USA > Arizona > Arizona, prehistoric, aboriginal, pioneer, modern; the nation's youngest commonwealth within a land of ancient culture, Vol. I > Part 40
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LIVERY AND ED STABLE
PROSPECTORS READY FOR THE HILLS
COPPER MINES AT METCALFE
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engineer tied down the whistle valve and used all the steam he had in celebrating the advent of the iron horse into a new territory. The garrison woke up and the railroad men were forced to steam back to the California side and even to open the drawbridge that their exploit might not be repeated.
Construction eastward was resumed November 19, 1878. At Casa Grande, reached May 19th, work was held up during the hot season of 1879. The track reached Tucson March 17, 1880, with passenger service starting a few days later. The New Mexican line was reached September 15, 1880, with a gross construc- tion cost across Arizona of $30,813,390.
Maricopa then was about four miles west of the present Phoenix junction point. They called it Maricopaville in 1879 and it afforded coast real-estate speculators a chance for what might have been called prophetic investment. At least one special train was run from San Francisco for the convenience of invest- ors, who were supplied with great maps of the Southwest on which Maricopaville was in the red center of a spiderweb-like tracery of railroads that ran to every point of the compass. Particularly remembered was a road than ran, contemptu- ous of the Grand Canon, straight through from Salt Lake to Guaymas on the Gulf of California. Till about June, 1879, Maricopa had a population of several thousand. Today, called Heaton Switch, it is hardly a whistling post, for in the summer of 1887 its railroad offices were moved, together with the name, to the present junction point.
The story how Tucson celebrated the occasion is told in another chapter. Construction from Tucson proceeded without intermission until the track reached El Paso, in May, 1881. Beyond Tucson the Southern Pacific developed several important junction points, such as Benson, Cochise and Bowie, but only Willcox became a town of any size. As far as San Pedro the line has been an expensive one to maintain, damage by flood in the fall of 1887 alone, in the Cienega section, causing a loss of over $1,000,000. The "desert" sections were easy to grade and there were some wonderful tracklaying records, of a dozen or more miles in a day. But pioneer Arizonans, remembering the stage coach, considered with patience all such reasons for delay in travel. The Southern Pacific tried to absorb the Scott land subsidy, but failed.
THE SANTA FE AND ATLANTIC & PACIFIC
The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé Railroad Company first was chartered in 1859 as the Atchison & Topeka Railroad Company, within Kansas, its name being changed to its present form four years later. Work was first begun in 1869 on the line from Topeka west. The present incorporation was in Kansas, December 12, 1895, for a term of 999 years. The original line only intended to build into the coal fields of Kansas, but stretched gradually westward along the old Santa Fé Trail, with various branches within the plains country.
The Atlantic & Pacific Railroad Company was organized in 1867, but for years did nothing more than run a number of surveys westerly from New Mexico. In 1879 there was a reorganization, with new surveys from Albu- querque, New Mexico, headed for deep water at Guaymas, Sonora. Preliminary lines also were run toward Yuma and Topock, for possible crossings of the Colorado River, with San Diego, California, as the objective point. The line along the thirty-fifth parallel finally was adopted and a definite location survey
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was started back from Topock, below Needles, in 1880. About the same time construction work was begun at Albuquerque. Tracklaying commenced in 1882 and reached the Colorado River in May, 1883, though the road was not completed till August. Paralleling the 393 miles in Arizona was a land-grant strip of 10,058,240 acres, taken in alternate sections.
The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Company contested with the Southern Pacific its entry into El Paso within the same month of 1881. For years the best eastern connection for Southern Arizona was by transfer to the Santa Fé at Deming. From that point the Santa Fe had planned a road to deep water at Guaymas, but a favorable traffic agreement made with the Southern Pacific induced the building of the Sonora road from Benson in 1882.
