USA > Colorado > History of Colorado; Volume I > Part 37
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VIEW OF THE CITY OF FORT MORGAN IN 1908
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HISTORY OF COLORADO
Moffat and associates, had begun laying tracks, and before winter the road, approximately fifty-eight miles, with a small equipment, was operating to the crossing of the Platte, at the town which had been given the name of Evans in honor of the president of the Denver Pacific.
ARRIVAL OF FIRST TRAINS IN DENVER
In May, 1870, construction was begun on the southern part of the line under the direction of General Palmer, and the line from the site of the present Union Pacific shops to Evans was completed by June IIth, a notable day in the history of Colorado. The silver spike driven as the concluding act of construction was presented by Georgetown, and was inscribed with the name of that town, to the Denver Pacific, and the name of John Evans, president of the road. The first locomotive, which arrived on that day, was followed, on June 24th, by the first passenger train.
The officers and directors of the Denver Pacific at this time were : President, John Evans; vice president, John Pierce; secretary and auditor, R. R. McCor- mick ; treasurer, David H. Moffat; chief engineer, L. H. Eicholtz. The directors, in addition to these officers, were: Walter S. Cheesman, William M. Clayton, Frank Palmer, of Denver, Robert E. Carr, William J. Palmer, R. H. Lamborn, representing Kansas Pacific interests.
In the meantime the Kansas Pacific was speeding to completion, and on August 15th the first passenger train arrived from Kansas City. A ten-mile stretch had been completed in about ten hours, a rare feat for those early days of railroad building in the Far West.
In April, 1870, Governor Evans in an address to the Board of Trade stated that it had been found impossible to reduce the capitalization from $4,000,000 back to the original $2,000,000, which would have materially enhanced the value of the Arapahoe County bond issue. "The stock," he added, "represented all the value then existing, and it was an absolute necessity that the stock should all be given to secure the prosecution and completion of the work. Even then it was doubtful if it could be made to answer the purpose, for it must either be sold for cash enough, or the assets it represented be made to serve the purpose of borrowing enough money upon, to pay for the entire work. Nothing but cash will build railways."
"I took the contract, therefore, to build the road with the remaining stock. The county bonds in hand, at the best price that could be obtained for them, were barely sufficient to finish the grading and pay the pressing indebtedness already incurred for ties and other material. While the contract was thus pressed upon me, and while there were serious doubts as to the success of our efforts to make the means accomplish the end in view, I held in mental reservation a determination to so manage the matter as to make enough out of the contract to enable me to donate to the county an additional half-million of the capital stock of the road.
"This purpose I did not at first allow myself to express to anyone, for fear of disappointment in making the necessary profit on the contract to enable me to do so, and in my negotiations I found it absolutely necessary to place the half- million capital stock in trust, to be voted in perpetuity, but reserving to myself
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HISTORY OF COLORADO
and my assigns the entire right of property in the same, and all profits and divi- dends arising therefrom.
"I will, therefore, have, to all intents and purposes, the whole intrinsic value of said stock in my possession and ownership as soon as the road shall be com- pleted, and I now for the first time publicly declare, that it is my full purpose and intention to donate the same to Arapahoe County as soon as I shall become entitled to it by compliance with my contract to complete the road to the City of Denver. This I do on the condition that the people shall go forward with the other enterprises so necessary to our prosperity."
STRUGGLE FOR MINING OUTPUT
The Union Pacific had been fairly checkmated in the railroad game in Colo- rado, but it did not acknowledge its defeat for some years. Its directors were still pinning their faith to the project of W. A. H. Loveland, whose untiring efforts to make Golden the metropolis of Colorado, even though unsuccessful, are worthy to rank among the great pioneering efforts of this formative period.
On the part of the Union Pacific it was an effort to secure control of the mine output of Clear Creek, Gilpin, Jefferson, and Boulder counties and, as far as possible, at the expense of the citizens of these counties. Jefferson, Love- land's home county, had voted the Colorado Central $100,000 of bonds, and this enabled Loveland to make some progress on his project. He purposely niade his Denver terminal close to the junction of the Denver Pacific and Kansas Pacific lines on or near the site of the now dismantled Grant smelter. By this move he hoped to divert traffic direct to Golden and away from the growing town of Cherry Creek. As part of this plan he designed a standard gauge connection between his so-called Denver terminal and Golden, but the line up Clear Creek Valley was to be of narrow gauge construction. On September 23, 1870, the standard gauge section had been completed and passenger trains were run. The Union Pacific had finally, when the Denver Pacific was nearing completion, agreed to put down the rails and equip the graded main line of the Colorado Central. Not until 1874 was the route changed to enter the city directly.
