USA > Colorado > History of the State of Colorado, Vol. I > Part 42
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Pacific. He returned via Panama, and next appeared as an engineer of construction on the Union Pacific, where he remained until its completion to Promontory, when he came to Denver and was appointed chief of construction on the Denver Pacific.
A special train had gone down from Denver, and another came up from Carson, each loaded with passengers eagerly interested in the final consummation of the second grand artery of the future, and anxious to witness the exciting rivalry between the tracklayers. These trains arrived in Denver at 6:45 that evening.
This, indeed, proved to be the inauguration of a new era of progress in the development of the country from the heterogeneous to the homogeneous. Henceforth the progress of Denver was to be more prominently identified with the progress of the entire Terri- tory. Here all doubts ended, the veil of uncertainty was lifted, and the promise of a golden future assured. It was the impelling force in the creation of the magnificent railway center since established. How much the struggling communities around us needed the assistance of these potential agencies in their efforts to build a powerful common- wealth, none save those who passed the trials of the first decade can rightly estimate. They had long been promised the light of a brilliant dawning, but the hope had been so often deferred and so often well nigh extinguished, there were times when it seemed impossible of realization. General Dodge had said the town of Denver in a few years would be a deserted village, the grass growing in its streets, and only abandoned buildings left to indicate its fate. When he became interested in the Carter-Loveland road from the Union Pacific to Golden, lie declared that that town was to be the metropolis of Colorado. Never wholly friendly to this city, he appears to have employed his influence with the Union Pacific directors in opposition to the measures instituted for the construction of the Denver Pacific road. But neither he nor his associates had properly measured the latent power of the men who had undertaken this enterprise. They were not of the caliber to be easily dismayed by threats or shaken from
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their purposes by trials and disappointments. They might, had the worst come, have built and equipped the line from their private means. It might have strained but it would not have exhausted their resources. They proved themselves strong enough to secure congres- sional legislation, which, supplemented by the county bonds and indi- vidual subscriptions, gave them ample means for the accomplishment of their ends. Though it cost the county half a million and the citi- zens two hundred and fifty thousand, the entire amount was quickly repaid by the immediate augmentation of business, the steady advance in property values, and the added thousands of people who crowded in to share the bounties provided. None but the men who passed through the dark and despairing days when everything appeared to work disaster and to threaten annihilation, can realize the state of public feeling. Colorado seemed to be cut off and set aside as a barren region not worth saving. Nothing but the energy and faith of men like Evans, Moffat, Johnson, Hughes, Pierce, Cheesman, Clayton, Salomon, and the sturdy spirits who clustered about them in the Board of Trade, saved us from serious retrogression. The work they performed, the gigantic obstacles they overcame, and the indom- itable perseverance they exhibited in the plan of salvation, rescued Denver from great peril. Though they were unable to secure the transcontinental road, they built the branch, and, moreover, forced the Kansas Pacific to make this city its western terminus, thereby securing . the advantage of a trunk line to Kansas City and St. Louis, and connection via the Denver Pacific with Omaha, Salt Lake and Cali- fornia. Indeed, the Kansas road proved the more important of the two, for it opened sources of supply from the rich corn, hay and grain fields of that State which filled our wants until our own farmers were prepared by increase of numbers and a more widely cultivated area to meet the deficiency of agricultural products. We had little or no trade with the West, no marked identity of interest with that region, our only commerce for some years after the road opened being in the line of domestic fruits.
