Santa Fe Railroad and the taming of the west

[Murphy Siding]

     What role did ATSF play in the taming of the west?  It seems the birth, growth, and success of the Santa Fe coincided with the growth and success of southwetern ag industries.  Starting with Kansas, then west into Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and eventually to the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico, ATSF seemed to be in it for the cattle and grain traffic.                It appears, that as the railroad moved west, civilization followed it.  A fella probably could have ridden the train to the gunfight at the OK corral.  Was the grain and cattle traffic the reason for existing for the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe?

[Southwest Chief]

I've read many books that purport Fred Harvey (and the Santa Fe) tamed the rugged west.

[Red Horse]

Thanks for this post, I work in HO scale SF and love to read anything about this line.

[SSW9389]

And coal from the New Mexico mines, and lumber from Northern Arizona, and all those immigrant cars bringing new settlers to the lands of a land grant railroad or further west to California, and fruit and vegetables from California.

The OK Corral was in Tucson, Santa Fe didn't go there.  

Circle-Cross: The circle of life and the Cross of Christianity, there is a herald for you.  

 

 

[greyhounds]

And coal from the New Mexico mines, and lumber from Northern Arizona, and all those immigrant cars bringing new settlers to the lands of a land grant railroad or further west to California, and fruit and vegetables from California.

The OK Corral was in Tucson, Santa Fe didn't go there.  

Circle-Cross: The circle of life and the Cross of Christianity, there is a herald for you.  

 

 

I thought it happened in Tombstone, AZ.  Where is Tombstone, AZ? 

[SSW9389]

Dang you're right, Tombstone is in Southeastern Arizona near the border. I thought all that track down that way was Espee.

 

And coal from the New Mexico mines, and lumber from Northern Arizona, and all those immigrant cars bringing new settlers to the lands of a land grant railroad or further west to California, and fruit and vegetables from California.

The OK Corral was in Tucson, Santa Fe didn't go there.  

Circle-Cross: The circle of life and the Cross of Christianity, there is a herald for you.  

 

 

I thought it happened in Tombstone, AZ.  Where is Tombstone, AZ? 

[Murphy Siding]

Dang you're right, Tombstone is in Southeastern Arizona near the border. I thought all that track down that way was Espee.

 

And coal from the New Mexico mines, and lumber from Northern Arizona, and all those immigrant cars bringing new settlers to the lands of a land grant railroad or further west to California, and fruit and vegetables from California.

The OK Corral was in Tucson, Santa Fe didn't go there.  

Circle-Cross: The circle of life and the Cross of Christianity, there is a herald for you.  

 

 

I thought it happened in Tombstone, AZ.  Where is Tombstone, AZ? 

     I'm not sure where Tombstone is, but the Santa Fe must have made life a lot easier for the cowboys, and at the same time, eliminating a lot of their work.

[ChuckCobleigh]

The OK Corral was in Tucson, Santa Fe didn't go there.  

Tombstone.  Even farther from the ATSF.

[nanaimo73]

The Santa Fe competed their line down to the Mexican port of Guaymas in 1882, which went through Fairbank AZ. Tombstone was served by a 9 mile branch from Fairbank, but I don't know if the branch was part of the ATSF. Santa Fe traded their Mexican line to SP in 1897.

[Murphy Siding]

And coal from the New Mexico mines, and lumber from Northern Arizona, and all those immigrant cars bringing new settlers to the lands of a land grant railroad or further west to California, and fruit and vegetables from California.

Was this coal and lumber to ship back east, or to supply the new settlers along the line?  I know there was some land grants to get accross Kansas, so I presume there must have been departments in the railroad that worked on luring settlers there.

[Murphy Siding]

I've read many books that purport Fred Harvey (and the Santa Fe) tamed the rugged west.

     Some accounts I've read, say that the Harvey Girls contributed up to 5,000 wives to the mix of the former wild west.

[diningcar]

There are several books which tell the stories of Santa Fe and Fred Harvey. Two are:

History of The Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railway by Keith L Bryant, Jr., a Professor

Santa Fe The Railroad that Built an Empire by James Marshall, a more romanticized version

[cacole]

The OK Corral was in Tucson, Santa Fe didn't go there.  

