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(<l tli.it -lay Gould wanted to run everything in
 
 o f. 
 
 2. ^-J'-
 
 THE NORTHERN PACIFIC. 193 
 
 his own way in the reorganization of the Kansas road, 
 and that he violated every agreement made with the 
 original owners. As to Mr. Gould's desire to run 
 things, it might be put down as an interesting bit of 
 history that Mr. Villard showed as much ambition in 
 that direction as did he, and almost as much ability. 
 
 Finding an open door, he came into the territory 
 of the Northern Pacific and looked about. It wanted 
 but a glance for a man with such a nose for business 
 to see the possibilities of the Columbia River and of 
 Oregon. He secured an option on the controlling in- 
 terest of the navigation companies, the right of way 
 for a railroad up the Columbia Valley, and other valu- 
 able franchises. He knew that the original intention 
 of the Union Pacific Company had been to drop a 
 line from Wyoming across Idaho into the Pacific at 
 Portland, Ore., and now he proposed to find the 
 money for half the road if the Union Pacific would 
 find the other half, which would give them, with their 
 Central Pacific connection at Ogden, two legs of a 
 " Y," with one foot on San Francisco and the other 
 on Portland. The Union Pacific spent a few days 
 in investigating the matter; then it declined the offer, 
 and spent a few years in regretting it. 
 
 Mr. Villard did not despair. He sought help else- 
 where, secured it, and in 1879 incorporated the Ore- 
 gon Railway and Na\agation Company. The work of 
 constructing a railroad on the south bank of the beau- 
 tiful Columbia began the same year. This was going 
 to be a good road to own so long as it had no rival, 
 but the Northern Pacific was liable to build down the 
 north bank of the Columbia, and Mr. Villard set about
 
 194 . Tfil! STORY OP^ THE RAILROAD. 
 
 to prevent the construction of that line. He intro- 
 duced himself to the Northern Pacific and asked for a 
 traffic arrangement. Having induced the Northern 
 Pacific to use the Oregon Kailvvay and Navigation 
 Company's track to Portland, he endeavoured to se- 
 cure an agreement to use it for all time, and a promise 
 that the Northern Pacific would not build down the 
 Columbia. 
 
 That was good business. There is no,.valid rea- 
 son for building two roads where there is a living for 
 but one, but the Northern Pacific would not agree. 
 Now Mr, Villard began to develop into a promoter. 
 It was in 1880, when money was piled up ready to 
 be risked. He did not tell even his closest friends 
 what was in his mind. To his business acquaintances 
 in the East he sent an invitation to join him in a new 
 company he was about to form. They were invited 
 to make up a pot of eight million dollars and ask no 
 questions. 
 
 There was a certain amount of mystery about the 
 transaction. Almost every one who received this in- 
 vitation to come in on the ground floor felt that he 
 had been let into a great secret, subscribed and asked 
 for more without knowing exactly what he was about. 
 The next day Mr. Villard had the money. Then he 
 called a meeting, explained his scheme, asked for twelve 
 million dollars more, and got them. When everything 
 had been arranged, the young organizer nipped enough 
 Northern Pacific stock to put his company in control 
 of the road. 
 
 Before this Mr. Villard, with a limited amount of 
 modesty, had asked for a seat with the Northern Pa-
 
 THE NORTHERN PACIFIC. 195 
 
 cific directors, but had failed to get it. Now he strolled 
 in, smiling, and rested his hand on the back of Mr. 
 Billings's chair. " Keep your seat, keep your seat," he 
 said, as that gentleman started to rise. " Don't get up 
 on my account. This is all done in the interest of 
 the Northern Pacific Railroad Company, and not for 
 the benefit of the Oregon line." 
 
 Now, as a matter of fact, Mr. Billings was really 
 anxious to give up the presidency of the road, and 
 without more ado he got out of the chair. It had all 
 come about so swiftly and suddenly that the general 
 himself was surprised. He was not ready to assume 
 the active management of the property, and it was 
 arranged that Mr. A. H. Barney should take the presi- 
 dency for a year, when Mr. Villard, to whom had been 
 refused a seat on the board, took his place at the head 
 of the table. 
 
 If Jay Gould ever rounded up a railroad, corralled 
 a company, or roped and marked a maverick for his 
 own more neatly or completely, his historians have 
 failed to record the incident. The striking difference 
 between Mr. Gould and some of his opponents was that 
 the former never squealed when he happened to come 
 out second best. The ultimate aim and ambition of 
 all the magnates was the same.* 
 
 Later the Oregon line became an independent road, 
 or rather a system of roads. A few years ago it was 
 being operated as a part of the vast Union Pacific 
 system, but was lost in the break-up of 1893, just as 
 
 * It is not within the province of this book to trace the 
 financial vicissitudes of the Northern Pacific within the last 
 fifteen years.
 
 196 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 the Northern Pacific Company lost it twenty years be- 
 fore. To-day it is being operated as an independent 
 line. It was from the start, has remained, and is now 
 one of the very best pieces of railroad property in all 
 the West. 
 
 Millions of men and women know the beautiful 
 river that runs from Albany into the Atlantic Ocean. 
 The writer has seen it from the engine of the Em- 
 pire State express at a mile a minute, when the oak 
 leaves, turning with the touch of Time, were all aflame 
 with the fire of a dying day. And yet, watching from 
 the window of a car as it winds along the banks of 
 the noblest river of the Pacific slope, in the shadows 
 of wild, native woods, hearing the splash and feeling 
 the spray of foaming falls, one is apt to say that the 
 hills of the Hudson are the banks of a sleepy canal 
 compared to the wild grandeur of the beautiful Co- 
 lumbia.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE CANADIAN PACIFIC. 
 
 Before the Canadian Pacific Railway, or back of it, 
 there was the beginning, in 1867, of the Dominion of 
 Canada, created by the confederation of the several 
 provinces under a general government. Before that there 
 were Indians, and back of the Indians the mountains, 
 lakes, and forest; but back of everything was the Hud- 
 son Bay Company. That institution seems always to 
 have been here. A half hundred years ago its trappers 
 were found on nearly every river that ran between 
 the Arctic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. The early 
 pathfinders crossing the plains took tips from these 
 men, and the first overland caravans were often piloted 
 along the old Santa Fe trail by the fur-catchers from 
 Canada. Having been here always, the Hudson Bay 
 Company claimed the earth by right of discovery, or, 
 at least, all of it that lay between the Rocky Mountains 
 and the watershed of Lake Superior. 
 
 Now, the Canadian Government, being ambitious, 
 wanted a dominion washed by the waters of the Pacific 
 as well as by the Atlantic, but before it could hope to 
 have absolute empire over all the vast region that 
 reached from ocean to ocean it must do away with the 
 Hudson Bay Company, which had a government of its 
 own. The company was disposed of by a cash pay- 
 
 197
 
 198 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 ment of a million and a half dollars, the retention of 
 its occupied posts, and five per cent of all lands lying 
 between the Eed Eiver Valley on the east and the 
 Rocky Mountains on the west, and extending as far 
 north as the great Saskatchewan. This purchase car- 
 ried the Dominion of Canada to a line marked by the 
 summit of the Eocky Mountains, between the forty- 
 ninth and the fifty-fourth parallel, thence on the one 
 hundred and twentieth meridian to the sixtieth paral- 
 lel, which lines form the eastern boundary of the Pa- 
 cific province, British Columbia, north of which the 
 Dominion was extended westward to the one hundred 
 and forty-first meridian west of Greenwich, which is 
 the eastern boundary of Alaska in that latitude. This 
 was one of the largest real-estate transactions on record. 
 In 1871 British Columbia entered the union, thus 
 extending the Dominion of Canada to the Pacific 
 Ocean. The principal condition of this union was 
 that the Dominion should within ten years connect 
 by rail the seaboard of British Columbia with the rail- 
 road system of Canada, construction to commence at 
 the Pacific coast in 1873. Surveys were immediately 
 commenced and prosecuted for years, but the work 
 of construction was not begun until 1875, and then 
 not at the Pacific coast, but at the Lake Superior 
 end. Work at the coast was not commenced until 
 1879. Some of the delay is accounted for by the fact 
 tbat tlie records of the first three years' survey were 
 destroyed by fire in Ottawa early in 1874.* 
 
 * These facts and figures are taken from a paper read by Mr. 
 Thomas C. Keefer, President Am. See. C. E., at Milwaukee, in 
 
 1888.
 
 THE CANADIAN rACIFIC. 199 
 
 The Parliament of Canada had decided in 1873 
 that the road should be constructed and operated by 
 a private corporation subsidized by the Government, 
 and a contract was made in that year with the late 
 Sir Hugh Allan for its construction within ten years, 
 and its operation for a similar period on the basis of a 
 subsidy of thirty million dollars cash and fifty million 
 acres of land. Sir Hugh controlled a transatlantic 
 steamship line, and desired the railroad for inland 
 connection. This excited powerful antagonism, and 
 his project was so discredited in the money market 
 that he failed to form his company. The Government 
 also was defeated on a question arising out of this 
 contract, and retired. The new Government was 
 bound to carry out the agreement with British Co- 
 lumbia, but, not feeling responsible for its details, 
 did not regard time as the essence of the contract, 
 and considered it an impossible one in that respect, 
 especially after Sir Hugh Allan's failure. It was de- 
 termined, therefore, in 1874, to proceed with it as a 
 public work, and construction was commenced be- 
 tween Lake Superior and the prairie region in the 
 following year. The Government of 1874 was de- 
 feated in 1878, its opponents returning to power. 
 They, after continuing the construction as a pub- 
 lic work until 1880, reverted to their original policy 
 of construction by a private company. The terms 
 of the contract with this private (the present) com- 
 pany were: 
 
 1. Twenty-five million dollars cash and twenty- 
 five million acres of selected land in the fertile belt, 
 in addition to the right of way for track and stations,
 
 200 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 shops, docks, and wharves on or through public prop- 
 erty. 
 
 2. Free import of all steel rails and fastenings, 
 fence and bridge material in wood or iron for origi- 
 nal construction, and telegraph wire and instruments 
 for first equipment. 
 
 3. The Government sections under contract — about 
 seven hundred miles — to be completed, with stations 
 and water service, but without rolling stock, and 
 handed over to the company on the completion of 
 that contract as a free gift. This seven hundred 
 miles of road had cost the Government thirty million 
 dollars. 
 
 4. Perpetual exemption from taxation by the Fed- 
 eral Government. 
 
 5. No line to be chartered south of the Canadian 
 Pacific for a period of twenty years, except for a direc- 
 tion southwest or west of south. 
 
 The company bound itself to build two thousand 
 miles of road and to operate the transcontinental line 
 for a period of ten years. The road when completed 
 was to be as good as the Union Pacific was found 
 to be in 1873, four years after the last spike was 
 driven.* 
 
 ♦ " When the Canadian Pacific was about to be built, the 
 Dominion Government, some time in 1873 or 1874, examined the 
 Union Pacific Railroad carefully, and, in making its contract for 
 the building of the Canadian Pacific, used the Union Pacific as 
 its standard ; and there occurs a clause in their contract which 
 provides that the Canadian Pacific, when completed, shall be 
 equal in all its parts (in roadbed, structures, alignments, and 
 equipment) to the Union Pacific as found in the year 1874 ; and 
 that Government is now (1888) making a settlement with its con-
 
 THE CANADIAN PACIFIC. 201 
 
 The capital stock of the Canadian Pacific Company 
 was fixed at one hundred million dollars. Here, as in 
 the building of other transcontinental lines, great cal- 
 culations were made and vast sums of money expected 
 from the sale of lands, but these could not be sold for 
 the simple reason that the Government was giving 
 away land that was Just as good. By the autumn of 
 1883 sixty-five million dollars of the capital stock had 
 been sold and all the money expended in construction. 
 
 Rival interests now assailed the road, aided by the 
 Government's political opponents, creating such dis- 
 trust that the remainder of the capital stock could not 
 be sold at all. About this time the Northern Pacific 
 was in trouble, creating a bad state of affairs in the 
 money market, and altogether the Canadian Pacific 
 Company was in a bad way. Early in 1884 the com- 
 pany was obliged to apply to the Dominion Govern- 
 ment for a loan of $23,500,000. This made a total 
 loan of $29,880,000, to secure which the Government 
 took a lien upon the entire property of the company. 
 In consideration of this loan, the company agreed to 
 complete the transcontinental line by May 1, 1886, 
 five years ahead of time. 
 
 The road was now being built at the rate of nearly 
 five hundred miles a year. Parts of it were comparative- 
 ly cheap, others extremely expensive. There is one mile 
 of the Canadian Pacific, along the eastern shore of 
 Lake Superior, where the rock work was very heavy, 
 that is said to have cost the company nearly three 
 
 tractors, and claiming that the Canadian Pacific has not yet been 
 brought to that standard." — General Dodge, Chief Engineer 
 U7iion Pacific Railroad.
 
 202 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 quarters of a million dollars before the naked track 
 was ready for a train to pass. And so, with this rapid, 
 expensive road making, the company was soon in finan- 
 cial difficulties again. Again it was forced to turn 
 to the Government, which seems to have stood loyally 
 by the road, no matter what political faction was man- 
 aging the public finances.* 
 
 It took a vast amount of capital, as well as of cour- 
 age, to carry a main line of railroad from Montreal 
 to the Pacific through a country that was for the most 
 part not settled at all. It was like building over the 
 American Desert. No man could say what the road 
 would cost in the first place, and what the cost of 
 keeping it open would be, or give a reasonable guess 
 as to its earning capacity. The engineers had been 
 able to make out that there would be a lot of heavy 
 rock work along the lake region, " muskege " in the 
 moorlands, " gumbo " on the slopes, and snow on the 
 mountains. The passes, compared with other passes 
 in the Eockies, were surprisingly low, but in the North- 
 west even a low mountain can make trouble. 
 
 The Eocky Mountains dip down as they go north, 
 terminating as a distinct range near the fifty-second 
 parallel, where they are cut short by the Peace Eiver, 
 
 * " The Canadian Pacific Railway is the work of Canada ex- 
 chisively. The road was undertaken by Canada as a political 
 and commercial one, to fulfil the compact with British Columbia, 
 and unite together all the provinces of the Confederacy, but 
 chiefly in order to develop the vast estate purchased from the 
 Hudson Bay Company. It has been carried out by her people 
 without any assistance from the Imperial Government — not even 
 the endorsement of Canadian securities to obtain a low rate of 
 interest." — Tfiomas C. Kicefkr, Chief Engineer,
 
 THE CANADIAN PACIFIC. 203 
 
 which heads in behind them, draining the table-land 
 between the Coast Eange and the Kockies. The Denver 
 and Eio Grande and the Colorado Midland cross the 
 continental divide ten thousand feet or more above 
 the sea. The Union Pacific crosses at a little over 
 eight thousand feet, the Northern Pacific at a still 
 lower altitude, while the Canadian Pacific, the farthest 
 north of all the transcontinental lines, reaches the 
 crest of the continent only five thousand two hundred 
 and ninety-six feet above tide water. Between the in- 
 ternational boundary and Peace Eiver ten passes were 
 explored by the Canadian Pacific engineers, all lower- 
 ing northward, from seven thousand to two thousand 
 feet. The range, which is sixty miles wide at the 
 forty-ninth parallel, narrows to forty miles before it 
 reaches Peace River, where it practically pinches out. 
 The three mainland ranges crossed by the Canadian 
 Pacific are the Coast Range, the Gold Range, and the 
 Rockies (whose rivers run down to the Arctic Ocean 
 and Hudson Bay on the north and east, and into the 
 Pacific on the west), extending from the eastern slope 
 of the Rockies to the end of the track at Vancouver, 
 a distance of five hundred and twenty-two miles. 
 
