio Grande force would probably use the night in making the run, for the road was new and rough, and the load heavy for the little six- wheeled locomotive. Where the river appeared to in- dulge in unnecessary curves, he cut them and plunged into the stream. Occasionally a coyote or mountain lion would hurry from the trail as the reckless driver dashed along. When day dawned his horses were white with foam, but still he urged them on. As the sun rose above Pike's Peak and spattered its glory against the Greenhorn range, the plucky driver was still pushing on for the front. Somewhere in the curves of the broad valley he must have passed the other outfit. At times he fancied that he could hear the sharp screams of the little locomotive rounding the countless curves, turning in and out like a squealing pig following the worm of a rail fence. For the first time it seemed to him that his horses began to fail. Their feet were heavy, they stumbled and fell to their knees, but, responding to the touch of the whip, got to THE GRAND CA^ON WAR. 139 their feet and galloped on. The new energy put into them by a vigorous use of the lash was short-lived, like the effect of champagne, and again the bronchos showed unmistakable signs of exhaustion. There were the adobe houses of Caiion City. They seemed in the clear morning atmosphere within a stone's throw, but in reality they were three miles away. Now the wild scream of the little locomotive broke the stillness of the narrow vale, and went wailing and crying in the crags up the canon. A moment later Morley entered the town, side by side with the wheezy little engine and its train of twenty tri-penny cars behind it, which ran up to the station all unconscious that it had run a race of forty miles against a man and a team, and had lost the race. Passing unrecognised by the crowd, Morley reached the office of the president of the local company (the Canon City and San Juan Eailroad Company), under whose charter the Santa Fe was operating in Colorado, and demanded from him authority to occupy the pass on behalf of his railroad. While the papers were being made out, he saw two Denver and Eio Grande con- tractors approaching the office. Passing out by the back door, Morley saw a shovel branded " D. &. R. G." leaning lazily against a post to which a saddle horse was tied. Securing the shovel, he cut the reins and rode like the wind for the canon, still two miles beyond the town, determined to hold it against all comers. No one was there to oppose his entrance; the other crowd, knowing nothing of the race nor of his pres- ence, and not anticipating any opposition, were mov- ing as leisurely as an army through a subjugated coun- 140 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. try. But Morley was there with his shovel, eommenc- ing the work of building the railroad. One shovelful of dirt over his shoulder or twenty — what matter? The construction of the Canon City and San Juan Eailroad was begun. President Clelland, not being able to recruit many assistants at so early an hour, followed Mr. Morley in a few minutes with only half a dozen friends, but all bearing the arguments which were then most respected in that country. They had hardly reached the canon when the Denver and Eio Grande forces, two hundred strong, appeared at the entrance. Laughing at the little force which barred the pass, and not suspecting who was the leader, they ordered them out of the way at the peril of their lives. Mr. Morley stepped to the front, and quietly responded that he was there as the representative of the Canon City and San Juan Kail- road, that he had taken possession of the canon in the name and behalf of that company, that work of con- etruction was already begun, and that, having taken possession and begun work, he would hold the canon against any and all opposition that offered. Any attempt to force him out would be met by his re- volver and the arms of his friends, and their blood would be on the heads of those who attempted to drive them out. From another man, backed by so small a force, these heroics would have inspired but little respect, but these men knew Morley. They knew also that if they had been first in the field, they would have made use of the same weapons and arguments as he was now using. So they left him and his small army in pos- THE GRAND CANON WAR. 141 session, moved farther westward, and took an uncon- tested stand some miles farther up the canon. Thus commenced the struggle carried on with violence and bloodshed, lawsuits and injunctions, writs and coun- terwrits without number — an internecine war, which raged during the next two years with only brief inter- vals of peace. Morley, the engineer who had been bold enough to disregard orders, take matters in his own hands, and to capture and hold the pass, now became the hero of the Santa Fe. Mr. Strong, then general man- ager and afterward president of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe,. gave the daring engineer a gold- mounted rifle as a slight token of his appreciation of what he had done. A braver man than Morley never located a line. He was full of the fire that burns in the breast of the truly heroic. No knight ever battled for his king with a more loyal heart or with less fear than Morley fought for his chief. To be sure, neither General Palmer, president of the Eio Grande, nor Mr. Strong believed for a moment that this great controversy could ever be permanently settled by violent means, and after the first brush, in which the Eio Grande got the worst of it, they turned to the courts. Although the arming and marching of a body of men across the country was in open violation of the laws of the State, nobody paid any attention to that matter. They were simply playing for position. None of the men engaged in the warlike demonstration was censured by the railroad officers. On the contrary, 14:2 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. they were applauded and in some cases rewarded for their loyalty. The many legal battles fought out in the courts were as interesting, if not as exciting, as the unlawful contests that were going on in the canon. The mil- lions of money involved, the splendid array of legal talent, and the fevered excitement of the people, made it the greatest case ever tried in the courts of Colorado. At this juncture a great misfortune overtook the Rio Grande — one that caused the failure of many a deserving enterprise and many a worthy man. They were without money, and were forced, through pov- erty, to compromise. In the last hour, if not at the last minute, of the 13th day of December, 1878, General Palmer, as the executive officer of the Denver and Rio Grande, leased and transferred to the Santa Fe Company the three hundred or four hundred miles of narrow-gauge road then owned and operated by his company. The Santa Fe was regarded as a Kansas line, while the Rio Grande was purely a Colorado road. The former, hav- ing Kansas City as its starting point, was interested in building up the wholesale and jobbing trade, and in making Kansas City the base of supplies and general distributing point for the growing West. The owners of the Denver and Rio Grande, as well as the people of northern Colorado, were not long in discovering the plans of the Santa Fe, and the former at once set about to find an excuse for breaking the lease. What is now the main line of the Rio Grande was then completed to Canon City, and as the Santa Fe Holding the cafiou. THE GRAND CA^ON WAK. 143 people had a line of their own to the coal fields a few miles below the canon, they renewed the fight for a sure and permanent outlet through this valuable and only passable pass to Leadville and the Pacific. Be- ing in possession of the constructed line, they began, the work of paralleling the Rio Grande by grading a way on the opposite side of the river. This old grade can still be seen from the car windows all the way from the mouth of the canon to the Eoyal Gorge. In March, 1879, the Santa Fe reopened the fight by demanding that it be allowed to examine the books kept in Palmer's office, which the latter refused. With the coming of spring the rival companies resumed their arms, and, after the fashion of hostile Indians, went on the warpath again. Armed forces occupied the canon and built forts like cliff-dwellers, at the top of the walls. The Eio Grande people were exas- perated — almost desperate. The fact that Rio Grande bonds had gone up since the lease from forty-five to ninety cents, and that stock that was worthless was sell- ing at sixteen cents, did not appease the Palmerites. The Santa Fe had shut them out at the south, crossed Eaton Pass, and gone on to the Pacific. They were preparing systematically to ruin the Eio Grande by building into all her territory, even to Colorado Springs, Leadville, and Denver. General-Manager Dodge declared that the terms of the lease had been broken by the Santa Fe before the ink was dry upon the paper. General Palmer openly asserted that the Santa Fe had mismanaged the road and diverted traffic, and that it was endeavouring to wreck the property. Mr. Strong claimed, on the other hand, that the books 14:4: THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. of the Eio Grande had been spirited away by the treas- urer, and that he had a right to see them. On the 21st of April the Supreme Court rendered a decision, giving the Eio Grande the prior right of way through the canon, but not the exclusive right. It was finally determined upon this occasion that no company of railroad builders could pre-empt, occupy, and hold against all comers the narrow passes or gorges in the mountains. The Rio Grande people were able to persuade the Supreme Court at Washington that they had located in the canon just one day ahead of their rival. Hall's his- tory of Colorado leaves this impression in the reader's mind. The historian was probably following the Su- preme Court, which in this case seems to have been in error. It has been said that Judge Harlan saw his mistake after it had been made, but, like the driver of a new locomotive, the Supreme Court dislikes to re- verse — it is hard on the machinery. The Denver and Eio Grande Company had in its favour a special act of Congress, enacted in 1873, granting it right of way through the public lands. In 1871, and also in 1872, it had made some surveys through the Grand Caiion, but of a purely prelimi- nary character. The decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of the Denver and Eio Grande Company against the Caiion City and San Juan Company, as delivered by Justice Harlan, was to the effect that this special act of 1872 gave it a present right through the canon, capable of enjoy- ment, though, only when the right of way should actu- ally and in good faith be appropriated; and he held THE GRAKD CANON WAR. 145 further that this appropriation was accomplished on the night of April 19, 1878 — ^that is to say, he dated the actual occupancy of the Denver and Rio Grande Company from the night of April 19, 1878, and stated that evidence of the Atchison Company's activity in that direction was found in the fact that on the morn- ing of the 20th — as early as four o'clock — some of its employees, nine or ten in number, in charge of an assistant engineer, swam the Arkansas River and took possession of the canon for the Santa Fe. He further decided that the surveys of the Rio Grande Company, made in 1871 and 1872, although very defective and not equivalent to, an actual location, were quite as complete and extended as the survey which the Caiion City Company had made in 1877.