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The problem of our destiny began to reach its solution imme- diately after, and as a direct consequence of the building of the Kansas Pacific. It became, with the branch to Cheyenne, which it subse- quently absorbed, the focal point of many other lines that followed in rapid succession. Our people, now thoroughly reassured, entered upon the work before them, strong and self-reliant. Real estate, which had had no stable value before, soon became the center of speculative interest. Vast schemes of internal improvement were projected. Now that capital could be brought in comfortable cars instead of joint- racking stages, it came in generous quantities. The town, already noted as a sanitarium, attracted scores of wealthy invalids. Lots and lands that had been considered comparatively valueless, since they could neither be sold, nor used as collateral for loans, or as a basis of credit, became prominent factors in the fast accumulating wealth. The straggling, scattered city began to put on airs and to give signs of a wonderful development. Ground that had been taken in payment of small debts at the grocery or drygoods stores, in lieu of the cash which the owners could not raise, began to advance, then to double, and finally to quadruple in value. Men who had been compelled to econ- omize in all directions to meet their taxes upon real estate, loaded upon them against their will, suddenly began to realize that the bur- den was likely to enrich them. Speculators floated in, opened real estate offices, and hung out attractive signs with the legend of " Money to loan" emblazoned upon them in gold letters. Outlying lands susceptible of irrigation, were picked up and measures taken to bring them under cultivation. From that time to the present there has been a constantly increasing anxiety to secure landed property, with a steady increase of value. Some of the lots on the principal business streets, that were bought for a few dollars in the early days, are to-day worth tens of thousands. The two on Larimer street occupied by the Cole block, purchased, one for thirty-five cents, the other for forty cents, are now worth not far from seventy thousand dollars. Some of our millionaires of 1889, made so largely by their acquisitions of real
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estate in the ante-railway period, were in 1865-66, and even as late as 1870, among the incessant growlers about taxes. A tract of eighty acres lying just southeast of the cemetery on the Hill, which the author purchased for five hundred dollars in 1870, sold since the writ- ing of this chapter began, for eighty thousand dollars, and has been converted into one of the numerous " additions" to the city. It is per- haps useless to add that I had no share in this enormous advance, else this history would not have been written.
The tract known as Capitol Hill, pre-empted from the govern- ment by Henry C. Brown at one dollar and a quarter an acre, and which until about the year 1878, no one would occupy as a place of res- idence, is now densely populated and worth uncounted millions. The same is true of the Baxter B. Stiles homestead and adjoining tracts, in the northern division of the city. Old residents remember when his little white house stood all alone on the open prairie, which few thought of visiting except in a carriage, owing to its remoteness from town. It is now at the corner of Twenty-first and Champa streets and the site occupied by Willard Teller. These few illustrations will indicate to the modern reader something of the changes that have taken place since the first locomotive shrieked its entry into Denver.
At the close of 1870 the sales of real estate reported for the year aggregated seven hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars; the value of buildings erected in the same period was five hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars. The volume of trade roughly approxi- mated by the newspaper statisticians with the favorable coloring usually given such estimates, amounted to nine millions and ninety thousand, and the total of manufactures to eight hundred and twenty-five thou- sand. The population of the city, taken from the official census of the year was four thousand seven hundred and fifty-nine, but the acquisi- tions brought in by the railroads after the census account had been closed, justified the claim of five thousand. The total business of 1870 was undoubtedly, about one hundred per cent. greater than that of 1869.
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The First National bank, with a capital of $200,000, showed a total deposit of $674,944; cash on hand, including bonds and exchange, $754,009.46; a surplus of $98,756.46, and gross footing of $1,153,700.46.
The Colorado National bank, with a capital of $100,000, showed deposits amounting to $478,165.47 ; cash, including bonds and exchange, $450,578.64 ; a surplus of $20,000 and a total footing of $691,535.07.
Such was the state of affairs, briefly epitomized, at the end of our first half-year's experience under the beneficent aid of railways. As we have seen, both roads were compelled to fight their way through combinations of every sort calculated to harass and delay, while the people found themselves in much the same predicament as the fellow who had the bull by the tail, neither daring to hold on nor to let go for fear of worse disasters.
A series of excursions from St. Louis, Kansas City and other points followed, when hundreds who had heard of Colorado as a settle- ment on the wild Western frontier, peopled by rough riders, hunters, trappers and miners scarcely less civilized than the untutored savage, began to pour in to witness this romantic spot whence the ancestors of some of the tourists representing " first families" had years before the Pike's Peak epoch, gathered wondrous harvests of beaver skins and other peltries, and where lay the beginning of their fortunes. The Denver theater on the corner of Lawrence and Sixteenth streets, long closed for the want of patronage, re-opened under radiant auspices. The alert and enterprising Mongolians came in from the Pacific, timidly and in small groups at first, but finding their entry and residence unopposed, finally by scores and hundreds, to open laundries, and to engage in gold mining in the gulches and placers abandoned by white labor because too lean to be worthy their attention. Gambling houses, dance houses, saloons and concomitant evils which had been measurably suppressed since 1865, partly by law but chiefly as the result of hard times, multiplied in corresponding ratio to the increase of prosperity.