 In Colorado the timber line is reached at about 
 eleven thousand feet, while in the Canadian Rockies 
 nothing grows over seven thousand feet above tide 
 water. At six thousand feet snow falls in every month 
 of the year in the Northwest, while in Colorado, Utah, 
 or Nevada delightful valleys lay six and eight thousand 
 feet above the ocean, bathed in almost perpetual sun- 
 shine in summer and a great part of the time in winter, 
 with no snow between May and October. That is why
 
 204: THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 the ranges in the North were so much dreaded before 
 the road was built. It took years of tireless watching 
 and " sleeping out " on the part of the engineers to 
 solve the snow problem. They had to get acquainted 
 with the country and the avalanche and learn to 
 handle it, and at the same time to take care of what 
 they call the " flurry "—the local hurricane produced 
 by the passing of a snovvslide. Trees standing one 
 hundred yards clear of the path of an avalanche have 
 been clipped off short fifty feet above the ground. 
 Others even farther away have had their trunks packed 
 full of fine snow, so hard that a cat could not scratch 
 it. If a slide struck a crag and shied off, the " flurry " 
 kept straight ahead over the obstruction, sweeping 
 everything before it for hundreds of yards. A big 
 avalanche — one travelling rapidly — accompanied by a 
 good " flurry " is said to be about the wildest thing 
 ever seen in the hills. To steer the avalanche away 
 from the openings between sheds, the engineers built 
 " A " splits — triangular pens filled with stone or dirt 
 — above the gap, which caused the slide to part and 
 pass on either side and over the tops of the snowsheds, 
 which in a slide country are very substantially built. 
 It is an interesting fact, however, that there were ten 
 years ago nearly ten times as many miles of snow- 
 sheds on the Central Pacific, which crosses the conti- 
 nental divide near the forty-second parallel, as there 
 were on the Canadian Pacific.* Probably no other 
 
 * " There are said to be six miles of staunchly built snow- 
 sbods on the Canadian Pacific, and sixty miles on the Central 
 Pacific Railway." — Tqomas Curtis Clakkk, The American Rail- 
 way.
 
 THE CANADIAN PACIFIC. 205 
 
 railroad in the world has a more substantial and com- 
 plete shed system than has been here worked out by 
 that eminent American manager, Sir William Van 
 Horn, and his assistants, superintendents, and en- 
 gineers.* 
 
 While the climatic conditions were more or less 
 against the builders of the Canadian Pacific, the In- 
 dians were not. Either they had a better breed of 
 Indian up North or a better way of handling him. At 
 all events, they seem to have made little or no trouble 
 for the trail makers. Only when fired by a dash of 
 the blood of the paleface or an overdose of fire-water 
 did her Majesty's red children make trouble. 
 
 Infinite' pains must have been taken by the en- 
 gineers who located the line of the Canadian Pacific. 
 The road runs from Montreal to Lake Superior with a 
 maximum grade in either direction of one per cent 
 and a minimum curvature of six degrees. In but one 
 place — going west from Lake Superior — does the grade 
 exceed one per cent until the Eocky Mountains are 
 reached. All the gradients on the main line that ex- 
 ceed one per cent are encountered on a stretch of one 
 hundred and thirty-four miles between Bow Eiver 
 in the Pockies and Illecillewalt, on the western slope 
 of the Selkirk Mountains. Instead of following the 
 Columbia Piver round a long, horseshoe bend, the 
 road climbed over the Selkirks, saving nearly a hun- 
 dred miles, the short cut being less than one third 
 the distance travelled by the river. The pass over the 
 
 * Sir William Van Horn, formerly General Manager, and 
 now President of the Canadian Pacific, is an American by birth. 
 He began as a timekeeper on the Illinois Central. 
 15
 
 206 ^HU STORY OP THE RAILROAD. 
 
 Selkirks, which is only forty-three hundred feet above 
 the Pacific, was discovered after months of hard work 
 "by Major Albert B. Rogers, one of the most persistent 
 and skilful of American engineers. It is said to be one 
 of the few passes on this continent where the locomo- 
 tive has blazed the trail for the Indian, the scout, and 
 the prospector. 
 
 The last spike in the Canadian Pacific was driven 
 in 1885, but no attempt was made to work the trans- 
 continental line during the following winter. The 
 track-laying had been rushed to complete the line, and 
 now the winter shot down and closed it. Engineers, 
 provided with meteorological instruments, snowshoes, 
 and dog-trains, stayed in the country to get acquainted 
 with the " flurry " and the slide. During the sum- 
 mer of 1886 snowsheds were built, with troughs at the 
 tops, through which ran water from adjacent springs, 
 to be used in case of fire, and with " splits " to protect 
 the open breathing spaces between the sheds, for long 
 sheds are dangerous; they hold the smoke from the 
 locomotives, darkening the interior, and hiding the 
 signals of trainmen, as well as making it difficult to 
 hear the whistle of the engine. There is no more 
 dangerous place for train and enginemen on the rail 
 than in a long snowshed on a steep grade. 
 
 It is on the slope of the Selkirks that the " gumbo " 
 is found. This is a sandy loam quicksand, which oozes 
 out of the sides of the cuts and covers the track. The 
 oozing was finally stopped by driving a double row 
 of piles on either side of the track and filling the space 
 between them with coarse gravel or broken rock. 
 
 On leaving the Columbia, the line crosses the Gold
 
 ^HE CANADIAN PACIFIC. ^07 
 
 Range through the Eagle Pass, a remarkably favour- 
 able one, the summit being only eighteen hundred 
 feet above tide, although in a range with many snow- 
 capped mountains. From the western side of the Gold 
 Range the line follows the shores of lakes and rivers, 
 which discharge into the Pacific Ocean upon Canadian 
 soil. In crossing the dry zone, or bunch-grass grazing 
 plateau of British Columbia, there is heavy work and 
 tunnelling along the rock-bound shores of tlie lakes; 
 but it is when the line descends the Thompson and 
 Fraser Rivers, where these cut through the Coast 
 Range, that the heaviest consecutive hundred miles 
 on the whole route are encountered. This section, 
 built by the Government, cost about ten million dol- 
 lars, or eighty thousand dollars per mile, without roll- 
 ing stock or stations. 
 
 Another serious and unexpected difficulty with 
 which the management of the new transcontinental 
 line had to deal, after the road was opened, was the 
 " creeping track." West of Winnipeg, where the road- 
 bed is highly elastic, the track creeps with the move- 
 ment of a passing train. At the bottom of a boggy 
 sag, called a " muskeg " by the Indians, there is a 
 small bridge, and from this bridge the track used to 
 creep east and west. The difficulty was finally over- 
 come by putting in twelve-foot ties and forty-inch 
 angle bars, with a slot in alternate sides of the rails at 
 every tie to hold them in position. The following de- 
 scription of the action of the " creeping track " is 
 given by Mr. Whyte, superintendent of the division: 
 
 " The track would yield about six inches to every 
 passing train. With a heavy consolidation engine,
 
 208 'THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 hauling thirty-five cars, this track crept twenty-six 
 inches in the direction in which the train was moving. 
 The rails creep for about three quarters of a mile east 
 and about half a mile west of a small bridge at the 
 foot of a grade in both directions. They creep with 
 every train, and in warm weather will often run twelve 
 inches under an ordinary train. Track bolts break 
 almost daily, and repairs are to the extent of a box 
 of bolts per month. Cinder ballast keeps the track 
 in line and surface fairly well, but does not in the 
 least prevent the creeping of the rails. Lining and 
 surfacing are necessary at least once a week. On ac- 
 count of the flanges on the angle plates, spikes must 
 be left out of a tie on each side of these plates, other- 
 wise the creeping rails would carry the ties with them 
 and throw the track out of gauge. Three trains run- 
 ning in the same direction are often sufficient to open 
 all joints on one side and close them on the other side 
 of the bridge between. The whole muskeg, when a 
 train is passing, shows a series of short waves five to 
 six inches deep, rising and falling with the passing 
 load, and the rails can be seen moving with the mov- 
 ing train." 
 
 Before the Leslies had perfected their rotary snow 
 excavator, the danger of having trains snow-bound 
 was a source of constant dread and uneasiness to the 
 railroad officials. Marshall Pass, on the Eio Grande, 
 was once blocked for ciglit days in the days of the 
 pilot plough. The passenger trains were held at the 
 foot of the hill on either side of the range, but in one 
 or two cases enginemen who got separated from the 
 main force actually suffered for want of food. An eu-
 
 THE CANADIAN PACIFIC. 209 
 
 gineer and fireman undertook to fall down the two- 
 himdred-and-seventeen-foot grade, but got stuck four 
 miles from the summit. Here they remained until 
 they began to eat the tallow out of the tallow pot, for 
 the storm that was raging there, eight or ten thousand 
 feet above the sea, made it impossible for either to 
 venture out. On the eighth day a successful attempt 
 was made to open the road, and the starved crew was 
 rescued. 
 
 As late as 1890, in the latter part of May, the 
 Union Pacific Company had a snow contest on Alpine 
 Pass to settle for all time the question as to the best 
 snow machine to be used on the mountains of its sys- 
 tem. The contest, which lasted three days and cost 
 the company something over ten thousand dollars, 
 was an exciting one, but it was worth the money, and 
 settled the snowplough question not only for the Union 
 Pacific, but for nearly the whole snow country.* 
 
 In order to reduce the danger of snow blockades 
 to a minimum, and to enable the passenger department 
 to give assurance to prospective passengers of the ab- 
 solute safety of the journey, Mr. Van Horn, then the 
 general manager of the company, caused a number of 
 " caches " to be made in the mountains, just as the 
 voyageurs of the Hudson Bay Company, explorers and 
 hunters, had done in the earlier days. For hundreds of 
 miles no supplies could be procured except by trains, 
 and, in view of detentions, each through train from 
 Montreal, in addition to the dining-car supplies, car- 
 
 * A full account of this contest, under the title of A Novel 
 Battle, will be found in Tales of an Engineer.
 
 210 THE STORY OP THE RAILROAD. 
 
 ried in the baggage car an emergency box of pro- 
 visions, to be used exclusively for passengers, and only 
 in case of necessity. Besides this, at nine points on 
 the Selkirks and Eagle Pass, where detention by snow- 
 slides was possible, provision magazines were estab- 
 lished in safe positions, at intervals of about ten or 
 twelve miles, so that no train could be caught more 
 than six miles from food. These provisions were taken 
 away in the spring and replaced by fresh supplies in 
 the autumn. Coal and oil supplies for the passenger 
 cars were similarly " cached," and emergency fuel for 
 the locomotives, bridge and track material held loaded 
 on cars, to shorten the detention of trains. 
 
 The Canadian Northwest, however, first opened 
 and prepared for settlement by the building of the 
 Canadian Pacific Eailway, is not all avalanche, " flur- 
 ry," and glacier. The valley of the Eed Eiver of the 
 North is one of the finest wheat fields in the world. 
 The continental line runs through nearly four hundred 
 miles of wheat land that is better than all the gold 
 lands of the far Northwest. One hears and reads a 
 great deal about the fifty millions of gold that the 
 Klondike promises to give up this year, but nothing 
 is said of the one hundred million bushels of wheat 
 that are now being wimpled by the warm " chinook " 
 and bathed in the sun of an eightcen-hour day.* 
 
 • " Another climatic feature peculiar to all high latitudes, 
 which acfoiints for the ripening of grain and vegotablos in the 
 Peace River region and north of the sixtieth parallel, is the 
 greater length of the day and the greater amount of sunshine, 
 the 8un rising on .Tune 21st at 3.12 a. m., and setting at 8.50 r. m. 
 •—Dr. Dawson, Canadian Geological /Survey.
 
 W 2
 
 THE CANADIAN PACIFIC. 211 
 
 The explorations and surveys for the railroad had 
 made known the character of the country it was to 
 traverse. In the wilderness east, north, and west of 
 Lake Superior forests of pine and other timber and 
 mineral deposits of incalculable value were found, and 
 millions of acres of agricultural land as well. The 
 vast prairie district between Winnipeg and the Eocky 
 Mountains proved to be wonderfully rich in agricul- 
 tural resources. Toward the mountains great coal 
 fields were discovered, and British Columbia beyond 
 was known to contain almost every element of traffic 
 and wealth. 
 
 Finally, the forces working toward each other met 
 at Craigellachie, in Eagle Pass, in the Gold or Colum- 
 bia Eange of mountains, and there, on a wet morning, 
 the 7th of November, 1885, the last rail was laid in 
 the main line of the Canadian Pacific Eailway. 
 
 The close of 1885 found the company, not yet five 
 years old, in possession of no less than four thousand 
 three hundred and fifteen miles of railroad, including 
 the longest continuous line in the world, extending from 
 Quebec and Montreal all the way across the continent to 
 the Pacific Ocean, a distance of over three thousand 
 miles, and by the midsummer of 1886 all this vast sys- 
 tem was fully equipped and fairly working throughout. 
 Villages and towns, and even cities, followed close 
 upon the heels of the line builders; the forests were 
 cleared away, and the soil of the prairies was turned 
 over, mines were opened, and even before the last rail 
 was in place the completed sections were carrying a 
 large and profitable traffic. The following years were 
 marked by an enormous development of this traffic,
 
 212 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 by the addition of many lines of railroad to the 
 company's system, and by the establishment of the 
 magnificent steamship service to Japan and China. 
 
 But the future of Canada and of the Canadian Pa- 
 cific depends not upon the traffic of the Orient nor on 
 the gold of the Klondike, but upon the settlement and 
 development of the great Northwest; and by-and-bye 
 men will not say that Canada made the railroad, but 
 that the railroad made Canada.
 
 CHAPTEE XVIII. 
 
 HOAD MAKING IN MEXICO. 
 
 Jtjst as great wars have developed great generals, 
 so has the railroad brought out some remarkable men. 
 There are great road makers who make roads all their 
 lives and die in the graders' camp. Others, more versa- 
 tile, build roads and then run them, and in time be- 
 come great managers, for it is well for the president 
 to know what is between the ties. The home of the 
 road maker is always at the front. The whistle of the 
 work engine echoes in a wilderness. 
 
 Twenty-five or thirty years ago a boy began push- 
 ing a truck, for fifty cents a day, on the Vermont Cen- 
 tral Eailroad. He kept the truck oiled and was pro- 
 moted, but slowly, and he went to California via Pana- 
 ma. He worked all the way from California to Ala- 
 bama, and in 1871 was station master at Mobile. Ten 
 years later he was general superintendent, resigned, 
 and went to Mexico to build the line of the Santa Fe 
 system known as the Sonora Eailway, and there is 
 where this story should begin. 
 
 The Mexican Government, for reasons which were 
 not published, refused to allow the road to be built 
 from El Paso to tide water, but compelled the con- 
 tractors to begin at Guaymas, halfway up the Gulf 
 
 213
 
 214 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 of California, and build back. Everything had to be 
 brought around Cape Horn by sailing vessels. The 
 ships carrying material to the track makers made one 
 round trip per year. In order to be sure of a small 
 working force, the builder of this sea-fed railroad 
 took two hundred negroes overland, and employed at 
 once all the Indians and Mexicans who could be 
 persuaded to work. Not all the negroes had char- 
 acters. Many of them had two names and a razor, 
 and when they distributed themselves among the na- 
 tives on the night that followed pay day thought- 
 ful men slept in storm cellars. Idle Mexicans, jealous 
 of the Americans, created or incited riot at every 
 opportunity. The Indians were Indians, and, as 
 a whole, the graders of the Sonora would rank with 
 the hardest working force ever collected on the con- 
 tinent. 
 
 The man who undertook the construction of the 
 Sonora Railway in the face of the most serious com- 
 plications was Daniel Bullard Eobinson, whose first 
 promotion came as a result of his care for a push- 
 truck down in Vermont. Mr. Robinson had with him 
 one of the most heroic as well as most popular en- 
 gineers ever employed in the West. His name was 
 Morley. He was the hero of that famous morning 
 ride from Pueblo to Canon City, in the fight for the 
 Royal Gorge. His name is on the sign-board above 
 the station halfway up the eastern slope to Raton Pass. 
 All the men who fought under, over, or side by side 
 with Morley in the great battle that ended with the 
 opening of the West speak well of him. Ex-President 
 Strong, of the Santa Fe, speaks of him as an affec-
 
 ROAD MAKING IN MEXICO. 215 
 
 tionate father speaks of a dutiful son who has lately 
 passed away. 
 
 Not long ago the writer asked Mr. Eohinson about 
 the famous pathfinder. His face showed instantly the 
 interest he felt in the subject. " Morley's head was 
 on my shoulder when he was shot," said the president 
 of the 'Frisco line, watching the " desert " that he had 
 helped to conquer slip away from his private car. 
 