* A dissenting opinion was filed by Chief-Justice Waite, in which he declared that the Atchison Company had made the first permanent location through the canon with a view to actual construction. Shortly after this decision had been announced by Judge Harlan, one of the Santa Fe attorneys wrote to him and called his attention to the fact that the evi- dence failed entirely to support his view of the events that transpired on the night of April 19th and the morning of April 20th. Justice Harlan wrote him in reply to the effect that the important considerations in his mind were the grant to the Denver and Rio Grande Company in 1872, the early surveys that Company had made, and the period of financial depression that * The opinion of Judge Harlan is found in 99 U. S. Reports, p. 463. 146 THE STORY OP THE RAILROAD. had delayed the construction for the years intervening between that time and 1878. The peculiar features of this litigation are, that when the case was decided in the Supreme Court of the United States the Santa Fe people were in control of the Denver and Eio Grande Company, and held prac- tically all its capital stock, and that the Supreme Court in its opinion left the matter to be determined in supplemental proceedings whether the trade made with the Kio Grande Company, by which the Santa Fe acquired control of it, was intended to put an end to the litigation over the canon. In the negotiations between General Palmer and President Nickerson nothing had been said in express terms about this. Each seems to have carefully avoided touching on the subject, and in all the papers by which the Atchison Company acquired the stock of the Rio Grande Com- pany and a lease of the road, etc., there was not a word which threw any light on the question of the dis- continuance of the litigation over the canon. The Rio Grande was at last victorious, but the road was still in the hands of the enemy, and would remain there for thirty years unless the Supreme Court would set aside the lease. The matter of cancelling the lease now came before the courts. This was urged by the Rio Grande, backed by the best legal talent that money could secure. Meanwhile the two armies in the mountains were being increased and the forts enlarged. In the midst of all the excitement, Attorney-General Wright added to the confusion by entering suit to enjoin the Santa Fe Company from operating railroads in Colorado. The THE GRAND CA??ON WAR. I47 hearing was had before Judge Bowen, afterward senator from Colorado, across the Sangre de Christo, in the little town of Alamosa. Willard Teller, for the Santa Fe, promptly applied for a change of venue, alleging, in language that could not be misunderstood, that the judge was prejudiced against his clients, and that he could not hope to get justice in such a court. It was not to be supposed that a man who played poker, as Judge Bowen did, would lie down at Mr. Teller's first fire. He led off with a spirited rejoinder to the attorney's attack, and ended by issuing a writ enjoin- ing the Santa Fe and all its officers, agents, and em- ployees from operating the Eio Grande road or any part thereof, and from exercising in any manner cor- porate rights in the State of Colorado. In short, he turned the road over to the owners. Mr. Teller commanded the conductor of one of the trains then lying at the terminus of the track to " hitch up " and take him to Denver with all possible speed. The employees had, of course, watched all the lawful and unlawful contests as closely as the higher officers, and were ready to take sides with their former em- ployers; and so the conductor, who had heard Judge Bowen's decision, refused to leave before schedule time. This conductor secured a copy of the writ, and, fear- ing a hold-up 671 route, placed it in his boot and pulled out for Denver. At Palmer Lake, when within fifty-two miles of Denver, this enterprising conductor gave additional evidence of his loyalty to Messrs. Dodge and Palmer by slipping out and disabling the locomotive. He re- moved one of the main rods (they were not so heavy 148 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. then as they are now) and threw it into the lake. He must have done more, for that, unless he had " seen " the engineer, would not prevent the engine, still hav- ing one side connected, from taking the train in. After crippling the engine, the conductor boarded a push-car (hand car without handles), stood up, spread out his rain coat to make a sail, and was pushed by the west wind down the long slope into Denver, while Attorney Teller sat in the delayed train at the summit and swore. It would seem that the Eio Grande was not content with all the advantage it held in the courts, but was still increasing its armed force in the Grand Canon, where J. R. Deremer, one of the engineers, blocked the trail with a force of fifty men. " By what authority," demanded the Santa Fe men, looking into the fifty rifles, " do you hold this pass? " " By the authority of the Supreme Court and the fifty men behind me," was Deremer's reply. The action of the regular officers and employees of the two roads was prompted by a sense of loyalty to their respective employers, but the common herd which took service did so simply for the pay of five dollars a day, and had no higher interest in the contest. Some- times tlie camps of the opposing armies were close to- gether; sometimes the officers and men met, mingled and mixed toddy under the same cedar. If President Strong of tbe Santa Fe had realized the seriousness of the situation, or, it were better to say, if he had been less considerate and humane, he might, by weeding out the old 'Rio Grande agents and employees and replacing them with men in sympathy THE GRAND CANON WAR. 149 with his company, have put himself in a stronger posi- tion for what was to follow; but, to his credit, he allowed the old men, whose only offense to the new regime was their loyalty to the old, to remain. Al- though the Santa Fe people appear to have paid no heed to the attitude of the employees along the leased line, the Denver and Eio Grande people did, and upon the loyalty of their old men they risked everything. The Santa Fe managers, however, were not idle. They had, located on the main line, a camp called Dodge City, as rough a community as ever flourished under any flag. From these rich recruiting grounds they imported into Colorado a string of slaughterers headed by " Bat " Masterson, whose hands were red with the blood of no less than a score of his fellow-men. In justice to Masterson, the explanation should be made here that he did most of this work in daylight, with the badge of a " city marshal " upon his unprotected breast, and that a good majority of these men de- served killing, but had been neglected by more timid officers of the law, wholly on account of their tough- ness, their familiarity with firearms, and an overween- ing fondness for the taking off of city marshals. There was not a man on either side who would not argue that his company was wholly in the right, " and," he would add, resting his rifle in the hollow of his left arm, " proceeding within the law." For example: A big Irishman in a red shirt was heard to say, " I'm a law-abidin' man, an' I believe in lettin' the law have its course at all times; only in this case I know the Eio Grande's right, an', begorry, I'll fight for 'em." Judge Bowen's decision caused the greatest con- 150 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. fusion. By it lie directed the sheriffs of the several counties to take possession of the Eio Grande property, and they began to serve writs upon the officers and agents along the line. On the night of June 10, 1879, President Palmer tapped the wires on either side of the station at Colo- rado Springs, made a loop through his residence, and sat all night listening to the messages sent over the line by the Santa Fe. General Dodge, Mr. Palmer's general manager, had established a line of mounted couriers, with stations every twenty miles over the entire road, for they must not attempt to use the telegraph. By these couriers they hoped to be able to run trains until such time as they could get possession of the telegraph offices. They were reasonably sure that Judge Hallett would reverse Judge Bowen on the 11th, and so the order went forth to Palmer's people and to the sheriffs along the line to swoop down upon the enemy at 6 A. M. and capture the road. Accordingly, on the morn- ing of the 11th a posse, under a sheriff, armed with a Bowen injunction, marched upon the station at East Denver and captured it. At West Denver the station was found locked, but the door was forced and an operator installed at the key. To and from along the line the mounted couriers were galloping with messages from General Palmer or Colonel Dodge. Up from the south came ex-Governor A. C. Hunt, another Rio Grande general, with a for- midable army that swept everything before it as effec- tually as did the army of Sherman in its march to the sea. The Santa Fe people, as soon as they learned THE GRAND CA5J0N WAR. 151 what was going on, concentrated their forces at Pueblo. That important point they had determined to hold. Bat Masterson, with his imported slayers, was in pos- session of the stone round-house, and all Eio Grande men steered clear of it. The Santa Fe people had for forty-eight hours been urging Governor Pitkin to call out the State troops, but the Governor said that he could not do so unless there was some demonstration of unlawful force, and even then the sheriffs must first ex- haust all means in their power to preserve the peace before he could act. When the fight was once on, it was found that the Eio Grande men were in need of restraint instead of encouragement. Santa Fe employees were pulled from their cabs and beaten into a state of obedience to the commands of the