The building of the Atlantic & Pacific through Arizona was a task of largest degree of difficulty, with contractors' grading camps strung along the survey for several hundred miles of work prosecuted at the same time. For the central division supplies had to be freighted by wagon from Maricopa, even 300 miles away. Only in one feature was the construction favored-a-plenty of timber for ties was at hand along the mountain sections. Water was almost lacking in the same forested area, till storage reservoirs had been provided. Maximum grades had to be surmounted. Yet the original location has been demonstrated about the best that could have been found and in late years has been changed only slightly in the course of double-tracking.
While the Atlantic & Pacific was working through Arizona, the Southern Pacific was stealing a march by building eastward from Mojave in California to Needles, on the Colorado River, occupying a route that the Santa Fé itself had expected to take. There was the customary railroad compromise. The Atlantic & Pacific took a lease on the unwelcomed line and secured trackage rights over the Southern Pacific from Mojave through Tehachapi Pass to Bakers- field, from which point it continued on to San Francisco, part of the way using the San Joaquin Valley road, which was purchased from San Francisco capi- talists. Southward from Barstow, the Atlantic & Pacific built first to San Diego and National City by way of Cajon Pass, San Bernardino and Temecula Cañon, later extending from San Bernardino and Orange to Los Angeles.
The Atlantic & Pacific was a corporation entirely distinct from the main line of the Santa Fe, which continued from Albuquerque southward to El Paso and Deming. In later years, following completion of the side line to Phoenix, there was a strong probability that the Atlantic & Pacific would fall into the hands of the St. Louis & San Francisco System. So Maj. G. W. Vaughn was sent out to scout eastward from Phoenix for a connection with the Santa Fé near Silver City. He reported a feasible route up the Gila with low grades. This would have been utilized, but the Frisco System later permitted the Atlantic & Pacific to be absorbed by the Santa Fé.
EARLY ARIZONA RAILWAYS
About the time the Santa Fé got to Flagstaff, there had been organized a company to build the Arizona Mineral Belt Railroad, later known as the Arizona Central. It had an ambitious idea, nothing less than the tapping of the great mining camp of Globe, about 160 miles to the southward, through the Mogollon forest and Tonto Basin. Involved was a tremendous engineering problem, in
John G. Capron
Clark B. Stocking
MEN OF THE SOUTHERN ROAD
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getting down the 2,000-foot rim of the Mogollons. Construction was begun in 1881, in charge being Colonel Eddy, later of the unique Angel's Flight Road of Los Angeles. Associated with him as manager was Gen. A. A. MeDonald, also manager of the Buffalo Mining Company of Globe. Thirty-five miles of railroad was built and a tunnel was dug east of Pine, near the rim. There had been an agreement with President Strong of the Atlantic & Pacific that he would provide $5,000 a mile, but thereafter the Atlantic & Pacific practically failed. Then, December 4, 1888, the Mineral Belt was sold at sheriff's sale on execution of labor liens for $44,000, and was bought by Riordan & Hinckley for a logging road. A part of the old line still is in use for the hauling of logs to the Flagstaff mills of the Arizona Lumber & Timber Company.
The Maricopa & Phoenix Railroad was completed into Phoenix July 4, 1887, at a cost of $540,000. Construction had been favored by a subsidy of $200,000 granted by the County of Maricopa. The company might have lost its subsidy had not its local surveyor, H. R. Patrick, started building the line on his own responsibility. He had heard nothing whatever from his principals at San Francisco and appreciated that the subsidy would run out with the last day of October, 1886, unless work had by that time been done upon the line. So he set a few stakes and threw up about 300 feet of six-inch grade and saved the subsidy by the margin of a day. Though the majority of the stock is under- stood to have been turned over to the Southern Pacific, the line had nominal independence until late in 1903, when it was absorbed by the Southern Pacific. Still later it became a part of the Arizona Eastern Railroad Company, a South- ern Pacific subsidiary organization, to which also were turned over the Globe and Cochise-Pearce lines. Its first extension, in May, 1895, was from Tempe to Mesa. Another, in 1911, was to Chandler. In April, 1907, the Phoenix & Eastern extension of the Santa Fé in the course of a main-line "deal" was taken from the Santa Fé, Prescott & Phoenix System of the Santa Fé and attached to the Arizona Eastern, giving it a 100-mile eastern branch up the Gila River to Winkelman with nine miles of trackage later added to a point near Christmas. The Plicnix-Christmas section has its most important feeder in a seven-mile broad-gauge from Kelvin to Ray. A narrow-gauge line was built in 1915 from the Arizona Eastern to Superior. A forty-five-mile extension, built westward to a point on the Hassayampa River near Arlington, passes Liberty and Buckeye and is to be extended on to Yuma.