 " We were travelling overland in a wagon," he 
 went on. " We used to make hundreds of miles in that 
 way, and, of course, in that wild country, where a 
 great majority of the inhabitants were opposed to new 
 things, we had to look out for ourselves. There were 
 Indians always to be guarded against, lawless Mexi- 
 cans and bandits of almost every shade and colour, so 
 for protection we had our rifles within reach at all 
 times. We had been travelling and working almost 
 constantly day and night, and were completely worn 
 out. I had leaned my head on Morley's shoulder and 
 taken a nap. When I awoke I complained about a 
 rifle that rested between the two men on the front 
 seat. The butt of the gun was against the dashboard, 
 the muzzle pointed at my head. Well, nobody paid 
 any attention to my protest. Morley said that he would 
 go to bed, and, leaning his head upon my shoulder, 
 w^as soon sound asleep. One of the men moved, the 
 rifle was discharged, and the bullet went crashing 
 through the sleeper's head." 
 
 Here Mr. Eohinson fished a little brass cylinder 
 from his vest pocket. " This," he said, " is the shell 
 that held the cartridge that killed Morley sixteen years 
 ago."
 
 216 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 The wound was not instantly fatal. Morley got 
 out of the wagon and walked round in front of the 
 team; then gazing about like a man looking for a 
 place to lie down, he said, addressing his companions, 
 " Boys, this is hard," and that was the end of a man 
 who wanted only the opportunity to become one of 
 the nation's heroes. It was with a heavy heart that 
 his chief and friend pushed the great work in Mexico 
 to completion after Morley's death. 
 
 He had begun this work in 1881, and in 1883 went 
 to Paso del Norte to take charge of the construction 
 of the Mexican Central from that point to Fresnillo, 
 Mexico, a stretch of seven hundred and fifty miles. 
 It was here that Mr. Eobinson beat the world's record 
 in road making. From one end, with only the stakes 
 set to begin with, he built five hundred and twenty-five 
 miles of track here in three hundred and sixty-five 
 days, which, with possibly one exception, has never 
 been equalled in any part of America, and certainly 
 nowhere except in America would men be in such a 
 hurry.* Before the entire line was completed, how- 
 ever, this Napoleon of the construction camp was 
 called to the capital to take charge of the construc- 
 tion of the line that was being built from that end. 
 He was to build north four hundred and fifty miles to 
 meet the builders (the work he had just left) coming 
 south seven hundred and fifty miles from El Paso. 
 Here, as in Sonora, the constructor was at a great dis- 
 advantage. Everything had to be brought in via Vera 
 
 * The Manitoba system was extended in 1887 through Dakota 
 and Montana, 545 miles, between April 2 and October 19. — 
 TnoMAS C. Clarke, The American liaihvay.
 
 ROAD MAKING IN MEXICO. 217 
 
 Cruz, just as the material for the Souora line was 
 brought from New York and Europe to Guaymas, in 
 the Gulf of California. This included everything used 
 in the construction of the road, as well as the equip- 
 ment needed for the work. Cars and locomotives had 
 to be brought in sections, shipped to the City of Mexico 
 over the Mexican Railway, and then set up. 
 
 Mr. Eobinson found the greatest difficulty in teacli- 
 ing the natives how to use the plough and scraper, the 
 standard tools of the American road makers. They 
 could make a hot taniale in an ice wagon, catch a run- 
 ning horse by the left hind foot without ever missing 
 it, but they could not fill a scraper or hold a plough. 
 They could not so much as pilot a mule to water along 
 a beaten trail. 
 
 A man can build a railroad with red ants if he has 
 enough of them and can keep them at it. Nobody 
 knew this better than Robinson, and when his hopes 
 and patience failed he piled the ploughs and scrapers 
 in a heap, turned the mules out on the cacti, and set 
 his ants to work. They were of all colours — red, black, 
 and a few white, but mostly yellow. The natives were 
 all right. Round and round, up and down, to and fro 
 they went, slowly, to be sure, but surely, and the grade 
 began to grow. Each man carried a basket or bucket, 
 filled it, climbed the dump, and emptied it at the point 
 indicated by the dumping boss. The Mexicans came 
 in great numbers now to seek work, and they were 
 all employed. As the days went by the line grew 
 longer, and in a little while new lines had to be formed 
 in new places. At the end of a week hundreds of 
 grademakers were piling up the grade. In less than a
 
 218 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 month the line was literally alive with these human 
 ants. Eed ants, fleece-clad, from the mountains, naked 
 ants from the Terre Coliente, and black ants from 
 Sonora, where the road was finished, found the work 
 and swelled the army. 
 
 It was Robinson's way never to be beaten. He had 
 undertaken to build four hundred and fifty miles 
 of road, and to meet the south-bound builders at 
 that distance from the capital, and he meant to 
 do it. 
 
 "How many men have we now?" he asked one 
 day, looking at the squirming mass of humanity that 
 covered the right of way for a mile or more. 
 
 " Fourteen thousand," said the boss of the bosses. 
 
 Robinson gave a low whistle, but kept on hiring 
 men. 
 
 The average wages paid to this bucket brigade was 
 thirty-one cents a day. To be sure, this half-civilized 
 band would not take cheques; they had to have their 
 pay every Saturday night in the coin of the country, 
 which was silver. The biggest piece of silver in use 
 then was one dollar. 
 
 " We were obliged to pay this army every Saturday 
 night," said Mr. Robinson, " and it took from five to 
 ten large wagons to carry the silver from the north of 
 the work to the various working camps. Of course, 
 these pay- wagons were closely guarded by Americans, 
 and it seems wonderful to relate now that not a single 
 dollar was lost or stolen during our entire period of 
 construction. I do not think that ihis would have 
 been the case had the same conditions existed in the 
 United States."
 
 ROAD MAKING IN MEXICO. 219 
 
 This was probably owing as much to lack of enter- 
 prise as to the " honesty " of the outlaws of that repub- 
 lic. The transportation facilities were not sufficient to 
 tempt an enterprising train robber. 
 
 Notwithstanding all the disadvantages under which 
 the south end was constructed, Robinson's army of ants 
 reached the pass of the north in time to connect with 
 the rails that were reaching from Texas toward the 
 capital of Mexico. 
 
 Upon the completion of this second line built by 
 him in Mexico, the general management of the Atlan- 
 tic and Pacific Railroad was offered to Mr. Robin- 
 son, and accepted by him. A year later he was again 
 at the old work, but this time with burros and blasters 
 in the Rocky Mountains. 
 
 Mr. J. J. Hagerman, of Colorado Springs, a man 
 of great business capacity, commanding an unlimited 
 amount of capital, had persuaded English investors 
 to join him in building the Colorado Midland Railway 
 — a foolish piece of road making, the casual observer 
 would say, for it began at a summer resort and ended 
 at a flag station. 
 
 This was the first standard gauge line to cross the 
 Rockies amid the eternal snows, and naturally the re- 
 sourceful Robinson was asked to take the job, and he 
 accepted it. There was some wonderful engineering 
 here, some expensive bridging and tunnelling. Hager- 
 man Tunnel, which pierces the range near timber line, 
 is twenty-six hundred feet long, and cost the tunnel 
 company two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The 
 locomotives used were of necessity heavy to climb the 
 heavy grades. The new grades gave way at times.
 
 220 THE STORY OP THE RAILROAD. 
 
 making funerals frequent among the enginemen for 
 the first year or so. 
 
 The Colorado Midland and the Denver and Rio 
 Grande, which was then building its standard line via 
 Leadville, ran together at Glenwood Springs on the 
 Pacific slope. The caiion was narrow there. There 
 was scarcely room for two, so the two roads combined 
 and built what was called the Eio Grande Junction 
 Eailroad from that point to Grand Junction, where 
 both connected with the Eio Grande Western for Salt 
 Lake and the Pacific coast. 
 
 The Denver and Eio Grande managed to control 
 the construction, and, as it was then handling all the 
 transmountain traffic through Colorado, it was in no 
 hurry to complete the new line and divide business 
 with an unwelcome competitor. The work dragged. 
 The Midland people protested, but there seemed to be 
 no help for it. Material intended for the joint road, 
 but still the property of the narrow gauge, would dis- 
 appear at the moment when the contractors were ready 
 to put it in place. A large shipment of steel for the 
 new line was lost. After weeks of " tracing," it was 
 finally located on the Denver division of the Eio 
 Grande, where Superintendent Deuel had spiked it 
 down for the new heavy equipment of the road, which 
 was about to widen out to a standard gauge. 
 
 In time, however, the standard gauge was com- 
 pleted; the Eio Grande Western had already been 
 widened, and the Colorado Midland began to figure in 
 transcontinental business, exelianging at Colorado 
 Springs witli tlie Chicago, Eock Island and Pacific, 
 and at Grand Junction with the Eio Grande Western.
 
 ROAD MAKING IN MEXICO. 221 
 
 A few years later the new road, which must have been 
 built to sell, was absorbed by the Santa Fe. In the 
 general shaking up during the panicky days of the 
 '90s the Santa Fe lost it, and just now Judge Philips, 
 of the United States Court of Appeals, is writing an 
 opinion in the suit brought by the tunnel company to 
 compel the Midland Company to use its hole in the 
 ground at Hagerman Pass, which the reorganization 
 company has refused to do. 
 
 After completing the Colorado Midland, Mr. Rob- 
 inson became president of the San Antonio and Arkan- 
 sas Pass Railroad. Two years later he went to the 
 Santa Fe as vice-president of that great system. In 
 1896 he became president of the St. Louis and San 
 Francisco Railroad, with headquarters at St. Louis, 
 where he now resides, still in the prime of life. The 
 doors of his office and his private car are unlocked 
 when he is there. He is extremely modest and gener- 
 ous, but a Napoleon in the management of men. Look- 
 ing at the man to-day, one would never guess that he 
 had spent the best years of his life in the rough and 
 riot of the uncurried West. 
 
 Pick up a pebble at the mouth of a mountain stream 
 and note its perfect polish. That comes from count- 
 less knocks and tumbles in the turbulent rill that has 
 carried it along, and finally landed it on the shore 
 of the broad, calm river.
 
 CHAPTEE XIX. 
 
 THE OPENING OF OKLAHOMA. 
 
 If all the other booms that have passed over the 
 West could be collected and concentrated into one big 
 boom, it would look like the opening of Oklahoma. 
 Hundreds of gifted writers have attempted to paint a 
 pen-picture of that wild time and have failed, and 
 here will be another failure. 
 
 Oklahoma was opened for settlement on April 23, 
 1889. This territory was about ninety miles long from 
 north to south and sixty miles wide from east to west, 
 extending from the north bank of the South Canadian 
 Eiver northward to a point about five miles south of 
 the present town of Perry. The history of the many 
 attempts made to place this land on the market is re- 
 markable. For a number of years Sidney Clark, Payne, 
 and others had laboured to secure that end. During 
 the winter of 1888-'89, when it became reasonably cer- 
 tain that a date would soon be set for the opening, 
 people began to gather from all over the United States, 
 and when the date was named, about April 1st, they 
 came with a rush. All winter long the United States 
 Government kept a guard and tried to keep out in- 
 truders, commonly called " sooners," but nearly all of 
 tlie professional land grabbers made frequent trips 
 and ^\)\vi\ out the land pretty thoroughly before the 
 233
 
 THE OPENING OF OKLAHOMA. 223 
 
 opening, so that they would know where to go 
 for the best lands. A few days before the opening 
 troops scoured the country and beat every bush to 
 make a clean sweep, but, notwithstanding this, many 
 men hid in the hollows and secure places, ready to 
 grab the coveted claim at noon on the 22d. Very few 
 attempts were made to enter from east or west. The 
 Government refused to allow the people to remain on 
 the Cherokee Strip, a body of land sixty-five miles 
 wide, extending all along the Kansas line, so those 
 from the north gathered mainly at Arkansas City, a 
 few thousand at Hunnewell and Caldwell, and about 
 five thousand at Purcell, on the south. 
 
 Every good saddle horse commanded a high price. 
 Eacing stock sold for two or three hundred dollars a 
 head. Most of the runs on horseback and by teams 
 were made from the south, as no horse or team could 
 traverse the Cherokee Strip as quickly as the train. 
 Everybody entered from the north via the Santa Fe 
 and Rock Island Railroads, except, of course, the 
 " sooners." 
 
 'No conception could be formed of the number of 
 people that were to be handled by train. Assistant- 
 General-Superintendent Turner, of the Santa Fe, who 
 was in charge of that territory, estimated that the com- 
 pany would handle ten thousand people out of Arkan- 
 sas City and two thousand out of Purcell. Thousands 
 of gaunt-faced men haunted the yards day and night, 
 trying in every way to buy information or bribe the 
 railroad employees into smuggling them into " the first 
 train." Unscrupulous confidence men, dressed like 
 switchmen, sold " tips " to tenderfeet, and at one time
 
 224 THB STORY OP THE RAILROAD. 
 
 the detectives employed by the raih-oad company found 
 a " Beauro of Information " running " wide open," 
 where inside intelligence was sold like liquor, pro- 
 ducing equally bad results. Men, made drunk by think- 
 ing upon a single subject, forgot that all men were not 
 for sale, and openly offered the railroad employees fifty, 
 a hundred, and sometimes a thousand dollars for the 
 faintest hint as to which train would be the first to 
 leave. 
 
 Newspaper correspondents were at first almost as 
 eager for information, though not bidding quite so 
 liberally. To quiet the reporters. Superintendent 
 Turner gave each a card signed with his initials, and 
 told them to keep still until they were ordered to get 
 aboard. If their car appeared to be at the end of the 
 last train, they were to say nothing. In short, they were 
 to leave everything to the management, and they did. 
 
 Seeing the great temptation to which the men were 
 being exposed, the railroad officials called the con- 
 ductors and engineers together and made it plain to 
 them that the well-known rules of running men " first 
 in, first out," would be off for that day. They would 
 all make a trip, and as nearly as possible in the proper 
 order, but no man could say with any degree of cer- 
 tainty whether he would be first out or last. All the 
 trains would leave and all would arrive within the 
 space of an hour or a little more, and as all employees 
 would be expected to remain on duty at the end of the 
 run, it could make no great difference how the men 
 went out. After that the train and enginemen could 
 Ray frankly that they knew nothing about the make- 
 up of the trains.
 
 THE OPENING OF OKLAHOMA. 225 
 
 It is to the credit of the employees, in view of the 
 great temptation, that no complaints were ever made 
 that the men had sold information that was false, or 
 that they had sold any information at all. 
 
 As the hour drew near for the departure of the 
 first train the scene was indescribable. Thousands 
 upon thousands of men tipped their pale, anxious faces 
 hack and peered with wild, wide eyes at the driver of 
 an engine that came slowly into the yard. If the loco- 
 motive touched a train or a car, instantly a thousand 
 men were on hoard, with hundreds hanging on the 
 steps and clinging to the windows. Hundreds of these 
 " homesick " people had not slept for nights or 
 stopped to eat a good meal for days. Presently a yard 
 man would cut the engine off, and as it moved slowly 
 away, parting the multitude with its pilot, the train 
 would give up its human freight. 
 
 After much unnecessary switching, the trains were 
 all made up and the engines began to be coupled on; 
 but when a train appeared to be overloaded, the loco- 
 motive would be detached, the switchman lectured for 
 having coupled the wrong engine, and then the mob 
 would fall off. When the officials had jockeyed in this 
 way until no man could form any opinion as to which 
 train would leave first, what appeared to be the last 
 train pulled out with not less than a thousand men and 
 a few women on board. 
 
 The ten trains were run from Arkansas City, 
 the first one starting at nine o'clock, so as to reach the 
 north line of the Oklahoma country at twelve o'clock 
 noon. It was followed by the nine other trains at in- 
 tervals of ten minutes. Each train consisted of ten
 
 226 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 cars; no car was loaded with less than one hundred 
 people, and occasionally contained one hundred and 
 fifteen. Ten thousand and six hundred tickets were 
 sold from Arkansas City. No reduced rates were made, 
 as the Santa Fe controlled the business. The first car 
 on the first train was a baggage car, in which were 
 placed seventy-three newspaper men, representing the 
 leading papers of the United States and some corre- 
 spondents from Europe. There was intense interest all 
 over the world, because this was the largest territory 
 that was ever thrown open for settlement in an hour. 
 