Rio Grande officers. Santa Fe sympathizers fought as fiercely, only they appeared to be in the minority at all points. Under the direction of General-Manager Dodge a train was made up at Denver to start south. Manager Kramer, of the Adams Express Company, hung his messenger about with six- shooters and locked him up in the car. Colonel Dodge said that the Rio Grande Company would run the ex- press business from now on, but, to avoid delay, allowed the Adams car to remain in the train. Presi- dent Strong, with his horses at a dead run, drove from his hotel to the station, where Colonel Dodge was making up the train, and all the people of the town who were awake ran after him, expecting that upon his arrival at the station the shooting would surely begin. Probably at no time in their lives, before nor since, have these two officers known such a trying 152 THE STORY OP THE RAILROAD. moment, but they were too wise to begin themselves a battle which they knew they could not stop. Finding Mr. Dodge in possession of everything in sight, Mr. Strong made a rush for the court. The greatest excitement prevailed among the em- ployees all along the line. Operators at small stations knew not what course to take. At some of the stations the agents were with the Santa Fe, and these made it impossible for the Eio Grande to use the wire for handling their trains. We have seen by the character and voting place of the men employed by. the Santa Fe that Mr. Strong was desperately in earnest. To show that General Palmer was making a great effort to avoid mistakes, I will quote from a letter lately received from a promi- nent railroad officer who was in the fight: " With the exception of about half a dozen em- ployees, the men were all in sympathy with General Palmer, and desired that he be successful in his efforts to regain possession of the road; and as each train passed Colorado Springs, up to midnight, June the 10th, as the trainmen applied at the Rio Grande head- quarters, which were then located at Colorado Springs, they were supplied with whatever they thought would be necessary to be used in defending their trains the next day, it having been previously arranged that pos- session would be taken at six o'clock on the following morning." It is safe to assume that thoy asked for all they Wiinfcd, and got all they asked for. By the time the first train pulled out of Denver the whole State was swarming with armed men. But THE GRAND CANON WAR. 15 3 from a single county, Pueblo, came the cry of a sheriff who had been unable to serve the Bowen writ and dislodge the Santa Fe. There Masterson held not only the round-house, but the station and oftices. The Rio Grande forces at Pueblo were under Chief-Engineer McMurtrie and R. F. Weitbrec, treasurer of the com- pany. Some of the Rio Grande men conceived the idea of stealing a cannon from the militia, with which they might batter down the round-house and capture the killers therein, but found at the last moment that the cannon had already been stolen by the gentlemen on the other side. It was even asserted that it was within the round-liouse walls, and the Rio Grande people moved yet a little space away. Mr. Weitbrec, it would appear, held the belief that a man who could be hired by an entire stranger to go out and slay people for a few dollars a day could be seen, and so went over to the round-house to see Mas- terson. When they had spoken softly together for a spell, Bat called his captain. The latter presently went to the lieutenant, who was standing at the other end of the house where the men were massed, and said: " Say, you fellers, drop yer heavy guns, keep yer light ones, an' slide." "What?" said the lieutenant. " You're to lay down — 'is nibs 'as seen Bat." " Well," said the lieutenant, " 'spose 'e have seen Bat, where do we come in? Wliat's in the pot? Ye kin tell Mr. Bat we'll not quit till we see some dough." The captain reported to Bat, and returning to the 154 THE STORY OP THE RAILROAD. lieutenant, who stood surrounded by his faithful sol- diers, said: " Bat says the gentleman 'as seen 'im, an' if you gents don't come off at wonct he'll have to come over personally. Th' gen'l'man 'as seen 'im — see? " and with that the captain shot a spray of tobacco juice into an engine pit ten feet from where he stood, and strode away. The army laid down their arms, for Mr. Weitbrec had seen Bat. The surrounding of the round-house, however, did not mean the giving over of the whole town, and the Santa Fe men still held the dispatcher's office. In the meantime Colonel Dodge's train was coming down from the north, and Governor Hunt was com- ing up from the south. The excitement was hourly increasing. Wherever the Santa Fe men refused to open up, the doors were smashed and the Eio Grande men, usually headed by a sheriff, took possession. When the train reached Pueblo the express car was broken into, the Adams express matter dumped upon the platform, and Mr. Kramer's messenger, loaded down like a Christmas tree in a mining camp, where the favourite gift is a six-shooter, dumped on top of his freight. " The excitement throughout the State was un- paralleled. Telegrams poured over the wire to the Governor's office. One from the sheriff of Pueblo County was to the effect that an armed mob had seized the Denver and Rio Grande property there and resisted his efforts to dislodge them. He had exhausted all peaceable means to that end, and felt that he must THE GRAND CA!?0N WAR. 155 resort to force, but asked for instructions. The Gov- ernor responded that he must act within the strict com- mands of the court. It was not for him (Pitkin) to construe the legal effect of writs in the hands of sheriffs; they must act upon their own responsibility. Thrown upon his own resources, later in the day the sheriff, with a large posse, forced the door of the dis- patcher's office. A number of shots were fired, but no one was injured. About dark the same evening ex- Governor Hunt, that whirlwind of energy and indis- cretion, arrived on the scene from the south with a force of two hundred men. They had captured all the small stations along the line, bringing the agents away with them on a captured train. It was stated that two of the Santa Fe men had been killed and a like num- ber wounded. At Pueblo all was excitement and con- fusion, where Hunt swept everything before him." * Having placed the property at Pueblo in the hands of Eio Grande employees. Governor Hunt cleared the Arkansas Valley up to the end of the track at Canon City, and when he had finished there the Denver and Rio Grande Eailway was in the hands of its owners. We often hear of a railroad train being held up — sometimes by a single man — but this is probably the only instance where an entire railroad has been cap- tured at the end of a gun, or a few hundred guns. When the sun rose on the 12th of June, it shone on General Palmer in all his glory, running every de- partment of the road, but the end was not yet. Judge Hallett promptly declared Judge Bowen's decision null ♦ Hall's History of Colorado. 156 THE STORY OP THE RAILROAD. and void. Judge Bowen rallied, and two days later issued a decree placing the road in the hands of a receiver. Again the Santa Fe went to the Federal Court. In the meantime rumours of riot and blood- shed came up from all along the line. At Pueblo the Eio Grande men had erected heavy fortiiications all about the station, while up in the canon Deremer had his army entrenched and supplied, and saw that no work was done by the opposing company. Judge Hallett, Judge IMiller concurring, now or- dered all property unlawfully taken to be restored to the Santa Fe, after which the Eio Grande might institute proceedings for the cancellation of the lease. Three days were given for the complete restoration of the property to the lessees. The Santa Fe now asked that the receiver be dis- charged, which, after elaborate arguments, was done. The Eio Grande promptly restored the road to the lessees, and asked for an order restraining the Santa Fe from operating it. This order was issued, a new receiver appointed, and the road restored to its owners. Jay Gould, who had vainly tried a number of times to settle the strife, now secured a controlling interest in the Denver and Eio Grande, after which the war came to an end.* Looking back over the twenty summers that have * President Strong relates that Jay Gould made a proposition to him at the Windsor Hotel at Denver for the settlement of tlie war. It was so equitable, so fair to the Atchison Company, tliiit lie could not believe it. He asked Mr. (Jould to write it out, and finally requested him to read it aloud, which Mr. Gould did. Mr. Strong then wired it to Boston, but got no reply. THE GRAND CANON WAR. 15 7 slipped away since the excitement in the canon, as the receding miles slip out from under a sleeper, one is apt to say that the end of it all was a good ending. Many of the men who took part in the war are still here to criticise this tame picture of those stirring scenes. 13 CHAPTER XIV. INCIDENTS OF THE EARLY DATS. Many really laughable things happened in the making of the railroads of the West. Men often took advantage of the miles that lay between civilization and the last stake, and settled differences as best they could to save the time and expense of going to court. Then, often, a man, or the company he represented, would have a hard case that would not stand the air- ing that it was sure to get at the hands of a cross- examiner. Perhaps rival roads were reaching for a certain pass the possession of which was as good as a deed. In that case the chief, or locating engineer, of each set about to beat the other. In this way alone, in more than one instance, the history of railroads — even of vast sections of the West — has been greatly affected. A line projected and planned to be built in a certain direction was often headed off by a smart rival and forced to nose along the ribs of the Eockics for an- other outlet. The president's private car, when the road was completed, often carried him into a country alto- gether different from the route originally mapped out. There was never any doubt as to the loyalty of a locating engineer. So far as the writer knows, no 158 INCIDENTS OF THE EARLY DAYS. 159 attempt to bribe these fearless pathfinders was ever made. The treasurer of one line could always do business with the lawless thugs armed and employed by its rival to hold a pass or a canon, but never with the real men of the West. In the early days it was a common and regarded as a perfectly fair thing to ditch a train carrying records, attorneys, or officials of a rival road. To be sure, care was always taken to do as little damage as possible, and not to endanger the lives