In 1871 a total of ninety and three fourths miles of operated road was added to Colorado's transportation system. The Boulder Valley from Hughes to Erie, a distance of fourteen and three-fourths miles, was the first branch of the Denver Pacific. The Denver & Rio Grande, the history of which will follow, had built seventy-six miles between Denver and Colorado Springs, the town then founded by General Palmer. But this section had not been opened until November.
FREIGHT BUSINESS IN 1871
With this added mileage the following exhibit of freight received and for- warded at Denver by all railroads during 1871 is interesting as a study of immediate growth :
Lbs. Received
Lbs. Forwarded
January .
15.724,679
4,368,359
February
13.094,741
2,609,735
March
17,635,44I
2,814,233
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HISTORY OF COLORADO
Lbs. Received
April
18,888,270
Lbs. Forwarded 2,679,688
May
21,397,733
3,577,253
June
19,709,435
3,088,963
July
17,583,666
2,278,44I
August
21,317,435
2,390,689
September
.27,555,105
3,239,696
October
23,769,860
5,853,261
November
23,318,839
3,574,347
*December
14,200,000
2,910,406
At the end of the year 1871 there were in operation within the limits of the state 425 miles of railroad.
The passenger fare between Chicago or St. Louis and Denver was $55; between Denver and Cheyenne, $10; between Denver and Kansas City, $44. Local fares on Colorado roads averaged 10 cents per mile. Freight between Denver and Kansas City or Omaha ranged between 80 cents and $2.80 per hun- dred, according to class. Even at this early period the Union Pacific and Kansas Pacific made uniform rates from Missouri River points to Denver.
There was received at Denver over the Denver Pacific and Kansas Pacific for the first eleven months of 1872, 88,539,710 lbs. of freight as against 62,551,- 690 lbs. for the corresponding period of 1871. The amount of outgoing freight over these two lines for 1871 was 7,031,842 lbs., and 17,833,625 lbs. for 1872.
A few carloads of cattle were shipped east in 1871, just enough to demon- strate that the trade could be made a profitable one, both to the shipper and to the railways. In 1872, 13,878 head of cattle were shipped out of Colorado. To this must be added 31,250 head driven out of the state. The value of live stock exported from Colorado in 1872 was $1,016,980.
THE COLORADO CENTRAL & PACIFIC STARTS BUILDING
In 1870 the clamor of the mining districts was at last heeded and construc- tion work was begun by the Colorado Central along Clear Creek Canon. This was a most difficult engineering task, but the bonus of $250,000 in Gilpin County bonds proved a strong incentive. In 1871 Gilpin had voted $300,000 in bonds provided the road could reach Blackhawk in a year. This was an impossible task, but the second bond offer of $250,000 was approved, yet the road failed to reach Central City in the time stipulated. It, however, reached Blackhawk in December, 1872, and Floyd Hill in March, 1873.
The completion of the four-mile branch from the junction of North and South Clear creeks to the western base of Floyd Hill, the entrance to the valley of South Clear Creek, gave an immediate outlet to the valuable mines of Idaho, Spanish Bar, Georgetown and Empire. In a report issued by the state geologist, J. Alden Smith, in 1883, he thus describes the results that followed the advent of the Colorado Central in the Clear Creek mining camp :
"The necessities of the people following the exhaustion of timber on the mountain sides, were met by cheaper and better fuel brought up from the coal beds of the plains. Golden having by this time become not only an active rail-
* Snow blockade
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HISTORY OF COLORADO
way center, but a strong point for the reduction of ores, competing markets were opened to the miners; and the unsatisfactory returns of the stamp mills, which up to 1868 when the Boston & Colorado Smelting Works became a competitor, were the sole arbiters of the gold product, were supplemented, or rather, for the higher grade of minerals, wholly superseded by the more perfect method of reduction in reverberating and blast furnaces. The change became a revelation to the despondent workers underground, since it brought the promise of sub- stantial gains for the present and future.
"Then began the practical demonstration of the character and value of the fissure veins at great depths, and the smelters were soon enabled to pay higher prices for the grades best adapted to their use, and to multiply their facilities to the extent of the growing demand."
But the Colorado Central, or rather the Union Pacific, had larger plans in mind to meet the last successful move of its rivals. In these years of 1870, 1871 and 1872 money was still plentiful for investment, and in the financial sky there were no portents of the collapse to come in 1873.