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The first through Pullman palace car from Chicago to Denver via Kansas City, arrived October 7th, 1870, and was named "Comanche." It was the first of the luxurious and altogether admirable additions to the pleasures of railway travel that many of our people had ever seen, hence it attracted much attention.
The schedule of freight tariffs via Omaha, Leavenworth & Kansas City to Denver, published December 15th, 1870, ran as follows :
Merchandise, first-class, $2.60 per 100 pounds; second class, $2.00 ; third class, $1.75 ; fourth class, $1.40.
The Colorado Central railroad, graded by the people of Jefferson County, ironed and equipped by the Union Pacific Company, was com- pleted to Golden City and opened to traffic on the 23d of September, 1870. Thereafter the stage lines plying between this city and the mines at Black Hawk, Central City and Georgetown transferred their head- quarters to the terminus of the road at the base of the mountains.
The Denver & Boulder Valley Railroad Company was organ- ized in October, 1870, with a capital stock of one million dollars. The trustees were John Evans, J. B. Chaffee, D. H. Moffat, Jr., W. S. Cheesman, P. M. Housel, Granville Berkley and W. J. Palmer. Mr. Chaffee was elected President ; W. S. Cheesman, Vice-President ; R. R. McCormick, Secretary, and D. H. Moffat, Jr., Treasurer.
Mortgage bonds to the amount of three hundred thousand dollars, bearing seven per cent. interest, were issued and guaranteed by the Den- ver Pacific, from the sale of which funds were derived for the construc- tion of the road. Work began on the 24th of October in the year named, and the road was completed to the Erie coal fields in Boulder County on the 24th of January following, R. E. Carr and D. H. Mof- fat being the contractors. The line was fifteen miles in length, extend- ing from Hughes station on the Denver Pacific, and actually a branch of that road. It was built to open the very extensive and excellent coal beds existing at the point named, that the roads and the city might be supplied with cheap fuel. For this purpose the Boulder Valley Coal Company was organized, and the town of Erie laid out. Lots were
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sold to the miners at low prices and on liberal terms to induce perma- nent settlement and thereby lessen the danger of strikes. Thus another artery of commerce which has developed into one of the more impor- tant of the series was added to the embryotic system.
The Denver & Rio Grande Railway Company was organized in Denver in October, 1870, articles of incorporation having been filed on the 27th of that month, bearing the names of only three corporators -- W. J. Palmer, A. C. Hunt and W. H. Greenwood. The Board of Directors comprised W. J. Palmer and A. C. Hunt of Colorado ; R. H. Lamborn of Philadelphia ; W. P. Millen of New York, and Thomas J. Wood of Ohio.
These directors or trustees elected Palmer President, Lamborn Vice-President, and Howard Schuyler Secretary and Treasurer. Gen. Sam E. Browne was made Solicitor, W. H. Greenwood Manager of Construction, and J. P. Mersereau Chief Engineer.
The capital stock was placed at fourteen millions. For construction purposes bonds of the company were issued at the rate of ten thousand dollars per mile. The trustees for the bondholders were J. Edgar Thompson, Samuel M. Felton and L. H. Meyer.