of those on board, the main object being to delay the train. During the Grand Caiion war, the acting general manager of the Santa Fe once had his special ditched five times on a single run of one hundred and twenty miles from Pueblo to Denver. Finally, when they could keep him out of the town in no other way, the dispatcher put the special on a spur with orders to " meet extra west " at that station; but the extra never came, and after hours of waiting the special flagged to the next telegraph station and asked for orders. Conductors have been known to disable the engine of their own train, and engine drivers have been taken suddenly and violently ill on the road. Upon one occasion the resourceful engineer of a special bearing a sherifE and his posse out to suppress a lot of strikers had a fit in the cab. The attack was so violent that he did not recover until he heard one of the deputies announce that he was a locomotive engineer from the Reading, and could " run the mill in." Then the driver slowly recovered. At the next stop, having filled the feed pipes, through which the water passes from the tank to the engine, with soap, he announced to his fireman that he IGO THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. was about to "throw another fit." This time he did not recover. The smart runner took the throttle, the fireman having confessed his inability to run^, and in a little while had the boiler as full of lather as a barber's mug, and about as useful for steaming purposes. The train hung up on the first heavy- grade, and had to wait until the engineer came round again. To get the clerk of a county or district court on board a train with the court's seal was considered a smart piece of work. The same official referred to here as having had his car ditched five times on a single trip, was in Pueblo one day when A. A. Eobinson, chief engineer of the Santa Fe, came to ask a favour. "Mr. Blank," said Mr. Robinson, "I've got the clerk of the district court at Alamosa here. I want to give him to you. He has the seal with him, and I should like to have him in Kansas, or out of Colorado at least, by daylight to-morrow morning." " But I'm not going to Kansas," said the official. " I understand," said the chief engineer, " but I thought you might take a run out that way as a per- sonal favour, and at the same time to rid this growing young State of so disreputable an official as the clerk of til is district court seems to be." " He has stolen the seal of the court, eh? " " Yes." " And you want me to stoal him? " " Exactly. You've got the only engine the com- pany owns here that is fit for the road, so I've been driven by circumstances to ask tliis favour." INCIDENTS OF THE EARLY DAYS. 161 "Where is this thief that I am supposed to want to steal?" " In your private car, sir. I heard him ask the porter to put him to bed at once, so he's probably asleep by this time." "How am I to handle him? Is he to eat at the first table and smoke my cigars? " " He's not to eat at all. I shall tell the conductor to put him off at Coolidge, and in that way save you the embarrassment of an uninteresting acquaintance." " Thank you, Robinson. You are very thoughtful. You may order the engine, if you will, while I break the news to Mrs. Blank. She has had her hair crimped for Manitou." While Mr. Blank explained the situation to Mrs. Blank, the engine backed up and coupled on. The conductor came bounding from the dispatcher's office with two copies of the running orders, and they were about to pull out when Mr. Blank came from the car. "You don't mind a little shaking up, do you?" asked Robinson. " Not in the least," said Mr. Blank, indifferently. " I can ride as fast as he can run." The driver heard that, and he made up his mind to take it out of the man with the special. They were in the act of pulling out when a couple of men came walking rapidly from the telegraph office. " Where's this train goin' to ? " demanded one of the men. When neither Robinson nor the conductor an- swered, Mr. Blank informed the man that the train was going to Topeka. 162 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. " Good 'nough/' said the stranger; " I'll just take a run down to Topeka m'self — will you jine me. Bill?" " This train doesn't carry passengers," said the con- ductor, slipping between the two men and the steps leading up to the rear platform of the car. Mr. Blank had paused upon the second step. " This is a private car," he said, " and we can't accommodate you." The two men with broad hats and heavy firearms drew near. Kobinson and the conductor stepped be- tween them and the car. " You've got one passenger," said the man who had spoken for the would-be voyagers, " and I guess you can take a couple more." " Keep back! " said Mr. Blank, raising a good-sized boot and swinging it threateningly near the face of one of the strangers. " Looka here," said the man, showing his temper, " I'm a deputy sheriff. You've got the clerk of the district court in that car, an' I want him, see? " " No, I don't see. I have not seen the clerk of any court, and don't want to. This car is my home, and you can't come in here. Do you see? " Now the car began to move off. The brakeman and porter came out on the platform, the conductor got aboard, and Robinson stood on the last step. Five men on the rear platform of a special car, fenced about with iron railing, make it difficult for unwelcome visitors to mount. The deputies saw that the only way to take the car was to begin shooting. Suddenly the right hand of each of the offieors went round to the right hip. Some of the men on the car made a like INCIDENTS OF THE EARLY DAYS. 1G3 movement, but at that moment the deputies thought better of it and allowed the special to pull out. When the train had crossed the last switch, Robin- son dropped off and went to bed, and then the fun be- gan in the private car. The road had just been com- pleted to Pueblo, and before they had gone a mile the car was rolling. As they proceeded, the track seemed to grow worse. Mr. Blank had unwittingly " dared " the driver, and the driver was showing the track off. He knew nothing of the presence of Mrs. Blank, and was letting the engine out regardless of consequences. Mrs. Blank was a good sailor, however, and, not being able to appreciate the real danger as the men did, went to bed, but not to sleep. By and by the ear began to pitch like a side-wheeler crossing the English channel. The negro forward was busy picking up cooking tools and hammering his head against the hard-wood finish in the kitchen car. The conductor and brakeman were exchanging glances and cold, mirthless smiles. Mr. Blank was holding hard to both arms of a seat. " George," called his wife from her room, " we're going —in the— ditch!" George gasped, stood up and reached for the bell cord. At that moment they hit a high centre, the car listed, the window came up and crashed against Mr. Blank's elbow. If he swore, nobody heard it above the deafening roar of the rolling car. The conductor, looking around when the crash came, got a signal in the direction of the slack rope that was threshing along the transoms: "Pull the bell on that lunatic!" yelled Mr. Blank. The conductor reached for the rope. It eluded his I6i THE STORY OF THE HAILROAD. grasp and his elbow went through a window. Another effort secured the coveted cord, but the rope crawled in from the forward car and fell in a heap on the floor. In the excitement incident to the departure of the special from Pueblo the trainmen had neglected to connect the cord with the bell in the engine cab, so that now they could not communicate with the daring driver. The train hung to the track, as trains will some- times do when there is every reason for their going into the ditch, and after a wild run over nearly two hun- dred miles of new rail it slowed down and left the clerk at Coolidge, just over the State line. As he was leaving the train, the seal-thief, in the vigorous language of the West, gave the porter his opinion of anybody who would make a business of that sort of night sailing and think that they were having a good time. The conductor went forward at Coolidge, at the sug- gestion of Mr. Blank, and explained to the engineer that they were out of the enemy's country, and that it would be perfectly safe to slow down to about a mile a minute. There was an unwritten law among the trail makers that gave a man with a gun in possession of a pass a title to the same so long as he could hold it. To be sure, it was jumpable, like a mining claim, as soon as the man's back was turned, but that was the holder's lookout. The boldest bit of work ever accomplished on the INCIDENTS OF THE EARLY DAYS. 165 plains in the way of holding property was the " draw- ing in " of the Kit Carson road just before an officer of the United States court arrived to sell it. No doubt it had a good ejffect in the end, as tending toward a better understanding on the part of foreign investors of the nature and possibilities of enterprises in which they were asked to invest. This line, which was built from Kit Carson to Las Animas, Col., on the Arkansas, was bonded for several millions to English capitalists, with the prom- ise that it would ultimately be developed into a through line to the Pacific coast over the old Santa Fe trail. It was done in the dawn of the era of great railroad construction in the West, at a time when capital was comparatively easy to get. The material with which the fifty-six miles of road were constructed was all fur- nished by the Kansas Pacific Eailway Company, for the road, if ever completed to the coast, would naturally become a part of that system. Wlien the rails reached Las Animas, the Kansas Pacific put on a daily pas- senger-train service to old Fort Lyon and the end of the track, and took care of what little freight originated on the branch as well as of that coming into the new district from the East. About this time the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe began the construction of a road from Topeka west, in the direction of Santa r6, also along the old Santa Fe trail. The panic of 1873 pvit a temporary stop to railroad building in the West, otherwise the Kansas Pacific might have been a competitor in the great race for Baton Pass, in which the Santa Fe and the Denver and Eio Grande afterward took part. 166 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. American securities were shaky in '73. The Eng- lish bondholders, having no returns from the money blindly invested, went into court and had a receiver appointed. Meanwhile the Kansas Pacific kept dou- bling the road every day to keep the rust off the rail, and awaited developments. Times grew harder, and the court ordered