The OK Corral is in Tombstone, which is 100 road miles southeast of Tucson.  The Southern Pacific ran into Tombstone on a branch off of the Sunset Route.  The Santa Fe ran through northern Arizona (Flagstaff, Williams, etc.)

There are surviving Harvey Houses at the Grand Canyon, Winslow, and Seligman.  The ones at Grand Canyon and Winslow, the El Tovar and La Posada, have been restored and are open to the public, but the one at Seligman is derelict and would require millions of dollars to restore because of lead paint and asbestos used throughout.

[SSW9389]

The Seligman Harvey House Havasu was demolished this Spring. Demolition started May 5th, Havasu House is gone.

[Murphy Siding]

The OK Corral was in Tucson, Santa Fe didn't go there.  

The OK Corral is in Tombstone, which is 100 road miles southeast of Tucson.  The Southern Pacific ran into Tombstone on a branch off of the Sunset Route.  The Santa Fe ran through northern Arizona (Flagstaff, Williams, etc.)

 

Some outlaws we'd make.  We'd end up on the 3:10 to Yakima, and wonder where the bad guys were.

[Murphy Siding]

There are several books which tell the stories of Santa Fe and Fred Harvey. Two are:

History of The Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railway by Keith L Bryant, Jr., a Professor

Santa Fe The Railroad that Built an Empire by James Marshall, a more romanticized version

Thanks diningcar.  Most everything I've read about it was quite romanticized.  It's as if the ATSF was happily expanding their grain and cattle business, and one day the guys said "Hey!  Let's head to the Pacific......and........and Mexico......and Kansas City.....and Chicago....."etc.  Never any good background as to where the railroad was headed and why.

[nanaimo73]

This map shows the line running south of Benson, but does not show the branch to Tombstone.

 

[CopCarSS]

Speaking of the Santa Fe and the taming of the west... Is there a good book or other source covering the "war" betwixt the Santa Fe and the Rio Grande in the Royal Gorge?

[Bruce Kelly]

ATSF did play a role in taming the West, but to elevate it to supreme status, as is all too often done in railfan (and rail magazine) circles, is to miss the geographic big picture. First, the geographic center of North America is in North Dakota, so there's a lot of "Western" real estate that other railroads tamed, which Santa Fe didn't come within several hundred miles of. Secondly, those other railroads, in most cases, tamed parts of the West that were enormously more difficult to tame than anything Santa Fe had to deal with. Laying track across the Southwest toward southern California meant throwing a number of big bridges across rivers, carving roadbed through open desert hillsides, and putting up with excruciating heat. Up north, meanwhile, railroads building through the Rockies, Cascades, Sierra Nevada, and other ranges had countless miles of tunneling and cut/fill/bridgework to do, plus everything from summer heat to winter cold and snow. (OK, so up north they had more plentiful water, and more abundant timber for making ties, but...) Jim Hill was every bit the tamer of the West that Harvey was. Harvey's goal was the California shore. Hill's goal reached beyond Puget Sound to the Orient. It wasn't until long after Harvey was gone that L.A./Long Beach began developing into a major seaport. Hill's counterparts north of the border knew where they were heading too; it just took longer for their dreams to reach potential. Portland, Tacoma, Seattle, Vancouver, and Prince Rupert are several days' sailing time closer to China than L.A., and with fuel costs getting where they are, it's becoming smarter for most of North America to import its merchandise and export its coal, grain, and potash through Northwest ports than Southwest ports. The West that was tamed by railroads is not limited to what's south of Sacramento.

[Railway Man]

Speaking of the Santa Fe and the taming of the west... Is there a good book or other source covering the "war" betwixt the Santa Fe and the Rio Grande in the Royal Gorge?

Robert Athearn's "Rio Grande -- Rebel of the Rockies" is the accepted source.  Athearn described this in a number of other publications but they're all virtually the same. 