The work of building began in March, 1871, by the Union Contract Company. Track laying was inaugurated at the foot of Fifteenth street, Denver, July 27th, 1871. The road crossed the Divide and was completed to Colorado Springs, seventy-six miles, its first terminal, October 2Ist following. The three foot gauge decided upon, was a new and rather daring experiment, for as designed in its ultimate purpose, it was wholly without precedent in the annals of narrow gauge con- struction. While it is true that Palmer and his associates took as their basis of calculation for the route to be pursued in a mountainous region the narrow gauge roads of England, Wales and others operated on the continent of Europe, much attention was given to that constructed from the slate quarries of Festiniog to the quays of Portmadoc in North Wales. But this was a two foot gauge and only thirteen and a half miles in length, built primarily in 1832, and for many years thereafter
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operated as a horse railway. It runs through a rough and rugged coun- try, mountainous and rocky. It was originally laid with light iron rails of only sixteen pounds to the yard. In 1862 locomotives and passenger cars were put on to accommodate the people and the constantly increas- ing traffic, when rails of thirty pounds to the yard were substituted. These wearing out, they were replaced in 1870 by double headed rails of forty-eight and a half pounds to the yard. The passenger coaches being very narrow, the people were seated back to back, with a foot board along the side over the wheels as in the Irish jaunting car. In stormy weather they were protected by canvas sheets drawn to the height of the knees.
It was by no means difficult to discover full information respecting the cost of construction, and operation of the various narrow gauges thus far adopted, for the reason that the war of the gauges had been carried on for more than twenty-five years, the advocates of each giving innumerable facts, figures and arguments in support of their respective systems. The newspapers and magazines were filled with them, and many books and monographs added to the volume. Besides the Festiniog two-foot gauge in Wales, Belgium had one or more of three feet eight, France one of three feet four, India one of four feet, Norway and Sweden one of three feet six, the Mont Cenis tunnel one of three feet seven and a half, and Queensland one of three feet six.
All these experiments had been more or less successful, but nowhere else had so vast a system as the one now projected by Palmer, and for all purposes, been attempted. The cheapness of construction, the ease with which heavy grades and sharp curvatures could be sur- mounted, and the great amount of work each road was capable of executing, seemed to set an example whereby all the more expensive standard roads might, by a reduction of gauge, secure like profitable results. Here, however, as in Europe, the project was fiercely attacked by the old school engineers and builders. The Rio Grande was pronounced impracticable, a wanton waste of capital, a scheme
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that must, perforce, terminate in signal failure. The columns of the press teemed with arguments for and against it, but as in all revo- lutions, it passed through the several grades of ridicule and argument to final adoption-after its practicability had been fully demonstrated.
But the principal source of wonder was how any company of builders possessing sound minds and average intelligence should imperil their honor and the money of innocent investors, by projecting even a narrow gauge railway through a region so utterly barren of settlers and visible resources as that between Denver and El Paso, Texas. Excepting the small village of Littleton, twelve miles away, and a few inhabitants scattered along the Fountaine-qui-bouille, there was nothing to invite nor give promise of traffic for an undertaking of such magnitude, for Pueblo was left out of the calculations. The site of the beautiful Colorado Springs of to-day was then but an open plain, afterward selected for a quiet, peaceful and industrious colony town-when settlers could be persuaded to locate there. The prim- itive town of Colorado City, for a brief period the capital of the Terri- tory, in 1862, had declined until scarcely enough people remained to keep the place alive, and Pueblo was but a straggling village without much hope for the future. There was not an important industry on the route surveyed, and very little apparent material for the creation of enterprises, agricultural or otherwise. Parts of the Divide furnished admirable pasturage for cattle and sheep, and there were a few tracts of timber suitable for ordinary lumber. Still, the idea of building a railroad through such a country for the gains in sight seemed Quixotic to the last extreme. The stage line from Pueblo to Denver carried an average of three passengers daily. The entire system had to be cre- ated, from the grade to the rails, embracing every detail of equipment, and involving plans and specifications for countless new patterns for locomotives, wheels and cars.
The original plan contemplated a line from Denver direct to El Paso, a distance of eight hundred and fifty miles, through a region even more inhospitable and desolate than that just described, prac-
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tically, for the most part, unpeopled and unproductive. Undoubtedly the promoters anticipated a speedy settlement, but this appeared to the casual observer a forlorn hope.