The Santa Fé, Prescott & Phoenix system of railroad lines, now providing traffic facilities for about all of Arizona between Ash Fork and Phonix, had its start in a need for cheaper transportation for the freight of the Congress mine, then owned by "Diamond Jo" Reynolds, of St. Louis, whose Arizona representative was Frank M. Murphy, of Prescott. There was much prelimi- nary work, mueh of it political in character. A subsidy voted the proposed line was vetoed by President Harrison, but the Legislature substituted a twenty-year exemption from taxation. Reynolds died, but Murphy went ahead just the same, plucky and undismayed whenever financial or legislative obstacles inter- vened. Showing that the proposed line would control the traffic of Central Arizona, he secured the support of high officials of the Santa Fé system, with D. B. Robinson of their number serving as first president of his new corporation. Murphy, who had started in Prescott as a salesman in a store, soon showed rare
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ability as a financier and early secured the co-operation of such men as Phil Armour, N. K. Fairbank, Norman B. Ream and Boise Penrose, as well as of the great Detroit firm of Bowen & Ferry, which already had large property interests in the Salt River Valley.
Organization of the Santa Fé, Prescott & Phoenix Railway Company was effected in May, 1891. An offer was made for the Bullock road to Prescott and was refused. So, January 22, 1892, construction was begun at Ash Fork. Pres- cott was reached in April, 1893, and Phoenix in March, 1895, by way of Congress and Wickenburg. Phoenix welcomed with large enthusiasm the coming of the Santa Fé branch and the reception of a party of visiting railroad magnates was the more notable by reason of a speech by Thomas Fitch, who, fifteen years before, oratorically had welcomed the arrival of the iron horse in Tucson.
CONFLICTING RAILROAD INTERESTS
Construction of the Phoenix & Eastern Railroad was begun near Phoenix in February, 1902. The line was an extension of the Santa Fé system, intended, as was later developed, to furnish a through connection with El Paso. An- nouncement at first was made that the road was to run only to Benson, there to make a Southern Arizona and Sonora connection. The line had been built through Tempe, Mesa and Florence, about as far as Kelvin on the Gila, when trouble materialized with the Southern Pacific system. The Santa Fé had switched its grade to the northern side of the river, thus indicating that it intended to follow the line of the Vaughn survey up through the Gila canons to a connection with its own line at Sweetwater, New Mexico. Epes Randolph, representing the Southern Pacific, already had organized the Arizona Eastern Railroad Company. With only an hour or so between the filing of his survey and that of the new route of the Santa Fe, he sent a large force of men iuto the Gila Valley and vigorously commenced the building of a grade east of Kel- vin. The two opposing railroad forces even came to blows and, naturally, much litigation followed.
After many moves in the game of finance that controls all railroad con- struction and that allots each road its field, the Southern Pacific won. It took possession of the Phoenix & Eastern from Phoenix to Kelviu May 1, 1907, and added the road to its Arizona Eastern system. There had been a general squar- ing of railroad accounts in the Southwest, all starting in a row over the pos- session of a road in Northwestern California. When negotiations had been completed, the road in dispute, near Eureka, came under joint management. The Mojave-Needles road passed to the Santa Fé, while the Santa Fé turned over to the Southern Pacific all its rights to the New Mexico and Arizona line between Benson and Nogales and the Sonora Railroad between Nogales and Guaymas, there being established some sort of "gentleman's agreement" con- fining for a time the spheres of action of the two competing systems within Arizona.