Actual standard gauge construction on what was to be the main line of the Colorado Central was begun in 1872 along a survey which extended from Golden as a terminal to Julesburg, by way of the coal fields at Marshall, and by way of Boulder, Longmont and Greeley, thus completely sidetracking Denver. Boulder and Weld counties had voted it $200,000 and $150,000 in bonds, respectively.
When the panic of 1873 broke upon the nation the Colorado Central & Pacific had been completed and was in operation to Longmont. There it remained, for the great eastern sources of investment funds were suddenly dried up. Work also was stopped on the narrow gauge at Floyd Hill.
But the plan to sidetrack Denver, which was ended by the panic, had been followed earlier along a southerly route as well, where a connection between Golden and Littleton on the new Denver & Rio Grande had been completed. This was plainly to divert southern business to Loveland's proposed Colorado metropolis.
The advent of the Colorado Central and the Denver Pacific into the coal fields of Marshall and Erie respectively had an immediate effect in greatly cheapening the price of fuel in Denver, Golden, Boulder, reached on June 1, 1874, by the Denver Pacific, and the other new communities. Prior to the advent of the rail- roads into the coal fields the price per ton of lignite coal, delivered by wagons direct from the field, was $10 to $15 per ton. When the railroads opened the fields the retail price at once went down to $4 and $5 per ton.
It was not until 1877 that the Floyd Hill branch of the Colorado Central was extended to Georgetown. In that year also the coal road from Boulder to the Marshall coal banks, six miles distant, was completed by T. G. Lyster and associates, of Denver. This was known as the Golden, Boulder & Caribou.
In 1878 the gap between Blackhawk and Central City was filled by a switch- back, a remarkable achievement of engineering skill.
In 1881 what was known as the Julesburg cut-off was extended from the Town of Evans on the Denver Pacific, 200 miles down the valley of the South Platte River to a junction with the main line of the Union Pacific at a point about five miles east of the old Julesburg station. This made a line to Omaha seventy miles shorter than via Cheyenne.
344
HISTORY OF COLORADO
But this construction work on the part of the Colorado Central and Union Pacific was by no means a peaceful proceeding. In fact in the history of Colo- rado's railroad wars it is paralleled only by the fight made many years later on the builders of the "Moffat road," and which might almost be called a renewal of that old trouble.
KANSAS PACIFIC IN FINANCIAL STRAITS
The panic had left the Kansas Pacific without the feeders so necessary for its existence. It now began to feel the heavy hand of Union Pacific competition, for with the Colorado Central's extension to Floyd Hill the latter road, or rather the Union Pacific, controlled practically all of the mining trade of the territory.
In March, 1872, when the pinch of future competition was in evidence, Presi- dent John Evans, of the Denver Pacific, resigned and R. E. Carr, executive of the Kansas Pacific, replaced him. Their first move was the incorporation of the Denver, Georgetown & Utah Railway Company, planned to run through Mt. Vernon Cañon to Idaho Springs, Georgetown, and then over the range to Utah. A branch was to be built to Central City. R. E. Carr was president of this company ; John D. Perry, vice president ; R. R. McCormick, secretary ; David H. Moffat, treasurer; with Governor Evans as adviser.
Bond issues were voted by Clear Creek and Arapahoe counties but no bonds were ever issued for the Colorado Central had been aroused to sudden activity by the opposition movement and speedily finished its line to Blackhawk and Floyd Hill as already related.
The Evans-Carr project lapsed for the time being, and the Kansas Pacific, hit hard by the panic and by the failure to establish feeders out of Denver, soon showed signs of distress. In 1873 the company defaulted in the payment of interest on its bonds and was placed in the hands of a receiver.
The Union Pacific directorate now became conciliatory, hoping to secure possession of the Kansas Pacific and Denver Pacific. Its first move along this line was to effect a lease of the Colorado Central to the Kansas Pacific. This was ratified by the Colorado Central at a meeting held in April, 1877, and pre- sided over by Senator Henry M. Teller, who was then president of the road. The Union Pacific, in control, had, however, failed to consider the fighting capacity of the founder of the Colorado Central, W. A. H. Loveland. The con- solidation, or what amounted to such, wiped out much, if not all, of the value in the stocks held by the several bonded counties. This brought the people to the side of Loveland, and on May 21, 1876, they took forcible possession of the road.