As you read it, you might keep in mind that Athearn was quite consistent through his career; everything I've read of his academic work was a building block of his central thesis of Western U.S. History.  Athearn's thesis about the D&RGW was part of a larger thesis in vogue during Western History during his era, which was that the West was treated at best as a stepchild of the East, and at worst as a location for wealth to be sucked out of and no investment put back.  Translated to the D&RGW, that meant that any time the D&RGW had local control, it was a good thing for the railroad and for the West, and any time it had non-local control, it was a bad thing for the railroad and for the West.  Whether you agree with that thesis is not the point, the point is that if you read Athearn knowing about his thesis, his writing becomes a lot easier to understand, and a lot easier to learn from.  You might not learn a darn thing about the Rio Grande reading Athearn, but you can definitely learn about the chip the West carried on its shoulder in the 1920-1965 era, when it felt ignored, slighted, and dismissed as ignorant Cow Country by the "hi-falutin East."  And from that you can learn quite a bit about policy and politics in the West during Athearn's era and subsequently, which has emphasized imitation of the East and simultaneously rejection of Eastern influence or control over its policy.  Americans are nothing if not comfortable with their inconsistencies!

RWM

[Murphy Siding]

     Here's something I don't quite understand:  As time went on, Santa Fe was able to greatly improve their system, by building some 'cut-off' lines.  These typically were new routes between 2 existing places on the line, built to eliminate harsh grades, curature, and helpers. The Belin cutoff avoided Raton pass dropping from 3% grades to 1.25% grades.  The Coleman cutoff shortened the route through Texas.  The Williams-Crookston line change replaced a lot of steep, up and down profile line, with some 10 degree turns and horseshoes, with a 1% grade line only 2 miles longer.

     Why the line changes (sometimes long) after the fact?  Wouldn't those routes have been considered during the initial layouts of the lines?

[mobilman44]

Hi!

The Santa Fe was invaluable in the opening of the west - as was the UP, CP, NP, GN, and others.  The RR would not have been built without a market to serve, which in many cases it helped to create (i.e. bringing in settlers, and supporting goods).  Of course we can't forget all the land grants to the railroads, and to the settlers in the form of "homesteads". 

It was kind of like a snowball rolling downhill (not too many of those in north Houston), with each of the factors building on each other as time went along.

For places with existing towns, getting the railroad to run thru (and stop) in your town would make or break its future - as the Interstates did to many of the towns along route 66. 

ENJOY,

Mobilman44 

 

[CopCarSS]

Thanks, RWM, for the suggestion. It just went into my cart at Amazon!

[MichaelSol]

Athearn's thesis about the D&RGW was part of a larger thesis in vogue during Western History during his era, which was that the West was treated at best as a stepchild of the East, and at worst as a location for wealth to be sucked out of and no investment put back. 

This dominated Western History studies of Athearn's era, epitomized and popularized by Bernard deVoto in "The West: The Plundered Province", Harper's Magazine, August 1934. The proposition hugely affected the development of historical literature regarding railroad expansion in the West, of which Athearn is representative, rather than unique. The view exists to this day, and is to a large extent responsible for the environmental movement regarding public lands in the West. My Major Professor, K. Ross Toole, was a recognized exponent of that view, and is acknowledged as such in "The "Plundered Province" Thesis and the Recent Historiography of the American West", William G. Robbins, The Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 55, No. 4 (Nov., 1986), pp. 577-597.

 

[Prairietype]

History 101: Lesson for 7-10-2008

Quite simply, Santa Fe and numerous other railroads tamed (or developed) the west in an American drama which repeated and progressed across the country and adjacent to their main line. Think of virgin prairie and a long ribbon of rail through a public land grant, with evey other section of land on each side of the railroad being open for sale to a population dispora flowing across the United States. Weeks after completion you could visit any point and experience the remoteness of the uninterrupted vista for hundreds of miles except for the tracks. Within a handful of years there were brand new towns 6-7 miles apart, with farms, and farm families, and county fairs, public schools, commerce and shipments of grain, food, livestock, machinery and people, and a classic American farm culture that turned this vast region into the United States that we know, with the railroad at the center and linking this all together at the stations in the heart or foot of each community. 

There is a romance or mythological ideal perhaps to this image, but there is also indisputable enough evidence of it that can still be seen or felt echoing across many decades down to 2008.  In other regions of the west the industry and develpoment may have taken different form, but the railroad's (including Santa Fe) impact or involvement would have been just as apparent there as well.  

     

[MichaelSol]

Think of virgin prairie and a long ribbon of rail through a public land grant, with evey other section of land on each side of the railroad being open for sale to a population dispora flowing across the United States.