Randolph, who came to the Southwest for his health, yet as the personal representative of President Harriman of the Southern Pacific, has done great things in a railroad way since he came and has planned things even greater. Among the latter is completion of the Gila Cañon cut-off to San Carlos and the building of several links that would give the Southern Pacific a duplicate line
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through Arizona, practically following the Gila River from its mouth at Yuma to its headwaters in Southwestern New Mexico, near Deming. This road, which would have no gradient higher than one-half of 1 per cent, would at the same time be somewhat shorter than the present line to the southward. The cost of its construction would be very large, however, and so the project still is in abeyance. He has planned also the building of a line from Durango into Arizona, to a connection near Globe with the Arizona Eastern. This route would pass through three coal fields, in Colorado, Northwestern New Mexico and Northeastern Arizona, and also would provide, through Phoenix, with the Gila Cañon extension, the shortest transportation line between Denver and Los Angeles. The project went as far as the preparation of working plans upon which contractors could bid.
The Gila Valley, Globe & Northern Railroad was completed through to Globe in December, 1899, from Bowie Station, a distance of 124 miles. No railroad ever found a greater need for its service, for the camp had practically closed down awaiting development of cheaper transportation facilities. An interesting feature was the diplomatic manner by which a right-of-way through the San Carlos Indian Reservation was secured. The road was held up a while until this could be accomplished. The Federal authorities were willing enough, but gave the Indians to understand that the final decision rested with them. After a few months of maneuvering, a grand powwow was held at the railroad's expense. At this an agreement was made that the Indians should be given $8,000, to be divided in silver. So a check for the amount was handed by President Garland to Lieutenant Rice, who superintended the final division of the subsidy. The railroad later was extended to Miami, after absorption into the Arizona Eastern system.
NORTHERN ARIZONA CONSTRUCTION
The Santa Fé & Grand Canon railroad line, built early in 1900, had its inception in a desire to furnish transportation to copper mines a few miles from the Grand Canon rim. These mines had been sold by W. O. O'Neill of Prescott to the Chicago firm of Lombard, Goode & Co. It was later demonstrated that while much copper could be found in the limestone capping, there really had been developed no continuous ledges or deposits. Yet so confident were the promoters that a blast furnace was erected on the eastern edge of Williams, though never operated. There were plans for the erection of a hotel at the end of the sixty-five mile road at the head of Bright Angel trail, where the great El Tovar Hotel later was built, and it was planned that water power would be secured by the fall of Indian Garden Creek, three miles below. The junction point was placed at Williams for the reason that a substantial cash subsidy thus was secured, though a strong competitor was Flagstaff, which there- tofore had enjoyed practically all the Grand Cañon traffic, taken through the forest to the northward by means of six-horse coaches, some of them double- decked. The railroad was not a financial success. Its best promoter, O'Neill, was killed in the Spanish war. The line went into a receivership and finally was pur- chased by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé system. Today practically all of its income is from tourist business and it is told that, save as a matter of advertisement, its operation is at a loss.
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The Arizona & Utah Railroad was completed into Chloride about July 4, 1899. On account of the heat, it is told, white labor could hardly be secured for the work of grading and track laying and so most of the line was built with the labor of Mojave Indians. It has passed through the usual course of failure and has been absorbed by the Santa Fé.
The first feeder 'of the S. F., P. & P. was a 26-mile narrow-gauge, built by W. A. Clark to Jerome. The Prescott and Eastern branch was finished in 1898, the Bradshaw Mountain road to Poland in April, 1902, and to Crown King in April, 1904.