the road to be sold. Of course, the Kansas Pacific Company had received nothing for the material, and said, with a good deal of justice, " We ought to save our iron." The date was fixed for the sale of the road, and when it came near enough the Kansas Pacific people went out to Las Animas and began to gather up the things that they had loaned to the new road. First of all they pulled down the switch-targets at Las Ani- mas. Then they gathered up everything that belonged to them and brought it out. They took up the rails and ties and carried them back to Kit Carson. All the improvements, stations, tanks, and turn-tables that had been built by them or with Kansas Pacific ma- terial they hauled home with them. Finally, when they had finished, they had hauled the entire Kit Car- son Railroad up to Kit Carson, sorted it, and piled it up to dry. And so it fell out that when the officer of the court came up to sell the road, the local officials and the crew of the special that had brought the party were })ubbling over with tlic joke. To be sure, some dozens of widows and orphans may have had their all invested here, but that is not the popular belief. The builders of railroads, unfortunately, arc usually reckoned to be millionaires who can stand the loss, and so the people INCIDENTS OF THE EARLY DAYS. 167 about Kit Carson laughed in their sleeves and followed the authorities down to the switch that used to open to let the Las Animas express in. " Where is this rail- road?" asked the auctioneer. " Well/' said the chief engineer, " the fixtures be- longed to us — there's the right of way, though, as good as new." The owners bought it in. The close of the war in the canon left the Santa Fe free to follow out the original plans of the projectors of that line, while its plucky little rival turned north to help open up and develop the then unknown wealth of the mihes in the mountains, and the farms and orchards in the valleys of Colorado and Utah. In twenty years from the day Colonel Holiday showed the " drawing of his dream " at the end of the first thirteen miles of road, the total mileage of the sys- tem had grown to nearly ten thousand miles, equal to half that of Great Britain and Ireland, half that of France or Eussia, and two thirds that of Germany. Its rails would reach more than one third the distance around the earth, and upon its pay rolls were ten thou- sand more men than were in the United States Army at the beginning of the war with Spain. Upon its rails a thousand locomotives were employed constantly with forty thousand cars. The traffic of the road had been created, in most instances, by the road itself — by the opening and developing of the country. The venerable projector of the road, and its first president, has been a member of the board of directors ever since the organization of the company. He has 168 THE STORY OP THE RAILROAD. lived to see the fulfilment of his prophecy — the realiza- tion of his dream — as few men have, and the man who rolled upon the ground, roared, laughed, and called the prophet a " damned old fool," lived to see all this, and to be a passenger agent of the line, upon which there are five bridges that cost as many millions. The legal history of the road, of the making and moulding of the vast system, would make an interesting story. Ninety-five corporations, which have at one time or another played an important part in the history of the company, are dead and inactive by abandonment or absorption. There are now seventy-nine active com- panies. The manipulation and amalgamation of the vast number of properties has been done chiefly in a legal way by Mr. George E. Peck, of Kansas, who en- tered the service of the system in 1878. To him, chiefly, has fallen the task of welding together this vast number of corporations, which were from time to time merged into the present system, or set to revolving in close connection with it. Many beardless boys who entered the service of the Kansas road before it had crossed the State line are to-day the gray heads of departments on what has grown to be one of the " longest roads on earth." It is a singular fact that the tourist, watching from a window of the California Limited, sees neither of the three cities whose names combine to make the name of this great railroad. The Limited leaves Atchison a half hundred miles to the north, Topeka a half dozen miles in the same direction, and Santa F6 can be reached only over a branch line. Mr. Strong, who as vice-president and general INCIDENTS OF THE EARLY DAYS. 169 manager helped to make some of the company's hottest history, became its president in 1881, and held the position for seven years, leaving the service and retir- ing to his quiet farm at Beloit, Wis., in 1889. For half a dozen years he dazzled the railroad world of the quiet East, and awed the natives of the untamed West. Mr. Charles S. Gleed, an influential director of the Atchison Company, who is ever ready to give credit where it is due, declares that Mr. Strong was a " mag- nate " when to be a magnate in that territory meant to be " half the time a rioter and the other half a fugi- tive; * that strictly within the bounds of civil life, he was yet as free as Columbus to discover new commer- cial worlds, declare war and wage it, organize and build communities, overturn political powers of long stand- ing, replace old civilizations with new, and do all this asking no man's leave save those whose money was to be risked, or those, few in number, whose tasks were somewhat like his and in the same field." Under Mr. Strong's administration of the affairs of the Santa Fe, Kansas was mostly settled, Colorado developed. New Mexico transformed, and Arizona awakened; while Texas, California, and Mexico were bound together by way of Kansas; and all were guyed to the great Western Metropolis, Chicago. Towns were located and built, cities were brought into being, mines were opened, millions of people were moved, wars were waged and customs and precedents established in com- merce and law. All this was done with one man as the chief arbiter of many destinies. Law has succeeded * The Cosmopolitan, February, 1893. 170 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. much of this individual power. Legislative hodies, courts, government commissions, commercial organiza- tions, labour organizations — all these have come on the scene, writes Mr. Gleed. He adds: " Thus the romance in the business has largely gone. It went with the Indian, who once burned station-houses and murdered settlers along the line; with the Colorado and Kansas grasshoppers, that stopped the very trains on the track; with the drought that drove the settlers back and threatened ruin to the whole new field of commerce. It went with the strug- gle for the valuable mountain passes and the rich- est valleys; with the riot of new discoveries in the mineral world — the sudden upturning of precious metals and the incredible incoming of eager fortune- hunters from every quarter of the globe. It went with the terrors of the border, the great wave of hardened and reckless humanity which precedes rigid civilization; with the countless herds of buffalo and the prairie dog and the coyote. It went with the unorganized political activity which naturally gathered about so great a nucleus of power as the railroad. It went with the ad- vent of the now omnipresent hand of law and legal re- sistance; with the revelations of the printed sheet, the decorated car, and the great centennial exhibit. It went with the passing of many of the rare, famous, or notorious men of the day, the men who made the his- tory of their times; with the end of the great gulf stream of humanity that poured out of the Old World into the New, and with the flinging open of Oklahoma. It went in all these ways, and others, and it went to stay." CHAPTER XV. THE DENVER AND EIO GEANDE. After the war with the Santa Fe, which left the Rio Grande in possession of the Grand Canon of the Arkansas, the latter company rushed its rails into Leadville. The twelve miles of track that the Santa Fe had chiseled from the granite walls of the wild gorge gave the narrow gauge possession of the only possible pass to the Carbonate Camp in Lake County, to Aspen beyond Tennessee Pass, and ultimately on down the Grand River to Salt Lake and the Pacific. The great controversy between the rival roads was ended in the complete " lay down " of the big line in 1879. In the following year the Denver and Rio Grande reached the booming silver camp, where what is now the main line ended for about ten years. In the dawn of the '80s all Colorado was smelting silver, and at that time silver was worth smelting. Just where the road entered the Grand Canon of the Arkansas a little mountain stream poured its limpid waters into the river from the opposite shore. Up this narrow, crooked gorge, called Grape Creek Cafion, probably because there were no grapes in it, the pathfinders of the narrow gauge chopped and 171 172 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. picked their way until they reached the high open plain of Wet Mountain Valley. Thirty miles from the main line, in Custer County, lay Silver Cliff, where thirty thousand men, women, and outlaws had assem- bled to carve out a fortune. It was to reach this booming camp that the company now began the con- struction of a branch line through Grape Creek Canon. It finished it in a little over a year, in time to carry away the corpse of the dead camp.* Beyond the Sangre de Christo, on the Pacific side of the range, Gunnison was thriving like a bit of scan- dal, building smelters, shipping silver, and developing a burying ground on the banks of the Gunnison River. Passenger rates on the Eio Grande were six cents a mile in the valleys and ten in the mountains, with freight rates in proportion. These conditions made great the temptation to the management to try to reach every booming camp in Colorado at the earliest possible moment, and the re- sult was that the millions of money used in construct- ing new mileage, together with the millions poured in from Europe and the Eastern States of America for the development of mines, and still other millions taken from the hills, gave Colorado an exciting boom, and made it easy to secure money to build roads, the cost of which would tie them with silver and rail them with gold. While the branch was being built to Silver Cliff, other engineers, leaving the Leadville line at Salida, * For the story of the undoing of this camp and railroad, see my story, The Express Messenger. — C. W. THE DENVER AND RIO GRANDE. 