 Probably five thousand people, seeing the great mul- 
 titude swarming about the train like red ants at the 
 opening of a hailstorm, turned away. Hundreds of 
 people there would unquestionably have passed else- 
 where as lunatics. As often as a train started to pull 
 out, loaded to the roof, hundreds of men would leave 
 a reasonably safe place on another train to race after 
 the already overloaded one that was leaving. Often 
 when these excitable voyagers returned they would find 
 the place they had quitted occupied by another. And 
 so the mad rush went on until the last train had pulled 
 out, leaving thousands of people behind. 
 
 The first train arrived at the line five minutes 
 before noon, waiting for the notice to start, which was 
 a rifle shot fired by the officer in command of the 
 troops guarding tlie gateway. When the first train 
 had run about a quarter of a mile, a young woman 
 crawled through a coach window and dropped to the 
 ground, but immediately jumped to ber feet, unhurt, 
 ran a sliort distance to clear the rigbt of way, and 
 drove iier stake, making the first claim. After that,
 
 THE OPENING OP OKLAHOMA. 227 
 
 on every hill, where the speed of the train was re- 
 duced, people dropped off as a good claim caught their 
 eye. The settlers on later trains did the same, and 
 many a conflict arose, in which the weaker party was 
 compelled to go farther away from the railroad to look 
 for another claim. All the trains ran to Guthrie, 
 which was the centre of the excitement, as it was ex- 
 pected that the Capitol would be located there. The 
 ten trains made an exciting jam, and a city without 
 a board or a nail was planned in an hour. People lo- 
 cated in streets without any regularity, which caused 
 hundreds of lawsuits and fights later on. 
 
 There was such a mob at Purcell that the general 
 superintendent who was handling the movement from 
 that end concluded that it would not be safe to try 
 to run two trains. So he coupled all the coaches — 
 twenty-two — in one train, using two locomotives, and 
 brought out twenty-five hundred people, the train 
 being literally covered, men even hanging on truss- 
 rods and outside of windows. The roofs of the cars 
 were black with people. Half of them dropped off at 
 Oklahoma City. There were only about eleven thou- 
 sand good claims of one hundred and sixty acres each 
 in the territory. It is presumed that every one of 
 these was occupied before 3 p. m., and that thirty thou- 
 sand people were in the territory before night. 
 
 The signal for the start had been given by officers 
 of the United States army stationed at intervals along 
 the border of the promised land. Where there were 
 cannon, cannon boomed out the signal, but at most 
 places a shot from a rifle or a pistol told the waiting 
 multitude that it was time to go.
 
 228 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 A party of railroad and Government officials had 
 gone in on a special train, and stood in the silent 
 waste waiting for the signal. Out over the rolling 
 plain they looked and saw no living thing. It seemed 
 incredible that a city was to be born there and a grave- 
 yard started within the next one hundred and twenty 
 minutes. " Time! " said one of the officials, snapping 
 his watch, and from afar over the billowed plain came 
 the low boom of a cannon, and instantly a man sprang 
 from the ground not a thousand yards away. "Wherever 
 the men on the special looked, men could be seen 
 springing from the very earth. Some were running 
 this way and some that way, while others, kneeling 
 in the native grass, drove a stake to mark a home. 
 
 A few minutes later could be seen the smoke of 
 the first section hurrying to the end of the track. 
 When the train stopped, a man, running with all his 
 might, saw Lawyer Quinton, of Topeka, standing alone 
 near the special train, with his hands in his pockets. 
 Now a man who could stand perfectly still at such a 
 moment was a man to be trusted; so the newcomer, 
 still running, threw a hand-satchel at the lawyer, 
 shouting, "Keep my grip!" and fell upon a corner 
 lot. Another man, seeing all this, turned and dropped 
 his bundle at the lawyer's feet just as a fat grip hit 
 that gentleman in the spine. It was easy to follow 
 the drift of things now. Those who ran could read 
 that the lawyer was a check stand, a baggage room, a 
 public warehouse j)ro lono pvhlico. In less than three 
 minutes he had three hundred pieces of baggage, all 
 of which had come to him as greatness comes to some 
 men. As the last train stopped, Mr. Quinton strug-
 
 THE OPENING OF OKLAHOMA. 229 
 
 gled out over the wall of grips and bundles that peo- 
 ple had left in his care as they hurried on to a new 
 home. Thousands upon thousands of pieces of bag- 
 gage lay there unmarked, and some of it was never 
 claimed, for the owners had gone to help people the 
 new graveyard. 
 
 The next problem was that of feeding this vast 
 crowd, which took with it nothing but a sandwich, and 
 a stake to mark its claims; and after that came the 
 problem of getting it material for shelter. At this 
 time the road had a stock rush. Pasture cattle were 
 going from the south at the rate of ten to twenty trains 
 a day. The stations were few and far between, with 
 limited side-track capacity. There was but one tele- 
 graph wire, and freight of all descriptions lined every 
 side track from Arkansas City to the Missouri Eiver. 
 The first day they moved nothing but food; the next 
 day food and material for shelter. After that it was 
 a scramble. Everybody was clamouring for his freight, 
 and great care was necessary to see that each town got 
 its share of food to keep the people from starving. 
 Every man that got a good claim telegraphed his peo- 
 ple in the East. Enough messages were filed to keep 
 ten wires busy. Hundreds of people left that night 
 on returning trains, either disgusted because they had 
 no section, or to go after their goods and family if 
 they had secured a claim. 
 
 The event was unique, and unparalleled by any 
 previous event of the kind. It was a perfect day. The 
 grass was green, the trees in leaf, and as most of the 
 people were from the North and East, and had just 
 left cold weather, the appearance of the land seemed
 
 230 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 to them to Justify the name, " The beautiful Indian 
 Territory." 
 
 In September, 1893, the Cherokee Strip was 
 opened, probably with nearly as big a crowd and a 
 more exciting race from the north line, because it was 
 sixty miles long, and the race was mostly on horseback 
 and by team, but many of the people had had previous 
 experience at the Oklahoma opening, and were better 
 prepared. 
 
 It is impossible to describe the enthusiasm and the 
 longing expectation that seemed to govern almost 
 everybody. Many of the railroad employees were half 
 crazy to secure claims, and in one instance a freight 
 train was abandoned on the main track between sta- 
 tions by every employee except the fireman. Other 
 trains were abandoned at stations by half their crews. 
 For days before the opening men sneaked in on freight 
 trains or paid their fares through the territory on 
 passenger trains, and dropped off while the trains 
 stopped at water tanks, only to be run out by the of- 
 ficers or Indian scouts employed by the Government 
 for that purpose. In most cases the scouts stripped 
 them of their arms and food, compelling them to leave 
 at once.
 
 In the mountains. 
 (A phase of the engineer's canon work.)
 
 CHAPTEE XX. 
 
 THE RAILROAD ENGINEER: A FEW ILLUSTRATIONS 
 SHOWING HOW HE HANDLES THINGS. 
 
 A MAN with one leg over a fence listening for a 
 dog — that's the engineer. He wants to locate the line 
 across the farmer's field, but he does not know how 
 the farmer and the dog are going to take it. When 
 night comes on the pathfinder will sleep where his 
 path pinches out, and he will not he welcome. 
 
 When he has passed out of hearing of the school 
 bell and the bulldog, wild animals and Indians will 
 block his trail, for there is no civilization beyond the 
 end of the track. All the way from the Atlantic to 
 the Pacific he has been forced to fight, leaving along 
 his new-made trail heaps of bleaching bones that tell 
 of his trials, and marvellous feats of engineering that 
 speak of his skill. 
 
 We have seen him climbing mountains over cog- 
 ways and switchbacks. Caught in a rising canon, he 
 doubles his trail, " loops " his line, and goes ahead 
 again. When a narrow pass pinches out, he climbs to 
 the top of the canon wall, lets himself down by means 
 of a long rope, and writes on a rock what he would 
 put on a stake if he were able to drive one. We have 
 seen him in a narrow gorge hanging between the 
 
 231
 
 232 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 granite walls an iron frame made thousands of miles 
 away. 
 
 Bestriding the stream, he bridges it lengthwise, and 
 the train above drowns the roar of the river. By 
 turning this way or that, he saves his company hun- 
 dreds or thousands of dollars. All the money put into 
 a new enterprise is at his mercy, and upon his judg- 
 ment alone the success of a great undertaking often 
 depends. If a tunnel is to be driven, it is his business 
 to find the softest possible place in the mountain. 
 He is expected to know not only the things on the 
 earth, but to give pretty good guesses as to the things 
 that are under it. If he orders piling to be driven 
 in a stream, the road builders are reasonably sure that 
 the waters of that river are not washing the bedrock. 
 If a corporation could be said to possess a conscience, 
 it would be the chief engineer. He holds the secrets 
 of the company, and he will not tell. Without appear- 
 ing to want it, he obtains all the information obtain- 
 able, and goes his way. He asks few questions; a 
 great deal of his education comes to him by absorp- 
 tion. He will sit up all night and listen to the stories 
 and experiences of an old, illiterate mountaineer, but 
 he wants no advice from a man who can read. It is 
 not fine theories he is looking for, but facts, the things 
 men learn from the hills. If he finds it hard to de- 
 termine whether a certain gulch ought to be bridged 
 or filled, he consults a cowboy, a scout, or a squaw. 
 He is modest, retiring, almost to the point of being 
 unsociable. Pie is always in earnest. Sometimes he 
 will jest and joke, and if he hap))ens to be Irish, which 
 is not often the case, he will tell a story, for the Irish
 
 THE RAILROAD ENGINEER. 233 
 
 are the mirth-makers of the rail. There is an Irish- 
 man in eight out of ten stories you hear on the road.* 
 The railroad engineer is never finical. He rises 
 fresh and hungry from his bed in the desert, eats his 
 bacon and bread, washes it down with black coffee, 
 and makes an even start with the sun. If need be, 
 he sleeps in a wagon, on the back of a mule, or goes 
 without sleep. If an important pass is to be taken 
 and held against a rival company, he lays down his 
 line and his life, and you can not take the one without 
 taking the other. His honour, his loyalty — his life, if 
 
 * Here are two sample stories that originated with the Irish : 
 
 A big boulder dropped into the Black Caiion, cut the 107 from 
 her train, and put her and her driver, Tom Ryan, to the bottom 
 of the Gunnison River. Hickey, the roadmaster, jumped from 
 the train, ran down to the water's edge, and fished Ryan out. 
 "Tom," cried Hickey hysterically, "are yez hurtted? Oh, spake 
 to me, Tommy, spake ! " 
 
 " Now, phwy the divil should I be hurtted ? " was the response 
 from the dripping driver. 
 
 " Thet's so," said the roadmaster, turning away in disgust ; 
 " I wonder ye got wetted." 
 
 One sultry midsummer day, when the hot winds were sighing 
 and the weeds were dying on the Western plains, the general 
 superintendent of the Santa Fe and his assistant were inspecting 
 track from the rear of a private car. Between the two general 
 officers sat the ruddy roadmaster, twirling his thumbs and sing- 
 ing softly to himself, " Jerrie, go ile th' kayre." The very sight 
 of the man, perfectly healthy and happy, was irritating to the 
 sneezing officials, who were watching the receding rails over their 
 handkerchiefs. 
 
 "Say, Moriarity," one of them asked," did you ever have hay 
 fever I" 
 
 " No," said Mory ; " me rank isn't high enough."
 
 234 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 need be — is pledged to his employer. He takes himself 
 seriously, never underestimating the importance of his 
 work. 
 
 You will see him on the hanks of a swollen river 
 that threatens the right of way, weaving stout willows 
 into a great carpet, sinking it in the stream, risking 
 his life, but saving the roadbed. If the current is too 
 swift and deep to do this, he will make an immense 
 seine of heavy woven wire, spread it along the margin 
 of the river, and wait patiently for the water to under- 
 mine the net, which falls over the crumbling bank 
 and stops the wash. 
 
 The chief engineer knows more men who do not 
 work for the company, and fewer who do, than any 
 other general officer on the road. If he thinks he is 
 right, he will fight or quit, but he hates to compro- 
 mise. He dislikes to move a stake when it has been 
 driven to stay. Once, when the present chief en- 
 gineer of one of the Western roads was locating a line 
 in Missouri, he was asked to change the stakes, and 
 refused. The proposed road at this point lay across 
 a meadow, passed up by an old orchard, and from there 
 gained the summit of a long, low ridge. The stretch 
 across the meadow was a charming bit of roadway, giv- 
 ing the future engine driver a long tangent and a good 
 run for the hill. When the stakes had all been set 
 a young, unshaved man came out and asked that 
 the road be " moved over a piece." The engineer 
 explained that it would be impossible, as that was 
 the best point to pass over the ridge. The man in- 
 sisted, and finally the engineer would not discuss the 
 matter, explaining that the company would indemnify
 
 THE RAILROAD ENGINEER. 235 
 
 the owners of the property when the proper time 
 came. 
 
 The man went back into the house, got an old 
 squirrel rifle, came out, and pulled up the stakes. The 
 engineer started back to remonstrate, but at that mo- 
 ment the young man's mother saw what was about 
 to take place, and hastened to meet the engineer. 
 
 " Can't you move your road over a little piece, 
 mister?" she asked. 
 
 " I don't see why I should. If you feel aggrieved, 
 the company will pay you what is right; my business 
 is to locate the line," said the engineer, glancing an- 
 grily up the slope where a lean young farmer sat 
 nursing his rifle. " What does that blackguard mean 
 by sitting there on a stump with a gun ? " he went on. 
 
 " Why, he ain't no blackguard — that's Nip. Name's 
 Nippolian; we call him Nip." 
 
 " Well, I'll nip him if he gets funny." 
 
 " Oh, no, you won't. I wa'n't afraid o' that. Wliat 
 come over me, as I see you startin' 'cross the meadow, 
 was maybe you had a mother that dotes on you as I dote 
 on Nip, an' how hard it would be for her to have you 
 come home that away, an' her a-blamin' us, maybe." 
 
 " What way do you expect me to go home? " 
 
 " Well, if you persist in drivin' them stakes there, 
 you'll go home dead." 
 
 " Well," said the engineer, " I'll do anything in 
 reason, but I won't be bluffed by that ruffian." 
 
 " I keep a-tellin' you he ain't no ruffi'n — he's jist 
 Nip, that's all. You see, we've been here purty nigh 
 always — Nip was born here — an' when the grurillas 
 come an' called paw out an' shot him, we hurried him
 
 236 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 jist wliar lie fell, an' we've always kep' it as a sort of 
 reservation, Nip an' me, an' he's determined you sha'n't 
 disturb it, that's all." 
 
 " Then you don't object to the railroad? " 
 
 "Lord o' mercy, no! We want the road, but we 
 don't want you to disturb paw's grave, that's all." 
 
 " Come," said the engineer, " we'll go to see Nip." 
 
 When they had come up to the stump the big en- 
 gineer held out his hand. Nip took it, but kept his 
 eyes on the stranger. 
 
 " Here it is," said the woman, touching a low stone 
 lightly with her foot. 
 
 " I see," said the engineer; " we can miss that 
 easily enough." 
 
 He moved a mile of road. From that day forward 
 until the road was finished, and long after, the widow's 
 home was the stopping place for the engineer. 
 
 The railroad engineer often succeeds where failure 
 seems certain, and his work then remains as a monu- 
 ment to his memory after he has passed away; but of 
 the many daring schemes that fail the world knows 
 nothing, or, if it ever hears, it soon forgets. One of 
 the wildest, most romantic, and daring enterprises that 
 have ever been undertaken in the West was the at- 
 tempt to survey and build a railroad through the 
 Grand Canon of the Colorado. If all the wild gorges 
 in the West were melted down and recast, they would 
 fall short of making another Grand Canon. Its awful 
 grandeur belittles everything else. 
 
 The Colorado River begins with the confluence of 
 the Green and Grand in southeastern Utah, so deep 
 down in the twisted hills that until a few years ago no
 
 THE RAILROAD ENGINEER. 237 
 
 man knew how or where the great stream originated. 
 Explorers have attempted to ascend it from the Gulf 
 since 1540, but soon find themselves at the foot of a 
 foaming cataract, and turn back. Scores of men have 
 gone in at the top of the canon, but were never heard 
 of afterward. 
 