The first rails were laid on the 27th of July, 1871. The event drew together a number of railway men and citizens of Denver, the author among them, all eager to witness the inauguration of the new and novel innovation upon established methods of rapid transit. The first spike was driven by Col. W. H. Greenwood, manager of construction, after which Gen. Sam. E. Browne delivered an address pertinent to the occasion, referring chiefly to the organization of the company and the plans it had formulated, and predicting that when the advantages of the three-foot gauge should be fully defined, all the Western roads would alter their gauges to the new standard-a prophecy that has in no case been verified. Hon. W. A. Pile, ex-Gov- ernor of New Mexico, made a few remarks to the same effect. It was not a very stirring affair, nor were any large crowds present. The objects that attracted most attention were the diminutive cars and locomotives which had been brought from the East to start the road, and were then standing upon the flat cars of the Denver Pacific near at hand. The engines were named respectively the "Tabeguache," " Showano," and "Montezuma," the latter designed for passenger business, the others for freight.
In a short time four other cars, two combination baggage, mail and express, the one named "Denver " and the second "El Paso," arrived. They were thirty-five feet long, seven feet wide, and ten and a half feet high, weighing about fifteen thousand pounds. For the time, they were handsomely decorated and equipped. They were divided into compartments, so to speak, the seats to the center being double on one side and single on the opposite, with like interchange thence to the rear, so as to preserve a proper equilibrium. They were built by the Jackson & Sharp Company of Wilmington, Dela- ware, and by reason of their novelty attracted much attention en route.
When the first train was made up, and while awaiting orders to
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move southward, hundreds of interested spectators were there to enjoy the wonderful novelty. The scene was both amusing and instructive. It resembled, with its tiny locomotive and cars, a toy outfit for children to play with, rather than the beginning of a colossal revolution. Year by year the designs were enlarged and otherwise perfected, until the trains, both freight and passenger, became equal to the immense traffic imposed by the growth of the country. No one then dreamed of the elegant sleepers, luxurious reclining chairs, or the tremendous tonnage since supplied. Like the Territory, it was in its swaddling clothes, and had yet to attain the full strength of robust manhood, before such improvements as are now seen were possible. It is no discredit to the builders of the mountain divisions of the Colorado Central and of the South Park roads to say that their equipments were furnished from the model thus provided, if not directly from the improved patterns.
The first stake in the town site of Colorado Springs was driven July 31st, 1871, in the presence of a number of ladies and gentlemen, who, though deeply interested, could not possibly have foreseen the results to follow. As a foundation for the modest colony to be located there, Palmer interested some of the wealthy stockholders in the pur- chase of a large tract of land opposite the base of Pike's Peak, to include the already famous, though as yet, wholly unimproved mineral springs, and all the available land in their vicinity, which was to be divided into villa sites. They secured ten thousand acres along Mon- ument Creek, on which they proposed to lay out a town to be called Colorado Springs-an absolute misnomer, since it is six miles from any sort of springs. Manitou was originally christened "Villa La Font." Their next plan was to construct a fine carriage road from the colony to the springs, erect a comfortable, not to say a pretentious hotel in the former, and with the ultimate intention of making both places fash- ionable summer resorts. It is possible that in forming visions of the future, they had gathered inspiration from Fitzhugh Ludlow's pro- phetic dream, published in 1868 from notes taken during his first visit
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to this romantic region in 1866-67. Ludlow, as is well known, was a confirmed opium eater, consequently a dreamer, and it may be that in one of the spells cast by the insidious drug, he wrote the following :
"These springs are very highly estimated among the settlers of this region for their virtues in the cure of rheumatism, all cutaneous diseases, and the special class for which the practitioner's sole depend- ence has hitherto been mercury. When Colorado becomes a State, the Springs of the Fountain will constitute its Spa. In air and scenery no more glorious summer residence could be imagined. The Colora- doan of the future, astonishing the echoes of the rocky foothills by a railroad from Denver to the Colorado Springs, and running down on Saturday night to stop over Sunday with his family, will have little cause to envy us Easterners our Saratoga, as he paces up and down the piazza of the Spa hotel mingling his full flavored Havana with that lovely air, quite unbreathed before, which is floating down upon him from the snow peaks of the Range."
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