USA > Kansas > Wyandotte County > History of Wyandotte County, Kansas, and its people, Vol. I > Part 50
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For many years this was Kansas City's great railway station, and many thousands of people who passed through on their way to the great west to seek homes and fortune, remember the splendid dinners and suppers and lunches they used to get at the border eating house run by Sam A. Lowe.
The building was one hundred and fifty feet long, sixty feet wide and two stories high. It was entirely of wood. The second story was divided into about sixty apartments, the partitions being made of pine boards.
SLOW TRAINS IN THE SIXTIES.
Many, many years ago, before Kansas had emerged from the horn. ed-toad stage, I. II. Isbell began a thirty-eight year service with the railway mail department. Antelope and a few buffalo still gamboled over the Kansas prairie. Snakes, toads, fabulous sums of gold and silver, bundles of official orders and documents destined for the army posts in the lonely west, love missives and business letters, were often jumbled together in the same mail sack of soiled blue and white. Or perhaps the noisy, important little engine might be stalled, with its load of passengers, for a week or two weeks by a snowstorm. It didn't matter so much then. Travelers in those days never expected to reach their destination on time. As for the mail-well, the railroads didn't have the system of huge fines as a spur then.
That was something of the beginnings of the railway mail service, as Mr. Isbell, now assistant chief clerk of the railway mail service in Kansas City, described it recently. The huge steel mail ears of today, each a complete postoffice in itself, would have left the rails at the first curve then. Generally the mail elerk found himself cooped up in a box-like room in the center of a combination baggage, express, mail and general utility car. On Mr. Isbell's first run on the Santa Fe, from Kansas City to Wichita, he had only forty boxes for letters and a few more for papers. The average mail ear of today has at least nine hundred or a thousand.
Vol. I-30
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IHISTORY OF WYANDOTTE COUNTY
EVERY CLERK A POLITICIAN.
The early day mail clerks always were politicians or men with political influence. Such a thing as civil service was unheard of. A congressman would ask the department to appoint a man, and he would be appointed. His duties immediately became, not only those pertaining to mail distributing, but to boosting for the congressman who had landed for him the fat pluim-the job paid $900 a year, which was considered a munificent sum in those days. If at the stops the mail clerk didn't get an opportunity to shake a few hands and look after the wires of his "friend," he wasn't mueh of a success as a mail clerk. And sometimes he didn't last very long, cither.
A PREACHER-CONDUCTOR'S YARN.
There were unique figures then in the pioneer railway and mail service, as there are "characters" today in every profession. Sam Newhall, one of the early day conductors on the combination train from Wichita to Dodge City, was one of the most interesting. Before be- coming a conductor Newhall was a Methodist minister. And as long as he was in the service, he couldn't reconcile himself to working on Sunday. Two other condnetors divided the Santa Fe run with him. They had just as strong an antipathy for remaining in Dodge City on Sunday as the ex-minister had for punching tickets or collecting fares on the holy day. So it was arranged that Newhall should always have the Sunday layoff in Dodge, while the other conductors should work Sundays and lay off at Kansas City or Newton. And what did Newhall do ? Dodge City then represented about everything in sagebrush wickedness that several dozen of reckless desperadoes-the real artiele, too-could mean. But Newhall started a Sunday school and preached every Sunday for years on his day of rest; and collected fares on week days.
THE FAMOUS MUNCIE HOLDUP.
In every man's life there is something he remembers more dis- tinetly and vividly than anything else. The particularly sharp-ent incident in Mr. Isbell's career as a railway mail clerk was the famous holdup on the Union Pacific at Muncie, Wyandotte county. It was the first Kansas train robbery of any importance.
"And it wasn't our train at all, that the bandit gang intended to rob," Mr. Isbell explained. "The gang-it was generally supposed to be the work of the James boys-had confederates in Denver, who posted them of a shipment of $80.000 in currency to Kansas City. But the confederates were misinformed on the train. The gold and silver
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HISTORY OF WYANDOTTE COUNTY
came to Kansas City safely on the train just ahead of ours. The one on which I was working was held up.
"The train had slowed up at the Muncie crossing. Most of the work was done and I was washing my hands. Just then a voice behind me said . Hands up.'
"Up went my hands without a moment's hesitation. Then the bandit demanded 'have you got any weapons?' 'Only a jackknife,' I replied. I tried to be as unconcerned as I could. 'Are you sure ?' the man repeated, thrusting the gun just a little nearer my head. This time I convinced him I was telling the truth. Just then the express messenger stnek his head through an opening in the partition to see what was the matter. The bandit switched the gun on him. 'Come
in here,' he said. The messenger erawled through the hole so fast his clothes were torn. Then while crew and passengers were lined up out- side the car under guard of two of the gang. the other three searched the mail and express car and dumped their booty in an empty mail sack.
"Just as they were about to leave, a farmer boy rode up on a fine brown mare. In less time than it takes to tell it one of the bandits had switched his saddle to her and had shot his own horse, which was jaded. Then the leader turned and with a wave of his hand shouted: 'Goodby boys; you acted real decent.'