173 fifty miles above the mouth of the canon, toiled up to the summit of the Eockies, reaching the crest of the continent at Marshall Pass — ten thousand feet above the sea — and dropped a line to Gunnison. Besides the silver mines of the Gunnison country they found here the only anthracite coal in Colorado, and immense beds of coking coal. In a little while the boom fretted itself out, the new hotel was closed, the fires died in the big smelter, and finally the public educator, hiding the elusive pea between the two half shells of a walnut, folded his blankets and went away. Meanwhile the restless pathfinders, from the tops of the wild walls, were sounding the depths of the Black Canon of the Gunnison for a path to the Pacific. Below Sapinero the walls of the canon came so close together that the trail makers were obliged to turn back and find a way to the bottom of the gorge beyond the narrows. A long rope was fixed to a cedar, and a man started down. The rope parted ten feet from the top of the wall, and the daring engineer was dashed to death at the bottom of the canon. Another rope was brought, another man went over, another, and another, and after burying their comrade in a quiet place they pushed on and planted a flag on the point of Currecanti Needle. They then turned into a side caiion, where the Cimarron empties into the Gun- nison, up the Cimarron, over Cerro Summit and down into the adobe, sage-covered desert lands in the valley of the Uncompahgre, the Gunnison, and the Grand. These same adobe deserts are dotted to-day with bits of green meadowland, wide fields of waving grain, and orchards drooping with the finest fruit that can be 13 174 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. found anywhere on the continent. The rails that ran through the narrow, wild canons were placed but three feet apart, and all that portion of track shown on the company's maps west of Salida is still known as the narrow-gauge system of the Denver and Eio Grande. Across the blazing Utah desert the locating en- gineers planted a row of stakes, and in time the loco- motive, begrimed with dust and alkali, dragging a huge water car behind it, crossed over to the shores of the Great Salt Lake. The intention of the projectors of the narrow-gauge system, as the name indicates, was to build a road from Denver to the Eio Grande Eiver, and possibly down to southern California by way of Santa Fe; but when Leadville and Aspen, and other silver camps, began to attract people by thousands and tens of thousands, the company did what was best for the road and for the State. Being a three-feet gauge, the road could go where a goat could find a footing. The locomotives were heavy for the gauge, but with very low wheels. The boilers lay so low that the links, when the lever M-as well down, would almost touch the ties. The grade on the original main line was two hundred and seven- teen feet to the mile. A branch line to the Calumet mines has a grade of four hundred and eight. A heavy locomotive can haul three empty cars — a load and a half — up the hill, and hold seven loads down, some- times. The Denver and Eio Grande, before the main line was widened out, was the most pretentious, most im- portant, best equipped, and, so far as we know, the most extensive and successful narrow-gauge system of THE DENVER AND RIO GRANDE. 175 railroad in the world. Nowhere have we ever seen such perfect little palaces as were to be found on this three- foot road. The only thing that approaches it in neat- ness and completeness is a little thirty-inch road that runs along the Suez Canal, from Port Said to Ismailia. The evolution of the motive power of the Eio Grande is an interesting study. The first locomotives weighed twelve tons — less than weighs the empty tank of one of the mountain moguls that scream along that line to-day. The mail cars had four wheels, and when one of them got off the rail the mail agent got out, and then the trainmen put their backs to the car and " jacked it up " on the rail again. The first coal ears had four wheels, a dump in the bottom, and held about as much as an ordinary farm wagon. A young man named Sample came out from Bald- win's to set up the first engine. When the work had been finished he remained at Denver, repairing air pumps and " tinkering about." By-and-bye he became foreman of the round-house, and finally master me- chanic. He had begun in the big shops at Philadel- phia at a dollar and a half a week; now he gave the firm orders for five, ten, or twenty locomotives at a time. For a quarter of a century he remained at the head of the motive power department, and then they promoted him. When Mr. Jeffrey became president he took the old master mechanic uptown, put him in a fine office in a big building, and gave him the salary, title, and responsibility of general superintendent of the system; but it did not make the old worker happier than he had been there at the shops, with the sound of the 176 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD, morning, noon, and evening whistle calling him to and from his work, just as it had called him at Philadel- phia in the days when his monthly stipend reached the sum of six dollars. At first the ties used on the Rio Grande were all pine, but the very hard mountain pine. These little locomotives — four wheels connected — could curve on the brim of a broad sombrero, and it was not an un- common thing for the locating engineers to run round a big bowlder rather than blast it away. They would not shy off for a tree unless it happened to be a very large one. In the mad rush to reach a booming camp, no attention was paid to banks. Often in the early spring the two sides of a through cut would ooze down over the track and cover it with mud. It was two or three years before the sides of the cuts got the proper pitch and became safe. General W. J. Palmer was the ruling genius in the building of the Denver and Rio Grande, and was its president when the narrow gauge crossed the Utah desert. The money that made the Utah line seems to have been Palmer money. Shortly after the comple- tion of the road to Salt Lake, the Rio Grande Company began to feel that it would like to lose the general, and his general manager. Colonel D. C. Dodge. Messrs. Palmer and Dodge were not in a hurry to get out. They had won the big battle that gave to the company the right of way through the Royal Gorge, and felt that they were at home. The climax came ono nitflii, a\1u'ti a new manager was temporarily in- Btallcd at Denver during the absence of General-Man- The Royal Gorge, Colorado. (Denver aud Rio Grande Railroad.) THE DENVER AND RIO GRANDE. 177 ager Dodge. The coloners car was at the rear end of a regular train, and when it came to the foot of the mountain the pin was pulled, and his car allowed to drop in on a shur. Very naturally the general man- ager was indignant. He raved at the dispatcher, and was about to wire an order dismissing that blameless official, when he was reminded of the fact that he also was at that moment out of a job. After much delay and a lot of wiring, the car was coupled on again and allowed to proceed to Denver, but that was the end of the reign of Messrs. Palmer and Dodge on the Eio Grande. But these indefeasible fighters did not go out of business. They pulled the pin on the Western section at the State line, called it the " Eio Grande Western," and took possession. It looked at the moment like a poor piece of property, stretching for the most part away across a desert with a range of mountains and the Utah Valley at the other end, but these far-seeing road makers saw the value of the franchise. Whatever of rolling stock happened to be at the west end was seized and held by the Rio Grande West- ern, and the same was done by the parent road. The new manager for the old company now began to get men loyal to his line to go over to the west end and purloin locomotives. When an engineer got near the State line, he would have his fireman pull the pin between him and his train and run over into Colorado. This business went on until both companies grew weary, for it was demoralizing to the service and in- terfered with the exchange of traffic which was neces- sary to both roads. 178 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. In time matters were adjusted, the superintendent of motive power for the Eio Grande was made consult- ing superintendent on the western, and in a few years nearly all the operating department, from the general superintendent down, as well as the general passenger agent, were men who had been with the old company. When the Colorado Midland built across the moun- tains the already prosperous Rio Grande Western widened its gauge, bought new, heavy locomotives, and began to boom with the business that came to it from the rival roads in the Eockies and from the Central Pacific at Ogden, with an ever-increasing local freight business originating in the mines, fields, and orchards of Utah, while the passenger department could live on half-rate tickets alone, so prolific were the families that flourished at the hearths of the faithful. Messrs. Dodge and Palmer are still at the head of the road, which, like the 0. E. & N., has always been a good road for its owners, its employees, and the sec- tion of the country through which it runs. If we except the New York Central and the Penn- sylvania, the Denver and Eio Grande is probably the best advertised road in the world. One reason for this is because it has always had a versatile and enthusiastic passenger agent, but mainly because God has scattered along its line miles and miles of almost matchless scen- ery, so that every lover of Nature who crosses the con- tinent by this route becomes at once a travelling agent for the Colorado road. CHAPTER XYI. THE NOETHERN PACIFIC. Because it traversed a country that promised some- thing for man to feed on, the northern route was the one most widely discussed at the beginning of the talk of a transcontinental railroad. It missed the high mountains of the middle West and the deserts farther south. Then, too, in the very early days, before we found out that we were in a great hurry, it was the cheapest route, for by it we were to sail round to the lakes of the Northwest, or paddle up the Missouri, take a train, or some sort of " steam carriage," to the head waters of the Columbia, and fall with the current into the Pacific — trolling for salmon on the way down. Had it not been for the war with Mexico in 1846, which drew attention to the Southwest, the gold dis- coveries in California in 1849, which drew attention to the Golden Gate route, the efforts of Jefferson Davis and other influential men of the South in the interest of a southern route — in short, if there had been no other way, the Northern Pacific might have been the first, instead of the third, transcontinental railroad in America. The Pike's