 In 1869 Major Powell undertook the exploration of 
 the canon with nine men and four boats. The In- 
 dians, looking on, said that he would not come back. 
 No Indian had ever gone through Cataract Canon and 
 lived to lie about it, and they would not believe a 
 white man capable of succeeding where the red man 
 had failed. 
 
 This expedition left the point where Green Eiver 
 station now stands, and started down the Green on 
 May 24th. Their greatest difficulty in that small 
 stream was to find sufficient water to float them, but 
 almost immediately after passing the point where the 
 Green is joined by the Grand the river became reck- 
 less. Swirls and eddies and dips and falls were encoun- 
 tered hourly, and it was not long before some of the 
 crew began to curse the day that tempted them into 
 this gorge of death. They would have deserted gladly, 
 some of them, but the walls were already steep and 
 high. 
 
 At the first opening one of the party escaped to the 
 
 mountain. After encountering the terrors of Cataract 
 
 Canon, three more half-crazed men walked out into 
 
 the desert. They never came back. They fell into the 
 
 hands of some Indians who were full of the story of an 
 
 outrage that had been perpetrated lately by white 
 
 men, and who accused these wanderers of the crime. 
 17
 
 238 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 The three explorers protested their innocence, and 
 begged to be brought before the chief. When the chief 
 saw the men, he demanded to know how they hap- 
 pened to be in the country. Now the white men told 
 the truth, which is sometimes stranger than fiction. 
 They said that they had come all the way from the 
 Green water in a boat. 
 
 "You lie!" cried the chief; "no man can do 
 that," and the three explorers were massacred. 
 
 On August 30th Major Powell, minus two boats 
 and four men, landed at the mouth of the Virgin 
 Eiver, nearly a thousand miles from the starting point. 
 His description of his journey down the Colorado is an 
 interesting bit of graphic history, and we who have 
 had glimpses of the Colorado are able to imagine that 
 he came out with a grand collection of stirring sensa- 
 tions and nerve-testing thrills. And this is the canon 
 through which a party of Denver men proposed to sur- 
 vey and build a railroad. If the road is ever built, the 
 tourists can have here, in a thousand miles of travel, 
 more wild, grand, and awful scenery than can now be 
 had from a car window in a journey round the world. 
 
 Aside from its scenic value, the proposed road was 
 to connect by a short line the Eocky Mountain region 
 with the orange groves of the tropics. It was to pass 
 through a canon where the wild mingles with the 
 weird, and where the grand touches the awful. It was 
 to be built along the foot of rocky walls whose sum- 
 mits were kissed by the clouds. It was to wind and 
 twist with a great river that is a raging, turbulent 
 tiling of swift rapids, foaming cataracts, treacherous 
 eddies, and fatal falls.
 
 THE RAILROAD ENGINEEa 239 
 
 The first attempt to survey the canon made by 
 these adventurous men was under the patronage of 
 Frank Mason Brown, John C. Montgomery, and others. 
 The party left Denver on May 23, 1889, headed by 
 Mr. Brown, who had been chosen president of the 
 company. The chief engineer who signed for this 
 dangerous task was Eobert B. Stanton. Other mem- 
 bers of the original party were Messrs. Heslop, Hans- 
 borough, Richards, and MacDonell, with two negro 
 servants. 
 
 A few letters were received by the families and 
 friends of the various members of the party, and finally 
 a " good-bye " from Green River. Then they were off 
 on their perilous trip. The next news received from 
 the expedition was most hopeful, and stated that they 
 had passed successfully about three hundred miles of 
 the most dangerous part of the river, " which is one 
 series of cataracts and rapids, walled on either side by 
 caiion walls at times rising to six thousand and seven 
 thousand feet in height. The descent is so great that 
 at places for miles in length the water is lashed and 
 churned to a foam of creamy whiteness. Notwith- 
 standing this, the journey of three hundred miles was 
 made in safety, and with only the loss of two boats." 
 
 From this point the party was reduced to eight 
 men. With a fresh supply of provisions, they pro- 
 ceeded on the dangerous journey. Their conveyances 
 consisted of three boats, each fifteen inches deep and 
 thirty-two inches wide. After leaving the Grand River 
 the party passed through what is known as Cataract 
 Canon, in which there are seventy-eight rapids within 
 a space of a few miles. These were passed in safety.
 
 240 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 For one hundred and fifty miles farther down the 
 stream was more navigable and easily passed, but after 
 they had left Lee's Ferry some distance behind a ter- 
 rible cataract was found, which is spoken of by Major 
 Powell, in his report of his journey in 1869, as being 
 sixteen feet high, and one of the most terrible whirl- 
 pools he ever saw. 
 
 After the cataract this message from Mr. Stanton 
 reached the families and friends of the adventurous 
 explorers. It was dated at Kanab, Utah, July 22, 
 1889: 
 
 " President Frank M. Brown was drowned in the 
 Colorado Eiver, in Marble Canon, July 10th, by his 
 boat being capsized while running a rapid. He was 
 thrown into a whirlpool and unable to get out of it, 
 while the other men in the boat were thrown into the 
 current and carried down about six hundred feet and 
 landed. All the other boats of the expedition went 
 through the rapids safely, and my boat reached the 
 point where Mr. Brown was thrown half a minute 
 after the accident happened, and less than five seconds 
 after he sank for the last time. Five days after, while 
 working our way down, another boat was driven against 
 the cliff, and two boatmen, Peter M. Hansborough and 
 Henry C. Ricliards, were both drowned before assist- 
 ance could reach them. It was impossible to recover 
 any of the bodies."
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 AT THE FRONT. 
 
 In order to develop more definitely the various 
 phases of the engineer's work in the field and of con- 
 struction camp life, I have obtained permission to re- 
 print the following magazine article published some 
 ten years since: * 
 
 "It was merely as an observer and writer that I first 
 studied life at the head of the rails in the Black Canon 
 of the Gunnison in 1882. At that time the Denver 
 and Eio Grande was building an independent route 
 westward to Salt Lake City. The train, drawn by two 
 heavy engines, wound slowly over the Marshall Pass, 
 rising two hundred and seventeen feet in the mile, sur- 
 mounting tier after tier of track. From the height of 
 ten thousand feet there was a slow descent to the plains 
 and the mining town of Gunnison. This was then the 
 end of regular travel. 
 
 " A construction train went onward daily, and pres- 
 ently I found a place among the ties on a flat car. 
 The first ' station,' Kezar, repeated the tale of Jonah's 
 gourd. It was a group of board shanties with canvas 
 roofs, a wretched huddle of groggeries and boarding 
 
 * Ripley Hitchcock in The Chautauquan, June, 1889. 
 
 241
 
 242 THE STORY OP THE RAILROAD. 
 
 tents. It had appeared in a night when the headquar- 
 ters of the advancing railroad were fixed there for a 
 few days. But the railroad had passed on, and Kezar 
 was left to languish while a new terminal city made its 
 boasts, only to be abandoned in turn. Presently the 
 hills along the river grew higher and more precipitous, 
 the mesas gave way to crumbling crags, and with a 
 farewell shriek from the engine the train thundered 
 out of sunshine into gloom. Frowning cliffs rose 
 straight up from the track on one side, and on the 
 other the gray river brawled along the foot of the 
 opposing precipice. Mountains of reddish gray rock 
 towered aloft on either hand, veined with white, and 
 seamed with fissures worn with the passage of ages. 
 Here great boulders literally overhung the track, and 
 again there were dark caves or fleecy cascades above, 
 or the grim canon walls were almost exactly vertical 
 from their giddy summits to the ribbon of steel and 
 the river at their base. The Black Caiion of the Gun- 
 nison is known to tourists in these days, but they can 
 not know the difficulties of railroad building through a 
 gorge only wide enough in places for the river. Here, 
 as in the Eoyal Gorge, the surveyors picked their way 
 through on ice in the winter. Here, when the work 
 of construction was begun, men, and even horses and 
 wagons, were lowered down steep slopes by ropes, and 
 workmen wielded drill and hammer hanging by ropes 
 until they had blasted out a foothold. 
 
 " I sto])ped at the boarding train, which stood op- 
 posite a rock tower a thousand feet in height. The 
 sunlight fell upon ils ])innacle, gilding a huge profile 
 carved by Nature, but the caiion depths were all iu
 
 o 
 p 
 
 H 
 
 -1 
 
 
 
 ro 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ITS 
 
 ;£ 
 
 
 t« 
 
 3 
 
 =r
 
 AT THE FRONT. 243 
 
 shadow. Here was the temporary home of four hun- 
 dred men. A httle beyond was the working train at 
 the very end of the rails. All along the dump or road- 
 bed gangs of men were busily unloading and placing 
 ties and rails, or levelling the surface with exactness. 
 Presently a whistle blew. Six o'clock had come, and 
 the men, leaving their tasks, scrambled aboard the flat 
 cars and the train rumbled back to the ' hotel on 
 wheels.' Long before the cars stopped the men were 
 hustling each other, like a flock of stampeded sheep, in 
 a wild race for supper. The seats were limited in num- 
 ber, the labourers many, and none had any idea of 
 waiting for ' second table.' A toilet was a trifling 
 matter. The ' next morning would be time enough 
 for soap and water. There were swarthy Italians, 
 Irishmen with carroty locks, men of a score of nation- 
 alities, begrimed, tattered, gnawed at by the appetite 
 given by labour in the bracing Colorado air, all breth- 
 ren in a purely animal instinct, a ravenous desire to 
 satisfy hunger. They swarmed into the old freight 
 cars which had been fitted up with long planks for 
 benches and tables. On the latter were tin pannikins, 
 iron knives and forks, and pewter spoons. Mounds 
 of coarse bread, pans of some strange stew, and pots 
 of rank black tea appeared and disappeared before 
 these lusty trenchermen. Words were not wasted. 
 Every act had a bearing upon the business in hand. 
 A railroad navvy hungry and tired has ' no time for 
 nonsense.' One by one they rose from the table. 
 There was nothing to be said. They had been fed, 
 and for the time they were content. But presently 
 the social instinct reasserted itself. They lighted black
 
 2i4 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 pipes and drew together. Some rudely mended their 
 garments in company, and others produced dirty cards 
 or gathered to talk. A few clambered into the narrow 
 board bunks in the cars and drew their blankets up 
 over aching limbs. It was a glimpse of a hard, cheer- 
 less life, but as I turned to go back to the construction 
 train some one struck up a rollicking Irish song, and 
 others joined, until the cahon walls gave back the 
 chorus. 
 
 " There were special dangers in this work aside 
 from ordinary accident and exposure. A little time 
 before two men were swept away by the rapid current 
 of the river; others had been killed by the overhanging 
 rocks. Yet the dangers of caiion work would be pre- 
 ferred by many to an open country harried by the 
 fierce Apaches of the Southwest and northern Mexico, 
 which I visited after leaving the Gunnison country. A 
 year or two before, the famous Apache chief, Victorio, 
 and his bloodthirsty followers, had raided the valley of 
 the Kio Grande. One contractor told me of a chase 
 which lasted for three days. At night he and his men 
 travelled as best they could. In the morning they 
 chose an advantageous place, made a corral of their 
 wagons, and lay behind them all day while the Indians 
 circled about at a distance, exchanging shots, but never 
 venturing on a direct attack. It is not hard to imagine 
 the harassing strain of these days, but happily the 
 white men escaped the fate of others whose graves 
 are in the lonely sand hills to the south of El Paso del 
 Norte. 
 
 " The end of the Mexican Central's rails was two 
 hundred miles below the frontier when I entered Mex-
 
 AT THE FRONT. 245 
 
 ico in 1883, and for this distance travel was simply a 
 question of securing a permit and waiting for a con- 
 struction train. But less than a year before eight 
 brave men had laid down their lives to open the way. 
 For forty miles below Paso del Norte stretches the 
 desert known as ' The Sand Hills.' At its southern 
 limit I saw four rude crosses outlined against the sky, 
 mute, lonely witnesses to the fate of avant-coureurs 
 of civilization. In June, 1881, four engineers were 
 riding down through the sand hills when the sudden 
 crack of Winchesters told of the remorseless Apaches. 
 On the hill marked by the crosses the white men made 
 their last stand. There was no chance of help or res- 
 cue. Surreiider meant only ghastly torture, so they 
 fought side by side behind a heap of sand until every 
 cartridge was gone. Had they been English soldiers in 
 an African campaign sent against Zulus who were 
 fighting to protect their homes, England would not 
 have allowed their heroism to be forgotten. But they 
 were only engineers, representing not aggression and 
 conquest, but the advance of civilization, and so they 
 laid down their lives and were forgotten, while you 
 and I come after them in safety. 
 
 " It was with difficulty even then that I learned 
 their names — Fordham, Leavitt, Grew, and Wallace. 
 It was characteristic of the life that no one had ap- 
 peared to claim Wallace's money and papers, which 
 were found buried in the sand beneath his corpse. 
 Like many another frontier hero, the story of his life 
 died with him. 
 
 " Life at the head of the rails in Mexico had a pic- 
 turesqueness of its own. There was the element of his-
 
 246 THE STORY OP THE RAILROAD. 
 
 torical interest. Our construction train passed down 
 the valley, close beside a bluff where heaps of earth 
 recalled the battle of Sacramento. At the time of my 
 visit the construction camp was about fifteen miles 
 north of Chihuahua. We rode to the end of the rails 
 on fiat cars loaded with ties. As the rails were laid 
 the flat cars of the working train were backed down 
 and other materials kept within easy reach. On a side 
 track stood a boarding train, but many of the men 
 were living in tents, and all about us the smoke of 
 their fires rose in the clear, dry air, which brought 
 out the very seams and fissures of the mountain peaks 
 along the distant horizon. Most of the contractors 
 had their own ' outfit,' a kitchen and storage tent with 
 simple utensils, tents for themselves, containing rude 
 bunks or occasionally cots, and sometimes tents for 
 their men. By boarding their men, and perhaps sell- 
 ing light supplies, they realized a double profit. If 
 prices were high, there was an excuse in frontier 
 duties averaging about one hundred per cent on manu- 
 factured articles. On canned goods, always in de- 
 mand, the import duty was seventy-two cents a kilo- 
 gramme, and the vessel, whether glass or tin, was taxed 
 at the same rate. ' What do you think those pickles 
 cost me?' asked a contractor in whose tent I dined 
 that day. Their cost was fifty dollars a half barrel. 
 Moreover, there were municipal duties to be paid be- 
 fore imports could enter a city. But there have been 
 changes since then. Two civilizations — the American 
 anrl the olrl conservative Spanish — have adnpted them- 
 selves siifficiontly at least to avoid constant friction. 
 But at that time the American railroad builder was
 
 AT THE FRONT. 247 
 
 almost as truly a pioneer as Cortes among the native 
 Mexicans. 
 
 " The contrast of types was a curious study. Be- 
 side the stalwart American or Irishman in faded flan- 
 nels and high boots, the swarthy Mexican, his scanty 
 dress concealed beneath his striped serape, squatted be- 
 fore his fire, lazily rolling cigarettes as he cooked his 
 frijoles and tortillas. Every morning Mexicans from 
 Chihuahua rode up to the camp and stared in passive 
 wonderment at the railroad, the ferrocarril, which 
 most of them had never seen before. There they sat 
 like the gayly coloured images sold in their cities, until 
 a sudden shriek from the engine drove their horses wild 
 with fear. As railroad labourers the lower class Mexi- 
 cans were more picturesque than useful, but they soon 
 learned some of the railroad's advantages. The en- 
 gineers told remarkable tales, like that of one of the 
 men who tied a venerable bull to the track at night and 
 appeared, after the inevitable result, with a claim for 
 the loss of a herd of cows. 
 
 " I rode into Chihuahua on horseback, and return- 
 ing after a week with a companion, we drove to the 
 camp, slept in a freight car, and next morning drove 
 on to a Mexican ranch near Encinillas. Here an en- 
 gine and caboose stood on the track waiting orders. 
 There were no regular trains, and we ran from one 
 siding to another, feeling our way as best we could, 
 or, by lying by, broiling in the sun. Night came on 
 while we were thus labouring onward. We had had 
 nothing to eat, and there was nothing short of Paso 
 del Norte. But presently the engineer came back to 
 us and revealed a can of chicken and some bread. It
 
 248 THE STORY OP THE RAILROAD. 
 
 was characteristic that he should divide his rations 
 among six hungry men — characteristic of Western rail- 
 road men. 
 