The courts were quick to act, as the Union Pacific had suddenly entered the contest with a claim of $1,250,000 for rolling stock and material. Judge A. W. Stone, of the Second Judicial District, appointed David H. Moffat receiver and arranged to qualify him at Boulder on August 15th, the last day of the term. But on the morning of that day the judge was forcibly taken from a train, and hidden in the mountains for three days, and finally brought back to Denver at night none the worse for his adventure. But the governor extended the term of court and the judge then qualified the receiver. Loveland, however, held on by counter court proceedings. In the meantime statehood had been granted, and Love-
345
HISTORY OF COLORADO
land was able to bring the Union Pacific to terms. For two years Loveland con- tinued as president, and in that period the Kansas Pacific was given a last body blow in the construction of the standard gauge line via Fort Collins to a junction with the Union Pacific five miles west of Cheyenne. This marked the beginning of a rate war which was disastrous to all lines and finally ended in an agree- ment by which uniform and higher charges were made.
UNION PACIFIC SECURES CONTROL OF OTHER ROADS
On January 24, 1880, the Union Pacific Railway Company was formed, con- solidating the Union Pacific, the Kansas Pacific and the Denver Pacific railroad companies. By the terms of consolidation the shareholders in each company were to receive shares in the new company corresponding in number to those held in the old, the number of shares of Union Pacific being 367,623; Kansas Pacific, 100,000; Denver Pacific, 40,000; the stock of the consolidated company being 507,623 shares, or $50,762,300. On February 6, 1881, $10,000,000 additional stock was sold at par.
In November, 1879, the Union Pacific leased the Colorado Central for a period of fifty years, and W. A. H. Loveland resigned the presidency.
Poor's Manual, the railroad authority, in its issue in the early '8os has this illuminative reference to the Colorado Central:
"Colorado Central Railroad-Denver to Golden (3 rails), 15.57 miles ; Golden to Wyoming line, 106.37 ; Denver Junction to La Salle, 151.16; Golden to George- town (narrow gauge), 34.23; Forks of Clear creeks to Central City, 11.12 miles ; total, 318.45 miles. The Colorado Central of Wyoming is operated under lease by this company. The company is controlled by the Union Pacific through the ownership of $6,229,000 stock out of a total of $6,230,300, and $4,697,000 first
mortgage bonds out of a total of $4,701,000 *
* * The Julesburg 'cut-off,' Denver Junction to La Salle, was built in 1882 in consequence of the extension of the Burlington & Missouri in Nebraska to Denver."
After all it was a great triumph for Denver, achieved by leaders who saw not alone the big interests but influential men within the state arrayed against its further development into a metropolis, a great railroad center. After 1874 there was no further question of supremacy, for even the building of the Golden- Cheyenne line in 1877, while it injured the Denver Pacific and the Kansas Pacific, aided Denver, for it was to the growing metropolis that the rich sections in the north sent their product. In the end even W. A. H. Loveland, one of the most indomitable spirits of that early period, became a resident of Denver and was influential and helpful in its progress.
In 1873 the Kansas Pacific extended a branch from Kit Carson to a point near the present site of Las Animas. This was to accommodate the traffic at Fort Lyon and Fort Reynolds, and also was intended to mark the inauguration of the long-planned southwestern line. The road was abandoned in 1878.
The Union Pacific has the following new construction record in Colorado since 1910: Sand Creek Junction to St. Vrain, Colorado, 17.45 miles, opened for traffic November 1, 1909; Greeley to Briggsdale, 26.16, opened for traffic May 22, 1910; Cloverly to Hungerford, Colorado, 13.16 miles, opened for traffic May 22, 1910; Dent to Fort Collins, 25.25 miles, opened in 1911.
CHAPTER XVII
TRANSPORTATION-THE DENVER & RIO GRANDE
VISION OF GEN. WILLIAM J. PALMER-PLANS A GREAT SYSTEM IN AN UNDE- VELOPED COUNTRY-FAITH IN ITS GREAT POSSIBILITIES-PREDICTED WITH UNER- RING ACCURACY TOURIST TRAVEL-HOW THE FIGHT FOR THE CANON OF THE AR- KANSAS WAS WON-THE CANON CITY & SAN JUAN RAILROAD ON THE SIDE OF THE SANTA FE-WHAT LEADVILLE MEANT TO THE FIRST RAILROAD TO REACH IT- THE DENVER & RIO GRANDE SELLS OUT TO THE SANTA FE-PALMER MEN TAKING FORCIBLE POSSESSION-SEIZING ROLLING STOCK AND STATIONS-JAY GOULD EN- TERS THE FIELD AND EFFECTS A COMPROMISE- TERMS OF THE AGREEMENT- FIGHT FOR RATON PASS-CONSTRUCTION RECORDS IN COLORADO-THE WESTERN PACIFIC-IN THE HANDS OF RECEIVERS
Gen. William J. Palmer was by far the greatest of the actual railroad builders of Colorado. He had been active in the construction of the Kansas Pacific, and when he came to Denver to smooth out the difficulties with the Denver Pacific, it was found that he was even more than a great engineer, he was a diplomat and statesman as well.