Part of the "Plundered Province" thesis is that this didn't happen. Rather than opening their lands to development, railroads were accused of keeping the lands locked up. The social contract by which the US Government would open up lands to homesteading to benefit railroad development at the same time that railroads did so, with the idea of providing tax revenue to newly formed, and financially strapped, territorial and state governments, was broken as railroads evaded property tax by delaying the "proving" process -- sometimes by as much as 40 years. GN, on the one hand, sold its enormous land grants almost entirely to finance construction West. The NP, on the other, held on to nearly everything and during the spin-off of Burlington Resources in 1996, over 60% of the land given to the NP in 1862 -- land meant for sale and development -- remained in railroad ownership, 134 years later!

This was the main reason that the Land Grant concept was abandoned nearly entirely in the 1870s, and agitation grew over the years against the railroads based on a perception that railroads were actively interferring with the full development of the West by turning the land grants to their own exploitative purposes rather than for sale to the public -- pumping the money out for short term gain -- and back East -- rather than enabling further settlement and population development -- the long term purpose of the grants. Congress considered bills revoking the land grants on this basis until as recently as the 1930s, and the subject came up during the Northern Lines merger proceedings of the 1960s as an argument to justify denying the merger. Not suggesting that it was a good argument, but it came up ....

 

 

[Anonymous]

Dang you're right, Tombstone is in Southeastern Arizona near the border. I thought all that track down that way was Espee.

 

And coal from the New Mexico mines, and lumber from Northern Arizona, and all those immigrant cars bringing new settlers to the lands of a land grant railroad or further west to California, and fruit and vegetables from California.

FYI Santa Fe(Now BNSF) goes down to Deming, NM, on I-10  to tap copper  mines down that way. I don't remember where the tracks end but if you go down I-10 across Southern NM you will cross under the tracks to I think the Phelps Dodge pit.

Rgds IGN 

The OK Corral was in Tucson, Santa Fe didn't go there.  

Circle-Cross: The circle of life and the Cross of Christianity, there is a herald for you.  

 

 

I thought it happened in Tombstone, AZ.  Where is Tombstone, AZ? 

Santa Fe goes south from Belen, NM / Albuquerque, NM to El Paso. There is a Branch off of this line that goes SW to Deming, NM(I think)  From there there is a rail line that cross over I-10 to the Phelps Dodge Pit.

Rgds IGN

[Anonymous]

The El Paso and South Western, EP&SW, built into Tombstone in 1903, according to David Myrick's book, New Mexico's Railroads.  The EP&SW became part of the Southern Pacific.

The EP&SW also built the line from El Paso to Tucumcari, and later with the Rock Island, became a mainline to Chicago.

Myrick says the EP&SW started out 'as a modest 36-mile railroad from Fairbank to Bisbee, Arizona, built in the name of The Arizona and Southeastern Railroad in 1888-89.'  This line is not shown in Steam Powered Video Arizona and New Mexico Atlas, though.  The Fairbank to Tombstone section is shown.

 Art 

[Red Horse]

There were a few entries here that did romanticize the role that rail roads played in "Taming the West" and now for a different opinion, from a different perspective.

I have heard stories from my Grand parents that were told to them by their parents about how the rail roads impacted the indigenous people who lived and hunted in these areas while the rail lines were beginning to grow and in our oral history I'd be hard pressed to find anything "romantic" about the coming of the Iron Horses.

The first encounters were terrifying to the Native populations, they didn't know what to make of the ground shaking, roaring massive smoke bellowing giants that began to creep into their lands.

As far as settling the West, it was already settled although not by the Anglo standards of what settled meant, we were not a bunch of savages we were a people that had a political system, a Justus system, we were organized and knew how to live in harmony with the land and not exploit it for all it was worth, we had communities and trade routes established long before the coming of the fire breathing mammoths that would ultimately bring destruction to a way of life that was enjoyed for some 800 years before the first rail was laid down.

When the trains began to open up the west it brought with them the opportunity for trophy hunters to kill the big buffalo herds that once covered the Great plains, these were not people hunting on horse back for food and clothing but a mass genocide of a great source of food, shelter, clothing, weapons and tools for our people, our ancestors watched the wholesale slaughter of our major staple to live.