 " These trifling details may help to illustrate the 
 unsettled conditions of life and travel before the formal 
 opening of a road, but the life in Chihuahua was lux- 
 urious compared with the experiences which followed 
 in Sonora. The Sonora Railroad was built northward 
 from Guaymas to the frontier, where it joined the line 
 built down from Benson on the Southern Pacific. 
 There was a gap of about twenty miles in September, 
 1882, when I reached the frontier. The northern rails 
 ended at Line City, a typical camp, which consisted 
 of a dozen shanties and tents and as many mountains 
 of empty beer bottles. There was no work in progress 
 at that end, and life was therefore comparatively quiet. 
 
 " When the ambulance of the chief engineer came 
 up, there were doleful tales of Apaches. Some of the 
 Chiricahuas had been raiding along the frontier. Two 
 white men had been killed on the road a week before, 
 and nobody ventured far among the hills without fear- 
 ing the sudden swoop of these Ishmaelites of the South- 
 west. Stories of the disappearance of herders and 
 ihe loss of cattle came in from the ranches. It is a 
 strange experience for one from the country of law and 
 order and police and the commonplace to find himself 
 among primitive conditions, a participant in the con- 
 flict between civilization and savagery. 
 
 " So far as my own journey was concerned, the 
 danger was too slight to be considered seriously. The 
 great construction camp was less than twenty miles 
 below, and there was travel enough by that time prac-
 
 AT THE FRONT. 249 
 
 tically to insure the safety of the road. It was due 
 to custom more than actual danger that the driver of 
 the ambulance kept his Winchester by his side; but 
 there was one passenger who saw danger lurking be- 
 hind every bush. He was a Hebrew merchant from 
 Guaymas, one of the many thrifty traders of his race 
 who have followed close behind the pioneers to estab- 
 lish trading houses throughout the southwestern coun- 
 try. My companion carried a little black bag, which 
 no one was allowed to touch, and this he was clearly 
 prepared to defend with his life. He had equipped 
 himself with a new Winchester and six-shooter, and 
 the only real danger of the trip lay in his manipula- 
 tion of these unwonted weapons. After the mules 
 started, he undertook to charge the magazine of the 
 Winchester and to load the revolver. As the ambu- 
 lance swayed from side to side, the muzzle of the rifle 
 now explored the driver's ribs, and again stared threat- 
 eningly into my face. Of the danger of a cocked gun 
 or a sudden or severe blow on the hammer this man 
 of peace seemed to know nothing. 
 
 " So we drove on past the little Mexican custom- 
 house with its pompous tenant, among hills dotted 
 with live oaks, over the ' summit,' and down through 
 the beautiful Magdalena Valley, passing contractors' 
 camps and swarthy Mexicans at work on the dump, 
 until we reached the end of the rails at Agua Zarca. 
 Here were sunshine and colour in place of the gloom 
 of the Black Canon. Mexicans and Yaqui Indians 
 worked about the construction train, clad in light 
 colours, vociferating and gesticulating with Southern 
 animation, picturesque in spite of themselves and their
 
 250 THE STORY OP THE RAILROAD. 
 
 prosaic handling of ties and rails, just as the rhythm 
 of the Spanish tongue preserved its musical cadence in 
 spite of the shrill voices. 
 
 " At night I went out into the camp. All ahout 
 us the camp fires blazed among the chaparral and mes- 
 quite, lighting swarthy faces with seemingly sinister 
 eyes gleaming under broad sombreros. There was a 
 time when the scene would have been described in a 
 phrase — the brigands of Salvator Rosa. It was a fas- 
 cinating sight, this camp in the firelight, with figures 
 sitting and standing, always draped in the gay serape 
 which the meanest peon wears with native grace, but 
 the glitter and glow had vanished in the gray morning. 
 I was called at four o'clock to take a train southward, 
 and when I left the car the air was very cold. The 
 camp fires had burned low. In that uncertain gray 
 light even the scrapes had lost their warmth of colour. 
 
 "A little later, and the local colouring asserted itself 
 more vividly than before. The train, consisting of 
 two passenger cars and a dozen freight and box cars, 
 stopped at Magdalena, where one of the perennial 
 fiestas had just closed, and two hundred Mexicans and 
 Indians waited on the platform. There was colour 
 enough and to spare in that company of gaudy serapes, 
 sombreros glittering with gold and silver, and the gar- 
 ish red blankets of the Yaquis. But the baggage! 
 Huge rolls of straw matting — patitas — used as beds, 
 stone mortars for grinding corn, wicker crates filled 
 indiscriminately with cheeses and dirty clothes, curi- 
 ously painted trunks, ancient enough to have carried 
 the wardrobe of Cabeza de Vaca, sacks of pomegranates, 
 demijohns of mescal, and an indescribable mixture of
 
 AT THE FRONT. 251 
 
 pots and kettles and household articles. Most of the 
 forenoon was occupied in painting station numbers 
 upon the various ' lots/ to use the phrase of the auc- 
 tioneer. Most of the afternoon was enlivened by the 
 hospitable Mexican baggagemaster, who freely dis- 
 tributed the mescal, pomegranates, and melons of his 
 passengers among a group assembled in his car. 
 
 " This was one of the phases of early railroad life 
 in Mexico, and another less amusing was the Mexican 
 desire to interfere with or make victims of American 
 railroad men. One station agent told of arrest and im- 
 prisonment because a Mexican had left his blankets 
 on the station platform until they were stolen. A 
 brakeman boasted of a dozen arrests. A conductor 
 whom I sought to aid in Hermosillo was accused of 
 murder by witnesses who swore that he not only put 
 a man off the train, but even held him beneath the 
 wheels. The ' victim ' was produced in court, but 
 even this failed to secure the conductor's acquittal, 
 and for attempting to see him I myself was arrested 
 and escorted to jail by a squad of soldiers. In my 
 case the thing was a trifle, for release with apologies 
 from the general and the Governor followed within 
 half an hour, but many of the railroad men suffered 
 severely. The story of early railroad building in Mexi- 
 co is a story of misunderstanding, of imposition, and 
 of petty outrages. The Americans were not without 
 sin, but in many cases the trouble could be traced to 
 Mexican jealousy or greed. 
 
 " The next year I followed the trail of blood which 
 marked the progress of the Atlantic and Pacific Rail- 
 way across northern Arizona. There may have been
 
 253 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 more violence than usual, but no Western railroad lias 
 been built without bloodshed. At Coolidge, Ariz., five 
 desperadoes fortified themselves in a log cabin and 
 sallied forth to harry land and people, until they were 
 surrounded and shot down. Holbrook, Winslow, Wil- 
 liams, all had their era of crime. At Canon Diablo a 
 murderous plot to rob the pay car was fortunately 
 frustrated. Flagstaff * was quiet enough at the time 
 I ' outfitted ' there to visit some newly discovered ruins 
 of cliff-dwellers, but of the fourteen graves in the rude 
 inclosure beneath the pines, eleven were the graves 
 of men who met with violent deaths. So the records 
 might be continued, although at the time of my visit the 
 rails had reached the Colorado River, most of the con- 
 struction hands had come back, and few besides the 
 bridge builders remained. So on the Northern Pa- 
 cific, which I travelled over the same summer, there 
 were only the ruins of construction camps and some 
 lonely graves in the mountains to tell of the army of 
 men suddenly gathered together only to vanish like 
 the morning dew. Their work was done. After them 
 came the magnates and politicians, whom I saw feast- 
 ing, like Belshazzar, in Portland, Ore., while the tele- 
 graph operators were writing the story of falling stocks 
 in New York and impending disaster. 
 
 " The recruiting of those armies of labourers is a 
 peculiar calling. The contractors enlist men through 
 advertisements or agents in the nearest cities and ship 
 them in gangs. The men usually bring their blankets, 
 
 * Amoiifj the many fhanf^es since this article was written, 
 none is more curious than that which has made FlagstafT known 
 to the world as the site of Mr. Percival Lowell's observatory.
 
 AT THE FRONT. 253 
 
 and sometimes modest kits. They are boarded and 
 usually furnished with sleeping places in cars, tents, 
 or shanties by the railroad company, the construction 
 company, or the contractors, as the case may be. Their 
 wages probably average a dollar and a half a day, al- 
 though any skilled labour, of course, commands more. 
 Their board may be estimated at about four dollars 
 a week. With the exception of the Italians, they save 
 little. When the road is built, some of the better men 
 secure permanent employment. The others, perhaps 
 a thousand miles from their last home, obtain return 
 passage from the railroad company if possible, or beg 
 and steal rides on freight trains, or travel on a ' tie 
 pass,' an ironical phrase for the privilege of walking 
 on the track. Some of them re-enforce the army of 
 tramps constantly moving backward and forward along 
 the railroads. It is a small minority, in all probability, 
 who are the better for their taste of the strange, wild 
 life at the head of the rails. 
 
 " Western railroad building has been an essential 
 factor in our national development, as every one knows, 
 but few have any knowledge of railroad exploration, 
 of the venturesome work of engineers, and of the rail- 
 road construction camp. A recklessness born of free- 
 dom from restraint and the splendid exhilaration of 
 the Western air has soiled many pages of the record, 
 but very many of the crimes have been due to the 
 bloodsuckers and parasites, the gamblers, thugs, 
 thieves, and rumsellers who infest railroad camps. If 
 there are dark pages in the history, there are many 
 others golden with stories of unselfishness, of steadfast 
 courage, and of heroism." 
 18
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE EAILEOAD AND THE PEOPLE, 
 
 " Every man in the land is interested daily and constantly in 
 railroads and the transportation of persons and property over 
 them." — Judge Thomas M. Cooley. 
 
 Daeing engineers, backed by equally daring capi- 
 tal, have pushed the railroad always far in advance 
 of civilization and business, so that we who are still 
 on this side of fifty have always had the railroad. The 
 people have not always made the railroad, but they 
 have always shown a disposition to dictate to it, and 
 in the few instances where the General Government 
 has lent its credit the people have insisted upon the 
 right to run the road. This is particularly true of the 
 people who live along the line that has received gov- 
 ernmental assistance. True, as taxpayers they have 
 contributed no more to the work than others who live 
 thousands of miles away and have received all its bene- 
 fits, but they insist u])on the right to enter the man- 
 ager's office and ]iut their feet on the desk. They 
 have been known to insist upon free transportation 
 and special freight rates, on the ground that the peo- 
 ple made the road, and that " we are the people." * 
 
 * " I found people in Nebraska who were possessed with the 
 idea that the Uuiou Pacillc was constructed for, and should be 
 2b\
 
 THE RAILROAD AND THE PEOPLE. 255 
 
 Certain inferior brands of very cheap politi- 
 cians have deemed it their duty to array the people 
 against all corporations, especially against the rail- 
 roads. This feeling finally got to be so general in 
 the West that the employees of the railroad actually 
 came to regard the company which gave them a 
 livelihood as a common enemy. Fortunately for 
 itself more than for the corporation, the great army 
 that operates the road is beginning to think for 
 itself, and has stopped taking its opinions blindly 
 from others. 
 
 A branch of industry which directly furnishes em- 
 ployment to two million people, and indirectly to two 
 millions more, ought to be encouraged. The railroad 
 can not be called a monopoly. Wherever there is too 
 much business for one road, a competing line is sure 
 to be built, and the laws passed by the people pro- 
 hibit the consolidation of competing or parallel lines. 
 As one result of paralleling, aided by adverse legisla- 
 
 operated mainly in deference to, the wishes of that section, and 
 •who actually believed that their State should be consulted by the 
 managers before any improvements were made, innovations in- 
 troduced, or extensions pushed forward. In the minds of such 
 people, the question whether the road had done more for the 
 State than the State had done for the road never seemed to rise. 
 But those who take an unreasoning and, to my mind, a most 
 unjust view of the conduct of the Union Pacific, are exceptions 
 to the rule. Among the most advanced thinkers of Nebraska a 
 different feeling exists and different opinions prevail. They 
 point out with just and pardonable pride the wonderful strides 
 which the young State has made since the Union Pacific Railway 
 was constructed." — Hon. Jesse Spalding, to the Secretary of the 
 Interior.
 
 256 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 tion, there are in the United States nearly one hundred 
 thousand miles of bankrupt roads. The American 
 railroad earns $1,200,000,000 annually, and yet nearly 
 two thirds of the mileage are in the hands of a receiver, 
 or ought to be. Then why should the people combine 
 against the railroad, which is not allowed to combine 
 even to save its own life? To be sure, no patriotic 
 citizen of this expanding republic would wish to see 
 the railroad run the Government; and yet there is no 
 more reason why the Government should run the rail- 
 road than there- is for its interference with packing 
 houses, flour mills, or the millinery business. Those 
 Avho advocate the Government ownership of the rail- 
 road point with pride to the splendid management by 
 the Government of the railway mail service. Well, 
 that service is the direct result of the enterprise of 
 and sharp competition between the various railroad 
 systems. 
 
 When young William H. Vanderbilt told his fa- 
 ther that the Post Office Department wanted the com- 
 pany to build and equip twenty postal cars to run over 
 the Vanderbilt system (the New York Central and 
 the Lake Shore) between New York and Chicago, and 
 that the department had promised to support the road, 
 to give it all mail matter originating at or coming 
 into the New York Post Office, provided the same 
 could be delivered at its destination by the Vander- 
 bilts as quickly as by any other line, the old com- 
 modore shook his head. " Do it, if you want to," 
 he said, " and if Chauncey wants it, but I know the 
 Post Office Department. They will break with you 
 within Iho year."
 
 THE RAILROAD AND THE PEOPLE. 257 
 
 The commodore was a bad guesser. They " broke " 
 within a month.* 
 
 President Scott, of the Pennsylvania, not to be 
 outdone by his splendid rival, now put on a similar 
 service, whereupon Congress, seeing the rivalry be- 
 tween the two systems, and thinking perhaps that the 
 roads would keep it up, began the parsimonious work 
 of cutting down the already inadequate compensation. 
 And then the roads most interested withdrew the 
 service. 
 
 Here is a fair illustration of the treatment ac- 
 corded the railroad. It shows also the difference be- 
 tween politics and business enterprise. The people 
 are apt to argiie that if a train is going over the road 
 once a day it might as well go quickly, and have done 
 with it, but it costs something in fuel, in the strain 
 on machinery, and the rack and wreck of the roadbed 
 to run at a high rate of speed. The people do not 
 know, or else they forget, that the resistance of a 
 train is four times as great at sixty miles an hour as 
 it is at thirty miles an hour, and the amount of steam 
 generated and power exerted must be eight times as 
 great in the one case as in the other. The comforts 
 of travel have increased continually, while the cost 
 has decreased. The fare in the Eocky Mountains, in 
 little, narrow, cramped cars, used to be ten cents a 
 mile; now it is from two and a half to five cents in 
 a palace car. 
 
 * " Within three weeks, despite the indignant protest of Colo- 
 nel Bangs, the mails of three States were ordered to be taken 
 from this and given to another road." — Ex-Postmaster-Genebai* 
 James.
 
 ^58 THE STORY OP THE RAILROAD. 
 
 Private enterprise, with a few exceptions, has cre- 
 ated within three quarters of a century a splendid sys- 
 tem of railroads in America, the rails of which, it is 
 said, would reach all the way from the earth to the 
 moon; whose locomotives and cars, coupled together, 
 would make three solid trains across the continent 
 from New York to San Francisco. 
 
 Every safety appliance that money can buy or in- 
 ventive genius can turn out has been applied to the 
 locomotives, cars, and signal systems, until it is almost 
 absolutely safe to-day to travel by rail. More people 
 perish annually by falling out of windows than are 
 killed in railroad collisions or wrecks. Travelling 
 night and day, a man ought, according to statistics, 
 to get killed once in every four hundred years. 
 