In March, 1904, construction was begun on the Arizona & California Rail- road, from a point five miles north of Wickenburg, westward to Parker and to connection with the main line at Cadiz. Through traffic was inaugurated July 1, 1910, a couple of weeks after the road had been built through to Cadiz on the main line. Just above Parker, the Santa Fé had erected what was then con- sidered the finest bridge on the Pacific slope, a quarter of a mile long, spanning the muddy Colorado, at a cost of $1,000,000. The bridge rises seventy feet above the ordinary river level, while its piers in some places were sunk 110 feet below. In the same year was built a branch from Bouse to Swansea.
The Verde Valley Railroad, a Santa Fe line, was completed in October, 1912, giving broad-gauge transportation to the new smelter town of Clark- dale. The road is one of remarkable scenic attractions, built down the cañon of the upper Verde.
January 1, 1912, in Los Angeles, the Pacific Coast representatives of the Santa Fé system organized the California, Arizona & Santa Fé Railroad Com- pany, a $50,000,000 incorporation, for the acquirement of all subsidiary Santa Fé lines in the Southwest. Later the headquarters of the Santa Fe, Prescott and Phonix system were moved from Prescott to Los Angeles.
RAILROAD EXTENSIONS IN THE SOUTH
The Cananea, Yaqui River & Pacific Railroad was the lengthy title first adopted for the Southern Pacific branch running southward from Cochise Station to Pearce and Courtland, for the line at first was intended to be con- tinued on into Mexico.
The Greene Consolidated Copper Company's railroad from Naco to Cananea, in May, 1902, was sold to the Southern Pacific Company for $1,000,000. A second railroad connection with Cananea was made in the last days of 1908, when Gov. Luis Torres of Sonora drove a silver spike that marked completion of a broad-gauge Southern Pacific line between Nogales, Sonora, and Del Rio Junction on the Naco-Cananea road.
In 1904 the Imperial Copper Company connected its smelter at Sasco and its mines at Silver Bell with the Southern Pacific station of Red Rock by means of a broad-gauge railroad.
The Johnson, Dragoon & Northern Railroad, a nine-mile road out of Dragoon Station, was absorbed by the Southern Pacific in December, 1911.
Tucson, on May 5, 1910, celebrated alike a Mexican holiday and the opening of Mexican west-coast railroad service, in the completion of the Southern Pacific branch through Tucson and Nogales. It happened that the road really didn't stand traffic at that time and the Mexican visitors had to come around by
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Benson. It was an international sort of celebration, among those present, greeted by Governor Sloan of Arizona, being Governor Torres of Sonora and Governor Redo of Sinaloa. The school children were much in evidence and there was a parade from which local Mexicans shouted greetings to the southern visitors, who replied in congratulatory tone to addresses of felicitation, made in the evening at a banquet, whereat Bill Greene delivered a two-hour speech, finished at 2:30 a. m.
A railroad was built by the Southern Pacific to the Laguna damsite, under contract with the Reclamation Service and another line was constructed south- ward from Yuma late in 1914.
GROWTH OF THE SOUTHWESTERN SYSTEM
When the mines of Bisbee reached the producing stage, all freight had to be hauled from Benson up the San Pedro Valley. In 1883 the Sonora Rail- road was completed past Fairbank, which became the station for Bisbee, freight being hauled over the mountain at a cost of $7 a ton. A heavy traction engine was tried for a while, but bogged down in the valleys. The Copper Queen Company, rejecting plans for a narrow-gauge road across the mountain, com- pleted, in 1889, a broad-gauge around the hills from Fairbank, thirty-seven miles long, lightly built, though costing much more than a $200,000 estimate. It was profitable, however, for the transportation cost was only one-sixth of the former charge. It is told that Dr. James Douglas called on President Nickerson of the Santa Fé to urge an extension of the road, then built to Deming, down through Bisbee and thence into Sonora. Nickerson is said to have treated the suggestion with indifference, preferring the Benson line for the New Mexico & Arizona Railroad, which proved unprofitable from the start.