It was with a rare vision that he scanned this great field for railroad oppor- tunities. There were no gold camps, no great trading centers, save perhaps Santa Fé far south in this vision. There were not 500 people between Denver and the straggling village of Pueblo. In Colorado City a few shacks marked the site of what had once been a territorial capital. Colorado Springs and Glen Eyrie, the town and the beautiful home he built later, were in the vision only. At the foot of Pike's Peak the wild vegetation, the pines and spruces and the mountain flowers of the region grew in unmolested grandeur and beauty.
Only a scenic wonderland was here, Cheyenne Cañon, Cheyenne Moun- tain, Seven Falls, which in his vision all the world would come to admire. At these mineral springs he saw the long pilgrimage of succeeding years. There was only beauty in the juncture of the valleys of the Monument Creek and "Fontaine qui Bouille."
General Palmer had toured the territory in the early '6os with a Government surveying party, one of the many Federal efforts to find a transcontinental route. With this knowledge and what he gleaned from many surveys submitted to the Kansas Pacific and Denver Pacific, and with an almost prophetic vision, he mapped out the present Denver & Rio Grande system. For sources of revenue he went to his marvelous faith in what these mountains would give up to the miner's pick, in what the axe would supply in the way of timber, in what the
346
BROADWELL HOUSE BROADWELL HOUSE
1
4
KE
+
.....
THE BROADWELL HOUSE
One of the pioneer hotels in Denver, built in 1860, which stood on the sontheasterly corner of Larimer and Sixteenth streets.
348
HISTORY OF COLORADO
virgin quarries would give of their stones, and in what these vast ranges could feed of cattle, hogs and sheep.
The system as he mapped it out before 1870 has been built, every line save one, and that was a railroad stretching along the valleys of the Grand and the Colorado to San Diego.
In his first annual report to the directors of the Denver & Rio Grande, issued April 1, 1873, General Palmer states that "the idea of a north and south railway following the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains from the principal city of the new West-Denver, southward to Mexico, arose from a conviction that this belt of country had especial advantages in its location, climate and natural re- sources. In the first place it was separated from the boundary line of arable culture on the eastward, in Nebraska, Kansas, the Indian Territory and Texas, by a width of over 400 miles of arid plains, unfit for settlement except in occa- sional valleys, and only capable as yet of supporting a population of nomadic stock raisers. On reaching the foothills of the great chain, however, new con- ditions were found: First, numerous streams of water pouring out upon the plains, and fed by the melting of the mountain snows. The slope being favorable to the distribution of this water over the adjoining land, the result was a fertile agricultural district, capable of raising food for a large population. Although this watered belt was not of great width, yet experience had shown that land cultivated by irrigation will produce much larger crops than the same amount under ordinary culture. Second, the rugged mountains immediately adjoining on the westward had been found, wherever exploited, to contain veins and deposits of silver, gold, lead, copper, iron and other metals. An active population of miners had begun to seize upon these treasurers and they required to be fed from the agricultural produce raised near the foothills. At numerous points along the whole belt named from Denver to El Paso were found extensive deposits of good coal, frequently in connection with iron ore, lime and fire clay. This cir- cumstance and the water power afforded by the rapid fall of the mountain water courses to the plain, pointed out the country as especially fitted for manu- facture." In the next three paragraphs he tells of the vast supply of timber, stone and lime for building purposes, of the grazing possibilities, of the genial climate. "It was plain," he concludes, "that the long distance from all other agricultural districts would cause its farming lands to be rapidly and densely settled, that its coal, iron, water power, timber, wool, hides, etc., would soon create with railroad facilities, a large manufacturing community. Assisted by the natural tariff afforded by the distance of nearly 1,000 miles intervening between these and the nearest known iron deposits on the eastward, and of 500 to 600 miles between these coal mines and those of eastern Kansas; that the manufacturing resources and the working of the mines would afford a reliable home market to the farmer and grazer, that the larger amount of water near the mountains and the shelter afforded by the foothills gave peculiar advantages to this section for raising cattle, horses and sheep; that the climate, scenery and mineral springs would attract also a large number of tourists and invalids ; that the uninterrupted tide of emigration would have to leap across the great plains which begin 200 to 250 miles from the line of the Missouri River, and settle upon this first inhabitable belt westward; and that the six or eight great east and west railway lines crossing or preparing to cross the continent would, from neces-
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