 Every stake stuck in a proposed road is a pros- 
 pect hole, every station along the line a mine, and 
 every new road a Klondike to the country through 
 which it passes. All the gold in the world would not 
 buy a half interest in the American railroad, which 
 earns as much money annually as all the silver and 
 gold mines in the United States yield in ten years. 
 From the spring to the autumn of 1887 a little army 
 of ten thousand men, commanded by General D. C. 
 Shepard, added eighty millions to the wealth of our 
 country by the rapid construction of five hundred and 
 forty-five miles of road in Dakota and Montana. This 
 estimate is on the principle that every dollar invested 
 in railroad construction is worth ten dollars to the 
 country through which the road passes. The Ameri- 
 can railroad is a big thing. It employs one out of 
 every twenty of the working people you pass. Its
 
 THE RAILROAD AND THE PEOPLE. £59 
 
 freight work is equal to the moving of one hundred 
 thousand million tons a mile every year. If one man 
 did all the travelling, he would make fourteen thou- 
 sand million miles annually, whipping the tail lights 
 of his train round the earth at the equator every fif- 
 teen minutes, but it would take him eighty thousand 
 years to do the year's work, with no stops for meals. 
 
 The eight hundred independent companies that 
 run the American railroad pay their employees nearly 
 half a billion dollars a year, but pay interest only on 
 thirty per cent of its securities; the other seventy per 
 cent earn nothing. 
 
 As early as 1835 the American republic had over 
 half the railroad mileage of the world. In all the 
 West the railroad has been the pioneer. Although the 
 Federal Government, States, and in a few instances 
 counties and municipalities, have helped the railroad, 
 it has, on the whole, been discouraged by the people. 
 The good people of the State of New York as late as 
 1858 were holding public meetings and resolving that 
 the New York Central had no right to compete with 
 the Erie Canal. Verily the people have made some 
 bad breaks in their efforts to keep the railroad down.* 
 One of the good results of the great evil of the civil 
 war was that it promoted the growth of the railroad. 
 Men then began to think of the nation, national needs, 
 and national development. The war removed all local 
 
 * " It is less than thirty years since a convention at Syracuse, 
 representing no small part of the public sentiment of New York, 
 formally recommended ' the passage of a law by the next Legisla- 
 ture which shall confine the railroads of this State to the business 
 lor which they were originally created.' " — A. T. Hadlby,
 
 260 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 jealousy of interstate traffic. Out of the necessities 
 that arose came valuable ideas, which were afterward 
 developed, perfected, and used by the engineers who 
 made the railroad in the West.* 
 
 The most beneficent function of the railroad, it 
 has been truthfully said, is that of a carrier of freight. 
 It moves a ton of wheat a mile for a cent. The Ameri- 
 can railroad makes it possible for the hungry millions 
 of the crowded European cities to break bread oftener 
 than they used to break it before the road was built. 
 The railroad has helped to reclaim hundreds of mil- 
 lions of acres of land in the West and Northwest, and 
 made homes for people at the rate of over half a mil- 
 lion a year for the past half hundred years. It would 
 be impossible to print in one book a complete list of 
 the blessings that have come to the people of the 
 United States as a direct result of the American rail- 
 road, or to attempt to record all the wrongs, big and 
 little, done to the railroad by the same blessed com- 
 munity. 
 
 * " I firmly believe that the civil war trained the men who 
 made that great national highway." — General Sherman. 
 
 " Necessity brought out during the war bold structures, that 
 in the rough were models of economy and strength. In taking 
 care of direct and lateral strains by positions of posts and braces 
 they adapted principles that are used to-day in the highest and 
 boldest structures. And I undertake to say, that no structure 
 up to date has been built whicth has not followed those simple 
 principles that were evolved out of necessity, though reported 
 against during the war by the most experienced and reliable en- 
 gineers of the world."— (f'erteroZ Douue, Chief Engineer, Union 
 Pacific.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF THE EXPEESS BUSINESS. 
 
 The idea of taking charge of money and other 
 vahiables, becoming responsible for them en route, and 
 delivering them in good order at their destination, 
 originated with William Frederick Harnden. He had 
 been a passenger conductor on the Boston and Worces- 
 ter Eailroad, later ticket agent in the Boston office, 
 and no doubt the many calls he had from people who 
 were willing to trust him with their shopping helped 
 him to appreciate the necessity of a public errand boy 
 on the road. After three years in the ticket office 
 Harnden visited New York. He wanted outdoor em- 
 ployment. " Do errands between New York and Bos- 
 ton," said his friend James W. Hale, who ran a news- 
 stand called the Tontine Reading Room, and was agent 
 for the Providence steamboat. People used to dump 
 small pieces of freight in the Tontine and ask Hale 
 to send them on. In time the bankers and brokers 
 got to know him, and would go down to his place at 
 the corner of Wall and Water Streets, hand him letters 
 and bundles of greenbacks, and ask him to give them 
 to some one who was going to Boston, Providence, or 
 wherever the package happened to be billed for. In 
 this way Hale saw the need of a messenger, and ad- 
 
 261
 
 262 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 vised Harnclen to go into the business. This was 
 early in 1839. On the 23d of February of the same 
 year an advertisement in the Boston papers stated that 
 W. F. Harnden had made arrangements with the Provi- 
 dence Eailroad and New York Steamboat Companies 
 " to run a car through from Boston to New York and 
 vice versa four times a week." 
 
 He would accompany the car himself, the notice 
 stated, " for the purpose of purchasing goods, collect- 
 ing draughts, notes, and bills." 
 
 The original valise in which Harnden carried all 
 his freight for months was, a few years ago (and may 
 be still), in Cheney and Company's express office at 
 Boston. 
 
 The express started on the 4th of March, and on 
 the 31st the Boston Transcript gave Mr. Harnden edi- 
 torial notice, stating that the express had been found 
 " highly convenient to those who wish to send small 
 packages from one city to the other. It affords us 
 much pleasure to recommend the express to the notice 
 of our readers." 
 
 Harnden appears to have got in touch with the 
 editors of the great dailies of New York and Boston 
 at once, for on the 14th of May the editorial page of 
 the Transcript made the following acknowledgment: 
 " We are indebted to our friend Harnden, of the Pack- 
 age Express, for the United States Gazette (Philadel- 
 phia) of yesterday." 
 
 A man carrying packages, or even messages only, 
 was not called a messenger, but an " express." * 
 
 * *' Some little idea of the opposition that exists among New 
 York editors may be formed, when wo mention that so great was
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF THE EXPRESS BUSINESS. 2G3 
 
 In a year Harnden had built up quite a business. 
 His brother Adolphus was one of his best messengers, 
 and yet, according to Stimson's History of the Express 
 Business, " Adolphus Harnden was by no means a fast 
 young man." 
 
 In less than a year the founder of the express busi- 
 ness had a foretaste of the risk he was running in en- 
 gaging to carry and deliver money and other valu- 
 ables. 
 
 The first disaster came, as historian Stimson puts 
 it, " on that bitter cold, dark, calamitous night, the 
 13th of February, 1840." That night the steamer Lex- 
 ington, with thirty thousand dollars in specie for the 
 Merchants' Bank of Boston, on accounts of the Govern- 
 ment, and twenty thousand dollars in " greenbacks " 
 and other valuables for various persons, burned off 
 Long Island. Only four out of the one hundred and 
 fifty passengers and crew were saved, Adolphus Harn- 
 den being among the victims. W. F. Harnden, the 
 founder, died five years later, six years after starting 
 the business. 
 
 the anxiety to get the start of each other and have the credit of 
 being out first, that three expresses were employed by the print- 
 ers of that city to bring on President Jackson's message. The 
 Courier and Enquirer, speaking of it, says : ' It was delivered 
 yesterday at 12 o'clock, and conveyed from thence to Baltimore 
 by express, from Baltimore to Philadelphia by steamboat, and 
 from Philadelphia to this city by our express, in six hours and 
 twelve minutes, notwithstanding the bad situation of the roads. 
 We would have been able to lay it before our readers at an 
 earlier hour, had not our express between Baltimore and Wash, 
 ington lost all his copies. As it was, we have incurred an expense 
 of three hundred dollars.' " — Boston TranscHpt, Dec. 11, 1830.
 
 264 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 In 1840 Alvin Adams laid the foundation for 
 the business that employs an army of men to-day, 
 and whose noisy wagons add materially to the 
 deafening " downtown " din in nearly every city 
 in the United States. He wanted to drive a stage, 
 but the agent told him that he was " meant for bet- 
 ter things," although the New England stage driver 
 was a man of importance, often driving his own 
 team. 
 
 Failing to find employment on the road, young 
 Adams became a produce merchant, failed, and started 
 in the express business with P. B. Burke, under the 
 name of Burke and Company. 
 
 Harnden's friends said Adams was an interloper; 
 his own friends said he was foolish to want to divide 
 the business that would scarcely support one man. 
 Burke soon became discouraged. Adams kept on, and 
 in three years bought a horse. 
 
 The beginning of the American Express Company 
 was when Henry Wells and George Pomeroy, follow- 
 ing the star of empire and the Indian, started an ex- 
 press west, between Albany and Buffalo. 
 
 That was in 1841. Like Burke, Pomeroy quit; but 
 "Wells kept on, paying his fare on the railroads, steam- 
 boats, and stages that made the journey to Buffalo in 
 three nights and four days. 
 
 Nearly all the great companies whose faithful mes- 
 sengers ride near the locomotives up and down and 
 across the continent, standing in the open door, re- 
 ceiving freight, and road agents, and cold on their 
 lungs, taking part in wrecks and head-end collisions, 
 had a humble beginning.
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OP THE EXPRESS BUSINESS. 265 
 
 The baggage express business was originated by a 
 tailor named Arnoux. 
 
 All there was of " The Westcott Express Company " 
 in 1851 was a one-horse wagon with " Bob " Westcott 
 sitting close up to the crupper. To-day this company 
 handles nearly a million pieces of baggage per year. 
 
 In 1853 Henry Wells, who had been Harnden's 
 original agent at Albany, with W. G. Fargo and others, 
 established what is now the well-known firm of Wells, 
 Fargo and Company, of California. 
 
 It had cost seventy-five cents to send a pound of 
 freight from New York to San Francisco in 1849 and 
 1850. The rate was still sixty cents, but Wells, Fargo 
 and Company began business by cutting it to forty 
 cents. Among the first board of directors were D. N. 
 Barney, afterward its president, and at one time presi- 
 dent of the Northern Pacific Eailroad, and Benjamin 
 P. Cheney, who as a boy had been a stage driver, then 
 proprietor of the stage; as a man a railroader, then 
 proprietor of the road, and whose son, Benjamin 
 Cheney, of Boston, is now a director and part owner 
 in a number of Western railroads. 
 
 At the close of the civil war there were a number 
 of express companies, nearly all prosperous. Some one 
 said they were too prosperous, and organized " The 
 Merchants' Union Express Company," capitalized at 
 twenty million dollars. The openly avowed mission 
 on earth of this philanthropic institution was the utter 
 ruin of the business of all existing companies, which, 
 though they were competing sharply for business, were 
 thrown in a heap, in the literature put out by the new 
 organization, and called " the old monopoly.''
 
 266 THE STORY OP THE RAILROAD. 
 
 At the end of two years, having sunk seven milHon 
 dollars and demoralized the business to some extent, 
 the Merchants' Union failed, and was absorbed by the 
 American Express, with William G. Fargo as president 
 of the consolidated company. 
 
 During the first five years that Wells, Fargo and 
 Company did business in the West they carried fifty- 
 eight million dollars' worth of gold dust into San Fran- 
 cisco. No other express company in the world has 
 Buffered so much at the hands of road agents. They 
 began business in the West when the West was wild. 
 They ran, in the early days, not only an express busi- 
 ness, but stages also, and an extensive banking busi- 
 ness as well. 
 
 It was at the door of Wells, Fargo and Company's 
 stages that the picturesque but always polite bandits 
 of Bret Harte used to doff their caps to timid passen- 
 gers. Their stage roads ran over the shoulders of bleak 
 and desolate mountains, in the shadows of frowning 
 cliffs, and along the tunnels that had been chopped 
 through the forests of California. Here that mild 
 murderer, the road agent, whose only redeeming qual- 
 ity was his politeness, who did not swear or smoke, 
 in this life, did his devilish work. 
 
 In fourteen years he had stopped four trains and 
 three hundred and thirteen stages. Upon thirty-four 
 occasions the stage failed to stop. During this period 
 four drivers and two messengers — those fearless guards 
 who set themselves on the front seat as a target for 
 the outlaws — were killed. The robbers shot seven 
 horses and stole fourteen from the teams. Despite the 
 fact that the robbers always had the advantage, the
 
 THE PONY EXPRESS. 2G7 
 
 brave guards succeeded during this time in killing six- 
 teen, while the Vigilance Committee hanged seven. 
 The total amount taken in fourteen years was nearly 
 a million dollars. 
 
 Later, between 1875 and 1883, a single man, with 
 a low, musical voice and a sawed-off shotgun, held up 
 the stage of Wells, Fargo and Company twenty-eight 
 times. In view of the fact that the State and the 
 express company had each a standing reward for road 
 agents of three hundred dollars, with an additional 
 two hundred dollars from the Government when the 
 mail was molested, this was shrewd work. The prompt- 
 ness with which all claims on this account have been 
 met and settled has ever inspired and confirmed public 
 confidence in the integrity and responsibility of the 
 company. 
 
 The writer would not give fulsome praise to the 
 express companies, yet it can be stated as a fact that 
 they have been the most public-spirited of the great 
 corporations of this country, and have managed their 
 business and their employees with the least possible 
 friction. Many of them (notably Wells, Fargo and 
 Company) have made it a rule to collect and forward, 
 free of charge, money donated to communities suffer- 
 ing from contagious fever, flood, or fire. 
 
 In 1866 the express companies of the United States 
 erected an imposing monument at the grave of Harn- 
 den, in Mount Auburn, at Boston. 
 
 Of all the expresses, the most romantic and pic- 
 turesque was the pony express, inaugurated by William 
 H. Eussell and B. F. Ficklin in 1860, absorbed later
 
 268 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 by Wells, Fargo and Company, and abandoned in 1862, 
 when the telegraph line was completed across the con- 
 tinent. 
 
 Although in existence but two years, the " pony *' 
 left its footmarks on the plains. It established sta- 
 tions which afterward became settlements, towns, and 
 cities, and helped materially to determine the practi- 
 cability of the central route for a railroad. It took tele- 
 grams and letters from the locomotive at St. Joseph, 
 Mo., and delivered them to the steamboat at Sacra- 
 mento, which carried them to the Golden Gate. To 
 secure suitable horses and men, and to establish sta- 
 tions along the line, one man had gone overland, and 
 another to San Francisco by sea, in the fall of 1859. 
 Promptly at 4 p. m. on the 3d of April, 1860, a pony 
 started from either end of the route. The Hannibal 
 and St. Joseph Railroad ran a special train to its ter- 
 mini, and the people of those outposts of civilization 
 were wildly enthusiastic. Mr. Russell himself placed 
 the first mochilas upon the saddle in a momentary 
 hush, in which people plucked hairs from the tail of 
 the pony, and when he bounded away toward the set- 
 ting sun pretty girls threw kisses at the courier. 
 
 The path that the pony was to take lay due west 
 from St. Joseph to Fort Kearney, up the Platte to 
 Julesburg, thence by Fort Laramie and Fort Bridger 
 to Salt Tjake via Camp Floyd, Ruby Valley, the Hum- 
 boldt, Carson City, Placerville, and Folsom to Sacra- 
 mento. Weekly trips were to be made, and on the 
 10th the second pony started west. On the 13th, 
 promptly at 4 p. M., the first pony from the Pacific 
 landed at St. Joseph, the mail and messages having
 
 THE PONY EXPRESS. 2Qd 
 
 crossed the two thousand miles of desert and plain in 
 exactly ten days from San Francisco. Subsequently 
 the time was shortened to eight days. At first the 
 stations were twenty-five miles apart, but the men rode 
 over three divisions. Later there were but ten miles 
 between stations. Now the pony was put to a smart 
 gallop at the start, and finished with neck outstretched 
 like a racer coming under the wire. The light rider 
 with his light load leaped from the pony as he braced 
 his feet for the last stop, sprang upon a fresh horse 
 that stood ready, prancing and pawing, with two men 
 at the bit. In a little while forty fearless riders were 
 racing eastward and forty westward at all hours of the 
 day and night. Often when the rider reached the end 
 of his run he would find the man who was to relieve 
 him ill, wounded, or scalped, or perhaps he would find 
 only the black ruins of the station, and would be com- 
 pelled to push on. One rider is said to have ridden 
 three hundred miles in this way. He had to be lifted 
 from the saddle, and was unable to walk for some 
 time. 
 