Peak excitement in 1859 was another 179 180 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. star by which the pioneer piloted his bull team across the plains, opening a new trail from Omaha to the Pacific, midway between the famed old Santa Fe trail and the proposed path of the Northern Pacific Eail- road. In spite of the prophecies of the seers of the Senate, House of Representatives, and the financial world, the middle and far West continued to grow in importance and to give, from year to year, promise of a great future. The Mormons had watered the adobe deserts of Utah, and they had blossomed into broad vales of fruit and flowers. This desert land, so dreaded by early voyagers, that lay glistening in the sun three hundred days in each year, arched over by a sky as fine and fair, as clear and blue as burnished steel, wanted only to be watered to become the garden spot of the world. But nobody knew this in the early days. The un- inhabitable West was looked upon as a thing to be crossed, conquered, and overcome. The plains and des- erts were useless, the great Eockies important only as ballast to keep the world right side up. The chief aim of the transcontinental railroad, as already stated, was to reach the Pacific Ocean and the Orient. The pos- sibility of the vast and growing empire that lies between the Missouri River and the Pacific coast to-day was put aside, as the ignorant miners of Nevada put aside the " blue stuff " that polluted their pans and clogged their sluices on the Comstock, thereby daily throwing for- tunes in the dump. Nature guards her secrets well, but Time will tell. After all these centuries Africa and Alaska are giving up their gold. It might have taken even a longer time to have THE NORTHERN PACIFIC. 181 demonstrated the riches and resources of the West if the civil war had not made the completion of a railroad to the Pacific a political and military necessity. When, in 1853, Congress authorized the War De- partment to make explorations to ascertain the most practicable route for a railroad from the Mississippi Eiver to the Pacific Ocean, the details, including the route or routes to be surveyed, were all left to Jeffer- son Davis, Secretary of War. Very naturally Mr. Davis favoured a southern route, but it is to his credit that he did not allow his prejudice to interfere "u^th his duty to the whole country in the matter. He set five sepa- rate expeditions to work at once on each of the five routes that had been advocated. These were then known as the 32d, 35th, 38th, 42d, and 48th parallel routes, along which were subse- quently built respectively the Texas Southern Pacific, the Santa Fe, the Kansas Pacific, the Union Central Pacific, and the Northern Pacific railroads. Isaac I. Stevens, who had seen service in Mexico, and was then Governor of Washington Territory, and Captain George B. McClellan, of the United States Army, were placed in charge of the survey along the extreme northern route. Associated with these leaders were a number of young men who won fame in after years. Captain McClellan was afterward commander in chief of the Army of the Potomac, and was once the Democratic candidate for the presidency of the United States. Captain Stevens perished on a Virginia battle- field. Stevens worked west from St. Paul, McClellan east- ward from the Sound. 182 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. These things were done in the days when the "West was a howling wilderness from the river to the coast. Each of the outfits was armed, clothed, and equipped in true military fashion, and fixed for a long and dan- gerous voyage. Every mile of territory between St. Paul and the Pacific was held by the Indians, who, painted, feathered, and full of fight, crossed the path of the trail makers daily, threatening the engineers and often engaging them in bloody battle. Governor Stevens, from the Mississippi, and Cap- tain McClellan, from the Columbia, fought their way up to the low crest of the continent where a base of supplies had been established. Governor Stevens came out of the work an enthu- siastic advocate of the northern route. In fact, nearly every one of the five men sent out as chief of the several surveys seems to have found a way to the Pacific, but the time had not yet arrived for the great work of building the roads, or any one of them. The reports of these expeditions, which were submitted to Con- gress by the Secretary of War in 1855, filled, with maps and illustrations, thirteen huge volumes. Secre- tary Davis, as had been predicted, and as was perfectly natural under the circumstances, favoured the 32d parallel route, and argued, when submitting his report, that the road should not leave the Mississippi farther north than Vicksburg. But finally, when the time came for fixing the starting point for the Pacific railroad, it was fixed by a man politically as far from Mr. Davis as the north pole is from the south pole. When President Lincoln, fit the conclusion of his first interview in Washington THE NORTHERN PACIFIC. 183 with General Dodge, put his long forefinger on Oma- ha, that settled the question, so far as the first Pacific road was concerned. In this way the northern scheme was put aside for the time, though never abandoned by the men who had been pushing the enterprise. After the completion of the first transcontinental road the California capital- ists, who had made money out of the building of the Central Pacific, built the Southern Pacific, which gave the northern route still another setback. Asa Whitney, who had been its early and strongest advocate, who was at one time within a few votes of winning from Congress a strip of land sixty miles wide, running from the Mississippi to the ocean, including a title to the Columbia River and sixty miles of sea- coast, went out peddling milk. Three or four Senators of the United States had it in their power to say whether this apparently unselfish man should be the emperor of seventy-seven million acres of land or of a milk wagon, and they gave him the wagon. We say that he was unselfish because he agreed to build a rail- road through the middle of his farm, all the way from St. Paul to Puget Sound, without any financial aid from the Government. If he had lived a quarter of a century later he might have been a Gould or a Hunt- ington. When the control of the Government passed from the South to the North, the friends of the northern route took courage, but the Government was not going to extremes. The friends of what is now the Union Pacific were close to Mr. Lincoln, who seems to have favoured that survey, just as Thomas Jefferson had 184 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. favoured the northern scheme, and as Jefferson Davis favoured a southern route, and the result was that the Government gave its aid to the 42d parallel line, over which the Union and Central Pacific roads were after- ward built. On July 2, 1864, after the Union Pacific had se- cured the necessary legislation to insure the construc- tion of a line from Omaha, President Lincoln signed the bill creating the Northern Pacific Railroad Com- pany. At the head of this enterprise was a man named Perham, who had been before Congress for some time with what he called " The People's Pacific Eailroad Company." This was a New England organization, which had been squeezed out of the 42d parallel scheme, and had transferred its faith, effects, and affections suddenly to the northern route. This com- pany was to receive no subsidy in Government bonds. The land grant was to be twenty sections to the mile of track in Minnesota, and forty sections in the territories. Perham had persuaded himself that a million peo- ple stood ready to buy each one share of stock at one hundred dollars a share. Out of this insane notion grew an embarrassing provision in the charter, which prevented the company from issuing mortgage bonds except by the consent of the Congress of the United States. The act of incorporation named one hundred and thirty-five persons as commissioners to organize the Northern Pacific Railroad Company. In September, 1864, thirty-three of these commissioners, nearly all New Englanders, met at Boston and elected Josiah Perham as president. The officers of the board of THE NORTHERN PACIFIC. 185 commissioners were directed to open books for sub- scription to the capital stock. It was necessary that twenty thousand shares of stock should be subscribed for before a board of directors could be chosen to elect permanent officers to take the active management of the business from the commissioners appointed by Congress. Now came John Hancock, who purchased one share, for which he is supposed to have deposited ten dollars with Mr. Increase S. Whittington, treasurer of the board. Two Perhams subscribed for one share each, while Josiah, the president, took ten. John A. Bass bought one share, and S. C. Fessenden four thou- sand. In all, twenty thousand and seventy-five shares were subscribed for, and in December, 1864, a board of directors was elected. Josiah Perham now became the first president of the Northern Pacific Railroad Com- pany, and Mr. Whittington chief of the treasury de- partment. Six years later, when the original sub- scribers were called upon to pay the remaining ninety per cent on their stock, they refused, whereupon the new board confiscated the whole of the original sub- scription. At the end of 1865, Perham, having exhausted his means and mental and physical strength, went to the wall, like Asa Whitney. He succeeded, however, in interesting a number of Boston capitalists, notably Benjamin P. Cheney, of the Vermont Central Eail- road, and proprietor of Cheney's Express. These en- terprising New Englanders, having paid off the debts incurred by Perham, appealed to Congress for aid in building the road. 186 THE STORY OP THE RAILROAD. Two winters were now wasted in Washington in an effort to secure the help of the Government. The " down East " company was not popular in the West. The fact that the New England organization favoured a consolidation or combination with a Canadian line was also worked hard by those opposed to the northern route and in favour of the Union Pacific, and also by a great many public men who were opposed to granting land to any company. Senator Sherman was a bitter opponent of the northern route, though his brother, General Sherman, was one of the earnest workers for a road to the Pacific. Early in 1867 the president of the Northern Pa- cific Company conceived the idea of forming a rail- road syndicate composed chiefly of railroad men. Through the efforts of his friend, Mr. Thomas H. Canfield, of Burlington, Vt., he succeeded in get- ting the signatures of the following influential men to an agreement to take the Northern Pacific franchise, debts, and other disadvantages, and to try to push it to a practical beginning, if not to completion. The first big man to sign what was afterward known as the Original Interest Agreement was President William B. Ogden, of the Chicago and Northwestern Kailroad. Later they obtained the signatures of the presidents of the Erie, the Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago, and of Vice-President Fargo, of the New York Central. Other signers of the Original Interest Agreement were A. H. and D. N. Barney, and B. P. Cheney. The new syndicate employed an eminent engineer, Mr. Edwin F. Johnson, and began surveying a line, THE NORTHERN PACIFIC. 