There are old black and white and cepia photos that show men with shot guns standing next to piles of buffalo skulls 3 and 4  stories tall, and the mass tanning of buffalo hides for rugs that would be found in almost every house hold in the old west towards the end of the slaughters were even higher.

These big game hunters wouldn't even get off the trains, just mow down all they could shoot while enjoying their tea in the dinning car with out a thought given to what this meant to the "dirty Savages" as they called us, what it meant was starvation, displacement from our homes, villages and communities, this act of selfishness was the first steps into the rounding up of a once proud people onto reservations were they were still starved, trying to be converted into farmers.

There isn't anything romantic about this and at one point in time the government were actually paying professional hunters to eradicate our peoples food supplies to force them to come onto the reservations, this isn't hearsay it is historical fact.

I'm in no way trying to breed controversy but I feel both sides of the "Taming of the west using the rail roads" should be represented.

And when this subject comes up it brings up some strong emotions on both sides of the issue, this is in no way a political statement or an attempt to solicit pity, lets face it, what was done was done a long time ago and as a child growing up in the Reservation and then in public school systems we were taught about all the good things the rail roads did for this country but these same books and teachers failed to teach our side of this dark period of history in the lives of our ancestors, and I always wondered why the other side was never mentioned, guilt maybe, after all who was writing these history books?

I do not hold any animosity towards those who had the need to "civilize the savages" of the old west but I do hold a grudge against those who are afraid to tell a whole story, ashamed to tell the whole truth.

This is just my opinion and it is based on the oral and now written traditions of keeping our historical records for the future and when we teach the old ways to our next generations there is only one rule, we can not add anything to the facts or omit anything from the facts.

I may have just painted a big target on myself but it would not be the first time.

All I ask is those who are so well schooled on the History of the rail roads and how they impacted this countries development also take the time to look into our view of this event and others like this one that would change a way of life for all indigenous people.

When the mass killings of the Buffalo were over, this country went from an estimated 30 million buffalo down to less than 1,000 I believe the exact number was 990 and the only reason we have them around today is because the last 990 were in an area that was not easy to get to by man, it is also a fact that all the buffalo that are living today are the decendants of this group of 990.

Most historians on both sides of this issue agree on one point, and this is, even the estimated 30 million is on the lower side of the actual buffalo population that once roamed the Plains, some say the numbers could go as high as 50 million.

For the sake of others on this site if you have some negative feed back concerning this post please send them in a PM to me unless you can keep your replies G rated for the families here.

Thank you.

Jesse Red Horse, Tribal Member of the Northern Blackfeet Nation.

[mudchicken]

History 101: Lesson for 7-10-2008

 Think of virgin prairie and a long ribbon of rail through a public land grant, with evey other section of land on each side of the railroad being open for sale to a population dispora flowing across the United States...... 

There is a romance or mythological ideal perhaps to this image, but there is also indisputable enough evidence of it that can still be seen or felt echoing across many decades down to 2008.  In other regions of the west the industry and develpoment may have taken different form, but the railroad's (including Santa Fe) impact or involvement would have been just as apparent there as well.      

Nice try,  but not true - especially in Santa Fe's case. (Surprised that diningcar did not tee-off on this) What most history books seem to imply is that :

• every western railroad was ALL Land Grant FALSE
• and ALL railroads had the checkerboard 6 & 20 mile alternate section grants FALSE

Santa Fe had almost no grant real estate outside its own operating R/W. What little it had came in trades of routes with SP and acquisition of other failed endeavors mostly in AZ and N with lesser impacts in KS and CA.

Don't know who gets the "F" in Railroad History 101, but the patently absurd and overgeneralized/ exagerated grant fairytale has been promoted and swallowed again. In reality only 8-10% of railroad route miles were built with the aid of land grants (US-GLO 1942 and Haney, A Congressional History of Railways in the United States -1910)...a lot of the problems with proving and verification of occupation and construction had more to do with the problems with the US-GLO beaurocrats that the Surveyor General could not control and railroads trying to keep options open when $$$ got tight (CB&Q in western Colorado with the "Colorado Railway" comes to mind).....and back to square one - The country got one heck of a payback on its cheap investment.