 The leading newspapers of New York and San 
 Francisco printed tissue editions and sent them by the 
 pony express across the continent. The pony express 
 was not a success financially, although the " pony 
 postage " on a letter that crossed the plains was five 
 dollars; but it was picturesque and valuable to the pub- 
 lic, and helped to blaze the way for the swifter, hardier 
 steed of steel. 
 
 Thousands of people saw these swift riders flying 
 like winged shadows across the continent, and among 
 them one man Avho could paint for posterity wiiat he 
 19
 
 270 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 saw. That man was Mark Twain, and this is the 
 closing paragraph of his picture: 
 
 " We had had a consuming desire from the begin- 
 ning to see a pony rider, but somehow or other all had 
 passed us, and all that met us managed to streak by 
 in the night, and so we heard only a whiz and a hail, 
 and the swift phantom of the desert was gone before 
 we could get our heads out of the windows. But now 
 we were expecting one along every moment, and would 
 see him in broad daylight. Presently the driver ex- 
 claims, 'Here he comes!' Every neck is stretched 
 farther and every eye strained wider. Away across the 
 endless dead level of the prairie a black speck appears 
 against the sky, and it is plain that it moves. Well, 
 I should think so! In a second or two it becomes a 
 horse and rider, rising and falling, rising and falling, 
 sweeping toward us nearer and nearer, growing more 
 and more distinct, more and more sharply defined to 
 the ear; another instant a whoop and a hurrah from 
 our upper deck, a wave of the rider's hand, but no 
 reply, and man and horse burst past our excited faces 
 and go winging away, like the belated fragment of a 
 storm."
 
 CHAPTEE XXIV. 
 
 THE WEST TO-DAY. 
 
 The West as it was in the beginning of this story 
 is gone. That vast domain, miscalled the American 
 Desert, is filled with homes, towns, and prosperous 
 communities. The broad vales where the wild grass 
 waved are green fields, meadows, orchards, and flower 
 gardens. The dead, dry plains, that the pioneers found 
 furrowed only by the deep, narrow trails made by the 
 buffalo and the Indian, are crossed and checked and 
 barred by bands of steel, and all along these new trails 
 are thriving cities/' The smoke of the machine shop, 
 smelter, and factory drifts where less than a half cen- 
 tury ago the signal fires of the savage burned to call 
 the band to the slaughter of a lone settler or an emi- 
 grant train. 
 
 From a single mining camp in one small State situ- 
 ated in the very heart of this " unwatered wilderness " 
 they take a million dollars in gold every month; and 
 yet all the mineral mined within its borders in twelve 
 months would not equal in money value the annual 
 products of the few fields, orchards, and gardens that 
 have been planted in the plains and valleys of that 
 stony little State. Ninety-five per cent of the revenue 
 of the Pacific railroads, projected and built for the 
 
 271
 
 272 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 traffic of the Orient, comes from what is called local 
 business. Following the smoke of the pioneer lines, 
 dozens of systems of railroad have pushed their rails 
 into this land, which at the close of the civil war was 
 considered uninhabitable. The traveller bound for 
 the Pacific coast has his pick and choice of a half 
 dozen or more routes, which for speed and comfort 
 can not be equalled under the sun save in America". 
 It would be impossible in a single volume to give even 
 a brief history of the many splendid systems of roads 
 whose through cars, by close traffic arrangement, reach 
 the Pacific coast States from Chicago, the great rail- 
 road centre, without change. In addition to the roads 
 already mentioned, the traveller can take the Manitoba 
 or the Sunset route, or his choice of a number of splen- 
 did roads between those extremes. Probably the most 
 extensive and important of the newer roads whose 
 rails reach out beyond the Missouri is the Chicago, 
 Burlington and Quincy. The Burlington and Mis- 
 souri River Railroad, a part of the powerful Burlington 
 system, has done a great work in helping to people the 
 " desert." It has almost an air line running from 
 the capital of Nebraska to Billings, in Montana, with 
 a branch north to that famed mining camp, Deadwood, 
 in Dakota. The Burlington has also a splendid 
 tliroiigh line from Chicago to Denver, and the heart 
 of the Rockies. Along these rails rush the magnifi- 
 cent trains that cover this one thousand miles in 
 twenty-six hours; and side by side, neck and neck, are 
 the Northwestern-Union' Pacific trains, equally hand- 
 some, doing tbe same thing in the same length of time. 
 The Burlington connects with the Denver and Rio
 
 TraTiscontinental 
 Railroads, 1898. 
 
 KM) 200 
 
 800 f \ ry \ % 
 
 Stiitulo MilcB. 
 
 "^ \ <\t 
 
 ^ijjVc 
 
 Hk 
 
 o 
 
 ^ 
 
 \.nu. West 30 fr
 
 THE WEST TO-DAY. 273 
 
 Grande at Denver, and by that line and the Eio Grande 
 Western reaches Ogden, Utah, where connection is 
 made with the Central Pacific for San Francisco. 
 
 The Chicago, Eock Island and Pacific is another 
 of the important roads that has penetrated the plains. 
 It takes through traffic via Colorado Springs, where 
 it connects with the Colorado Midland, until lately 
 a part of the Santa Fe system. 
 
 The Wabash, Alton, the Illinois Central, and other 
 roads carry people via St. Louis, and sometimes as far 
 south as New Orleans, and then send them flying across 
 to the coast by the Missouri Pacific, or down over 
 the Iron Mountain, and the International and Great 
 Northerns, and Texas Pacific, or by the Southern Pa- 
 cific's famous " Sunset Limited." 
 
 Far to the north the Great Northern — " Jim Hill's 
 road," as it is familiarly known among railroad men — 
 takes traffic from any and all roads at St. Paul, and 
 drives a paying business through what the early road 
 projectors used to call "the frozen North." This is 
 to-day one of the most prosperous roads in all the 
 West. 
 
 Thus it will be seen that the West is now able to 
 support a number of roads. True, they are not all 
 making money, but they are all helping to settle up 
 and develop a section of country that was once con- 
 sidered fit only for the home of the savage and a place 
 for criminals to hide in. 
 
 It is only by comparison that we can arrive at a 
 full appreciation of what the railroad has wrought in 
 the West. When the Zion-bound pilgrims pulled their 
 handcarts across the plains and over the Utah desert
 
 274 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 there were no trails but those of the buffalo. The trap- 
 pers and hunters followed the streams, while the In- 
 dians may be said to have wandered aimlessly over the 
 face of the earth. 
 
 Following the handcarts of the Mormons came the 
 ox teams of Eussell, Majors and Company, taking 
 supplies to the army in Utah. And it used to take 
 them from twenty to thirty days to drag the wag- 
 ons from the river to Fort Kearney, three hundred 
 miles. 
 
 A few years later the Overland Mail Company 
 transferred their post coaches from the southern to 
 this the central route, and then the dust began to fly. 
 The stage coaches soon overhauled the pilgrims and 
 the stage driver, and station hands, one writer tells 
 us, began to make trouble for the Mormons by marry- 
 ing " off wheelers," " nigh leaders," and " swing girls " 
 out of the handcart teams. 
 
 After "roughing it" across the continent in one 
 of these rock-a-bye wagons, Mark Twain wrote: 
 
 " How the frantic animals did scamper! It was a 
 fierce and furious gallop, and the gait never altered 
 for a moment till we reeled off ten or twelve miles 
 and swept up to the next collection of little station 
 huts and stables. 
 
 " At 4 p. M. we crossed a branch of the river, and 
 at 5 P. M. we crossed the Platte itself and landed at 
 Kearney, fifty-six hours from St. Joe, three hundred 
 miles.'^ 
 
 Looking back at the bull team, that was simply 
 flying. 
 
 A few years later an enthusiast who crossed the
 
 THE WEST TO-DAY. 275 
 
 plains on one of the early " Golden Gate " express 
 trains wrote the New York Times: 
 
 " At 4 p. M. Sunday we rolled out of the station 
 at Omaha and started on our long jaunt." Then fol- 
 lowed a lengthy description of the ride, of the writer's 
 first dinner " in one of Pullman's hotels on wheels," 
 where they drank champagne at thirty miles an hour, 
 " and never spilled a drop." 
 
 '' After dinner," the traveller tells us, " we repaired 
 to our drawing-room car and intoned that grand old 
 hymn, Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Then 
 to bed in luxurious coaches, where we slept the sleep 
 of the just, and only awoke the next morning (Mon- 
 day) at eight o'clock, to find ourselves at the cross- 
 ing of the North Platte, fifteen hours and forty min- 
 utes out from Omaha, three hundred miles." 
 
 That must have made Ben Holliday's crack stage 
 drivers wish they had never been. 
 
 How do they do this three hundred miles of desert 
 to-day? The reader can enter a sleeper coupled to 
 the fast mail leaving Omaha at 6 p. m. and stand almost 
 at the foot of Pike's Peak, at the other edge of the 
 " desert," when the sun is coming out of the plains on 
 the following morning. At midnight he will have 
 crossed the Platte, making the oft-travelled " three 
 hundred miles " in six hours. That beats the early 
 express as badly as that train beat the stage, or as the 
 stage beat the freighters. 
 
 If you care to carry the comparison a few thousand 
 years back of the bull team, it took Moses forty years 
 to put three hundred miles of desert behind him. 
 
 Wonderful, indeed, are the changes that have taken
 
 276 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 place out there within a third of a century. Far 
 greater than any change in the character of the coun- 
 try and the mode and comforts of travel is the change 
 in the character of the people who inhabit the far 
 West to-day. One may not paint a pretty picture of 
 the "West in the days of the stage coach and the pony 
 express. Here and there you meet a cattleman, a miner, 
 a mining engineer, or a missionary, but a majority of 
 the people you passed on the trail were criminals. The 
 division superintendent on the stage line might be a 
 gentleman or an outlaw, or both, according to the re- 
 quirements of the division. When the stage stopped 
 at a station, an assassin brought out the fresh horses, 
 while perhaps a road agent off duty led the tired team 
 away. When you sat to dinner at the stage station, 
 you were apt to find a desperado at the head of the 
 table. A half-breed raised on the warpath admired 
 your beautiful hair, or silently cursed you for being 
 bald, while he poured coffee. A horse thief carried 
 the dishes away and threw the crumbs into the face 
 of a filthy Goshoot Indian, who, until the stage line 
 was opened, had been hanging on the edge of the 
 desert waiting, along with that four-legged outcast, 
 the coyote, for something to die. 
 
 These Indians were too indolent to band together. 
 They had no tribe and no village. Too lazy to carry 
 a bow and arrow, they slunk, filthy as swine, by the 
 trail, competing with the vulture for a living. Other 
 Indians, more ambitious, would lie in wait for the 
 stage, which travelled clay and night, and "rub the 
 whites all out." And then there were always the white, 
 or half white, savages — road agents and other assas-
 
 THE WEST TO-DAY. 277 
 
 sins. Highway robbery was practised apparently for 
 pastime by some of these wolves. One division became 
 so unsafe that the stage company was obliged to install 
 a notorious outlaw in the ofhce of division superin- 
 tendent. He filled the position, and fitted into the 
 community beautifully. Where there had been whole- 
 sale horse stealing, stabbing in the dark, and shooting 
 by day, he quieted the " hands " down, and when he 
 was removed to reform another division he left behind 
 him a reorganized force, tranquillity, and a graveyard. 
 Even the Indians, whole tribes of them, dreaded and 
 respected this man, and the stage started by him usu- 
 ally went through on time. He was ever loyal to his 
 employer^ and if the outlaws, thieves, and murderers 
 imposed upon or abused the few honest helpers em- 
 ployed about the station, he shot them down as he 
 would have shot wolves among the stock. He was a 
 most useful man in his day, but the constant bathing 
 in blood hardened him. He took to drink and to in- 
 discriminate killing of people who did not deserve it, 
 who were not even in the employ of the stage company. 
 Finally he tore up a summons sent him by a Cali- 
 fornia vigilance committee, and they arrested him. 
 He was counted one of the bravest men that ever saw 
 the West, being utterly indifferent to danger. He had 
 sent dozens of men into the unknown — some of them 
 the hardest that that hard country had produced — 
 but when his time came, when they put the awful 
 noose about his neck, and he stood at the open door 
 of death, he wept and begged, and perished miserably. 
 These unpleasant pictures are shown to bring the 
 reader to a full appreciation of the condition of the
 
 278 THE STORY OP THE RAILROAD. 
 
 country when our hero, the locating engineer, entered 
 it. There was no legal restraint there, no coroner's 
 jury to come nosing around asking awkward ques- 
 tions. It was not that the West was bad, but because 
 it was wild and wide, for many of the outlaws, like 
 our superintendent, had been reared in the States, 
 within the sound of a church bell, and had gone to 
 the wilderness to lose themselves. The pathfinders 
 who first went out to find a way for the railroad, and 
 many who followed them, found the West a veritable 
 hell, filled with wild beasts and wilder men. When 
 the road makers followed with an army of workmen, 
 many of them reckless, and some of them desperate, 
 they built the temporary communities, full of lust 
 and gold, that were so graphically and powerfully de- 
 scribed by Mr. Stevenson. When these heroic pioneers 
 pushed on toward the Pacific they left an unbroken 
 line of railroad behind them, reaching back to civiliza- 
 tion, and a broken line of graves. 
 
 The towns that sprang up along the line and the 
 mining camps that were opened by the railroad were 
 wicked places for a time. The men were all murdered 
 who filled the first twenty-six graves at Virginia City, 
 Nev., and the place was not reckoned uncommonly 
 tough at the time. Many good men, as well as bad 
 ones, went down in tlie fight for the West. It cost 
 blood to conquer the country, but what is Cuba to this? 
 What is all the kingdom of Spain, compared with the 
 vast empire that was thrown open when the last spike 
 was driven in the first Pacific railroad? 
 
 The bad Indian and the outlaw shrank from the 
 glare of the headlight of that great civilizcr, the loco-
 
 THE WEST TO-DAY. 279 
 
 motive. In a little while the bad man was pushed 
 aside or trampled upon by the vast army of honest, 
 fearless, fair-fighting young men, the flower of this fair 
 land, the bravest, best blood of the civilized world, 
 who had come out to help develop the West that had 
 been opened by the daring railroad engineer. 
 
 Presently the lawyer came to this lawless land, 
 the life insurance agent, the preacher, and the play- 
 actor, and finally a man and his wife — Martha and 
 " Martha's younkit " — and all the miners dropped 
 their tools and went down to the camp at the bottom 
 of the gulch to see the woman. Stubble-faced men 
 gave small sacks of gold dust for the privilege of " kiss- 
 in' the kid." 
 
 By-and-bye, when the good red man got used to 
 the whistle of the locomotive, he came into the camp 
 that the white man had made, and learned to work in 
 the shops and mines. 
 
 The worthless Indian has perished — gone with the 
 buffalo, the bad man, the stage coach, and the desert, 
 for there is no desert now. Where a little while ago 
 the sage and cactus grew, June roses bloom to-day. 
 All this change has come about since the West was 
 awakened by the first wild scream of the locomotive 
 and the sun-dried plain was made to tremble under its 
 whirling wheels. A thousand years of bull teams, 
 handcarts, and pack trains could not have wrought 
 what the railroad achieved here in a quarter of a 
 century. 
 
 The grand, glorious, and still growing West could 
 not have been made but for the railroad, and the rail- 
 road could only be built by the dauntless pioneers who
 
 280 THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD. 
 
 set their faces to the wilderness and held them there 
 for five weary years, nor turned nor glanced back until 
 the trail had been blazed and their tired feet felt the 
 moist, cool sands of the Pacific. When the graders fol- 
 lowed and the work was finished, two thousand miles 
 of rails reached from the edge of civilization to the 
 Golden Gate. 
 
 Many were missing when the roll was called. Some 
 were sleeping in the broad prairies where the wild grass 
 waved, some among the desert dunes, and others in 
 the mountain passes. As I write this last page my 
 countrymen are moistening two sides of the earth with 
 their blood. These are heroes, and so were those pio- 
 neers who perished fighting for that magnificent West, 
 the pride and glory of America. 
 
 (S) 
 
 THE END.
 
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