The Copper Queen line from Fairbank was incorporated under the name of the Arizona & Southeastern. It was extended later to Benson, a distance of less than twenty miles, to cut out Santa Fé freight charges. The next extension, early in 1901, was to Douglas, it having been determined to place the Copper Queen reduction works at that point on the border. Subsequently the system was rechristened, given the name of the El Paso & Southwestern Railroad Com- pany and was extended still farther, late in 1902, 217 miles to El Paso, in order to reach a competitive point and retain the profits of transportation to as large a degree as possible. About this same time were built branches to Deming and Lordsburg and to Nacozari, Sonora. At the latter point were rich mines owned by the Phelps-Dodge syndicate. Still later were built the branches from Fairbank to Tombstone and from Donglas to Courtland, both designed as ore feeders to the Douglas reduction works. The El Paso & Northwestern Railroad system, with 452 miles of trackage, was purchased by the El Paso & Southwestern Railroad in May, 1905, for about $20,000,000.
There had been consideration of an alternative route westward down the San Pedro Valley, tapping the rich Mammoth, Winkelman and Ray copper min- ing sections, but that via Tucson finally was preferred, from Fairbank parallel- ing the Southern Pacific. Tucson was reached in November, 1912, the road received with great rejoicing. A subsidy of $60,000, collected among the busi- ness men of the city to provide station and yard grounds, generously was returned to the community by the railroad corporation, with the suggestion from Presi- Vol. 1-20
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dent Walter Douglas that the funds be devoted to a building for the Young Men's Christian Association. This was done. Lately has been added a branch to Fort Huachuca.
In 1914 was incorporated the Tucson, Phoenix & Tidewater Railroad, with James Douglas, former manager of the Nacozari Railroad and brother of Walter Douglas, at its head. This company has made several surveys through to Phoenix, where it has spent a large sum of money in the purchase of terminal grounds. While it is stated that the corporation has no connection with the El Paso & Southwestern, there is expectation that its line will be used in event of a Rock Island-Southwestern extension to a Santa Fé connection or to the coast.
ARBUCKLE AND THE "BABY-GAUGE"
The first mining railroad built in Arizona was the 20-inch "baby-gauge," mule-operated, from the Leszynsky copper furnaces at Clifton to the Longfellow mine. Its first locomotive, "Little Emma," which weighed only about four tons, was freighted, in 1880, overland from the Santa Fé terminal at La Junta, a distance of about seven hundred miles, through Santa Fé and Mesilla. The machinery was put together at Clifton by Henry Arbuckle, who had been a railroad engineer back in the States. It is said that the gambling element laid odds that the queer contraption would not run. Run it did, with its throttle pulled for many years thereafter by Arbuckle, who became affectionately known in the district as "Dad." His train consisted of the ordinary steel-hopper mine cars, the ore dumped at a high trestle above the old smelter and loaded at the Longfellow incline or, after the extension of the road, at Metcalf or Coronado, farther up the canon. His train crew was wholly Mexican, a queer lot of rail- roaders, usually wearing the large, high-crown straw hat of their native land. There was reckless scrambling over the ore-piled cars to set the hand brakes on the downward journey, which was made with the locomotive running free in the rear. Motive power was necessary only on the up-grade, with empties. Not once but many times Arbuckle and his crew were fired on by Apaches, both arrows and bullets striking the cab and the sides of the cars. On one occasion the Indians deployed both in front of and behind the train and thought themselves sure of its capture. But Fireman Pancho Membrila threw a few extra sticks of dry mesquite into the fire box, Arbuckle pulled the throttle out to its limit and the enginemen flung themselves over the short tender into the protection of the first ore car, while the locomotive tore through the attack- ing force. Arbuckle retired finally, after more than a score of years of service and died, at the age of 73, in the fall of 1909, at a new home he had established in Los Angeles.
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