187 lobbying at Washington, and printing pamphlets. In a little while they had gone into their private purses for a quarter of a million dollars. Despite all reverses, the holders of the franchise still clung to the belief that it was valuable. True, the Government gave no financial aid, but the land grant was double the amount per mile given to the Union and to the Central Com- pany, and the land much more valuable. At all events, it was so regarded at that time. In 1869, just after the completion of the Union Pacific, the banking firm of Jay Cooke and Company was asked to take the financial agency of the northern road. Before giving an answer, the big banking house sent experts of its own to explore the country through which the proposed road was to run. One outfit went round to the mouth of the Columbia, while another, accompanied by President Smith, explored from Lake Superior to the Red Eiver of the North. The Pacific coast party was chased from the Yellowstone by In- dians, while the members of the eastern end of the ex- pedition, together with their military escort, were forced to fly for their lives from Fort Stevenson to the settlements in Minnesota, pursued by a big band of savages. The expert engineer of the banking house put the cost of the road and the necessary equipment at $85,277,000, an average of $42,638 per mile. The re- port was on the whole very encouraging to the banking house, and it became the financial agent of the com- pany. The main terms of the Jay Cooke contract are set down in Mr. E. V. Smalle/s History of the Northern Pacific Eailroad as follows: 188 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. " They provided for an issue of bonds to the amount of one hundred million dollars, bearing interest at the rate of seven and three tenths per cent in gold. " The banking firm credited the railroad with eighty-eight cents on the dollar for the bonds it sold, and as it disposed of them at par its margin was a very liberal one. But the contract gave it two hundred dollars of the stock of the company for every thousand dollars of bonds sold, which would have amounted, for the completed road, to about twenty million dollars, and one half of the remainder of the one hundred mil- lion dollars of stock authorized by the charter. " The twelve original proprietary interests which owned the stock were increased to twenty-four, and twelve of them assigned to Jay Cooke and Company. A considerable amount of the stock was given by the banking house to subscribers to the bonds, but in all cases an irrevocable power of attorney was taken, so that the firm, having purchased a thirteenth interest, controlled the management of the company's affairs. Other specifications in the contract made the firm the sole financial agent of the road, and the sole depositary of its funds; provided for the conversion of the six hundred thousand dollars of stock outstanding into bonds at fifty cents on the dollar, created a land com- pany to manage the town sites, and bound the firm to raise five million dollars within thirty days, with which the company was immediately to commence building the road." A y)ool was formed in riiiladol]ihia to furnish the five million dollars that had to be paid in at once for the beginning of construction work. The members of THE NORTHERN PACIFIC. 189 the pool took the bonds at par and received the twelve proprietary interests at fifty dollars each. Out of this little deal the banking house made considerably more than a million dollars. By the time the road reached Eed Eiver each of the twelve proprietary shares had earned a little over a half million dollars' worth of stock. A company had been formed to speculate in real estate along the line — destroying old and building up new camps, planting county seats and settling waste places, one half the profits of which went to the bank. The Congress of the United States, which had stood firm against the combined pull and push of the powerful railroad syndicate, went down at the first fire from the great gold-clad cruiser. Jay Cooke and Com- pany. To be sure, the truly virtuous men of both houses made a strong fight, but they were outgunned by the opposing fleet. The joint resolution upon which the fight was made was introduced in 1870, authorizing the issue of bonds secured by the land grant as well as the railroad property, including even the filing of the mortgage in the office of the Secretary of the In- terior. It practically enlarged the area of the land grant to thirty miles in the States and fifty miles in the territories on each side of the line. Yet, with all the advantage enjoyed by the banking house in the way of gifts of interest, commissions, and the absolute control of the financial end of the enter- prise. Jay Cooke and Company found it hard to raise the money. A deal had been made, and nearly carried out, by which a syndicate of European bankers was to take fifty million dollars' worth of the bonds, but at U 190 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. that moment Napoleon III began to make trouble for himself on the Ehine, and tlie deal fell through. By liberal advertising in almost every available space Jay Cooke and Company succeeded in raising a considerable amount of money by the sale of bonds (the interest upon which was payable in gold) in the United States. Thousands of names were written upon the big books in the great banking house, many of them the names of comparatively poor people. The Cookes now used for advertising purposes the speeches of con- gressmen who had opposed the land grant upon the ground that the land was rich, fertile, and extremely valuable. Actual construction work on the Northern Pacific was begun in the summer of 1870, at Thompson's Junc- tion on the Lake Superior and Mississippi Eailroad, also controlled by Jay Cooke and Company. Within the following twenty-four months more than thirty million dollars were received from the sale of bonds, and it seemed that nothing could break the big bank that was back of the Northern Pacific Eailroad. The house had already made an enviable reputation and much money by placing the Government's war loans, and now thousands were eager to trust their savings to it. Early in 1878 the company took the completed por- tion of the road as far west as Ecd Eiver from the con- tractors and opened it for traffic. The Lake Superior and Mississippi was leased, and a controlling interest bought in the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, op- erating nearly all the steamboat lines on Puget Sound, the Columbia, Snake, and "Willamette rivers, making THE NORTHERN PACIFIC. 191 connection with the ocean steamers to San Francisco. The Northern Pacific Company by this latter purchase came also into possession of the portage railroad at The Dalles and Cascades on the Columbia, which gave it control of nearly all the transportation facili- ties then existing in Oregon and Washington Terri- tories. Despite the liberal flow of money into the bank at the East, the rapidity with which it was spent at the West found the company embarrassed as early as August, 1872. President Smith, who seems to have given the road its first real start, now resigned. The house of Jay Cooke and Company went to the wall in the panic of 1873, and in 1875 a receiver was ap- pointed for the Northern Pacific Eailroad Company. Jay Cooke and Company had advanced to the rail- road company a million and a half dollars to push con- struction, while the directors of the road had borrowed on their own individual credit vast sums of money to hurry on to the Pacific, and now it all had to stop. In 1875 General George W. Cass, who was presi- dent of the company, was appointed receiver. The winding up of the business of the bankrupt road by Judge Nathaniel Shipman, the shutting off of lawyers who were anxious for delay, and the shutting out of the financial undertakers, who are always waiting about to receive the remains of a dead enterprise, was a big piece of work justly and ably performed by the court. The bonds bought from Jay Cooke and Company were converted into preferred stock, the thirty-three million dollars of debt wiped out, and the original bond- holders left in possession of five hundred and seventy- 192 THE STORY OP THE RAILROAD. five miles of road and ten million acres of land free of encumbrance. Mr. C. B. Wright, who became president of the Northern Pacific when General Cass was appointed receiver, was succeeded by Mr. Frederick Billings in 1879. Mr. Billings was able to raise money, and the work of completing the road was recommenced. He succeeded in interesting Messrs. Drexel, Morgan and Company and Messrs. Winslow, Lanier and Company, and through these big firms secured the funds for the completion of the road in 1883, just about a half cen- tury from the time when the subject of a Pacific rail- road had begun to be agitated in the press, and thirty years after the first survey had been made. In the general shaking up of 1873 the Northern Pacific lost the footing it had gained by purchasing a controlling interest in the steamboat business on the Columbia. In this way the back door was left open, and a new man slipped in, who was destined to mix things for Mr. Billings and others who had come into possession of the then unfinished railroad. This unknown man was Mr. Henry Villard, a Ger- man-born journalist, who developed into one of the great promoters of the day. In the interest of a syn- dicate of New York capitalists, Mr, Villard came up through the mouth of the Columbia for the first time in 1874. Later he represented the bondholders of the Kansas Pacific, also suffering from the short crops of 1873. In 187fi he was appointed one of the receivers of Ihc Kansas Pacific, and afterward removed by the sanic cniiH. Some of Mr. Villard's friends have com- ]iliiiii( Wr'A i 5 'i9B5 AM 7-4 m PM 56^ 1 7 1998 FormL9 — 15OT-10,'48(B10y9)4d4 WMITERSITY OF CAI AT LOS ANGELI T.IRRARY nt 3 1158 01165 2871 U2 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 847 774 7 ^ ♦^ p ^\^