"They obtained something like $30,000 in eurrency by their holdup. I afterward learned that they rode on into town through Armourdale, crossed the river and divided their booty in a thick woods near Westport."
SEVENTEEN DAYS IN A SNOW BANK.
The railway mail clerks, in the pioneer days of the service, were pretty much their own bosses. They were responsible for the routing of the mail. No definite system was laid out then. If the trains were late, they just stuck to them until they arrived at the destination and turned the mail over to the proper authorities. £ Once, in the winter of 1877, when Mr. Isbell was working on the old Kansas Pacifie from Kansas City to Denver, the train was blocked for seventeen days in Colorado by a snow storm.
Fortunately the railroads had stored all the section houses with supplies, just for such an emergency as this. While the passengers spent the weary days as best they could back in the coaches, the express messenger, the baggageman, several members of the crew and myself wore out several decks of cards playing casino. The train got into Kansas City just seventeen days late with that mail.
CURIOUS THINGS IN THE MAIL.
It wasn't a unique experience in the early seventies for the mail clerk to dump a snake, or toad or other trophies of the plains, out of
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HISTORY OF WYANDOTTE COUNTY
the mail saeks. At Kit Carson, across the Colorado line, the trains would pick up the stagecoach mail from New Mexico and Arizona. Often, the plainsmen would wrap up specimens of life on the plains and mail them to friends back east. Almost invariably, Mr. Isbell said, the package would come unwrapped and the snake or toad come rolling out of the sack when the clerk began to redistribute its contents.
The mail clerks then were not mere machines of a great system. The runs were looked upon as the personal property of the clerk. When he decided on a vacation in Colorado he would place his family on the mail car with him and journey to the mountains. There he would trade runs, for a week or a month, with the clerk on a Colorado line running into the mountains. Nobody said anything and nobody cared, not even the postoffice department, as long as the mail was properly cared for.
Year by year, however, the mail became heavier; the railroads be- came more certain; the government more exacting, until the present elaborate system of carrying the mail by trains, and checking and re- checking the mail elerks, was established.
THE CALIFORNIA FAST MAIL.
From the Missouri river to Sacramento, California, in twenty-one days ! That sounds archaic, but until the spring of 1861 the fastest overland mail had been able to do no better. To remedy this intoler- able condition, Senator Guinn, of California, proposed his pet scheme of the Pony express. Failing of government support, he succeeded in interesting Colonel Russell, of the great firm of Russell, Majors & Waddell, of Kansas City, overland traders and government contractors. In the face of certain financial loss, these gentlemen determined to do their share toward welding east and west. To their unselfish patriot- ism, we owe the existence of the Pony express.
The arrangements were all made and the riders were ready to mount by noon of April 3, 1860. The people of Sacramento rang bells and fired a salute as Harry Roff galloped away with the precious mau on the road to Placerville. Here "Boston" Smith took up the burden. And so on. The mail sped eastward under saddles of Sam Hamilton, "Pony Bob" Ilalsam, Joek Fisher and the rest of that brave band. Meanwhile, in far-off St. Joe, enthusiasts had plucked the last souvenir hair from the tail of the fiery pony, and the western mail was on its way.
The first express took ten days; eleven off the record at the first clip ! Later on, weekly and semi-weekly trips of eight and nine days rendered a service almost equal to that of the earlier trains. The Pony mail that carried President Lincoln's first inaugural address took just seven days and seventeen hours to make the overland trip.
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HISTORY OF WYANDOTTE COUNTY
THE PIONEER RAILROAD TELEGRAPHER.
Jolin D. Cruise, the first superintendent of telegraph on the Union Pacific railroad in Wyandotte, writing recently of his experiences said : "A telegraph operator in the early sixties had to be an all-around man, or boy. I say he had to be an all-around boy, because most of the operators in those days were boys, and right lively fellows they were. They had to send telegrams, repair breaks in the line, locate interrup- tions from grounding, install offices and, in fact, do any kind of work that came to hand in connection with the telegraph service. Thorough electricians they were not, nor were there many in existence in those days, although they are now as thick as flies in the cities.
"We had a wreck on the road one time; the road had been built as far west as Edwardsville and all hands from headquarters were ordered out. It was in the fall and there was a drizzling rain. We built a bonfire along the side of the track. The operator shinned up a pole and brought down a wire. Then he took a bureau from one of the wrecked cars, put an old Clark relay on the bureau and used one post as a key by pounding it with one end of the wire. Having no umbrella I put my messages in one of the bureau drawers to keep them dry, and during the time I was copying I kept the paper covered with the cape of my military overcoat. And there we worked all day and all night until the wreck was cleared up. We had experiences in those days. Fancy sneh a telegraph office in these days when there are all kinds of railroad telegraph appliances for wrecking outfits."
A "HOLDUP" ON THE TRAIL.
It was while Kansas City, Missouri, was a little town and was called Westport Landing, that, according to the chronicles, a prototype train robbery occurred. The overland wagon trade with the Spanish city of Santa Fe was rapidly growing into the enormous traffie it was to be. Reports reached the mouth of the Kaw one day that a certain "Don," Cheviez Perez by name, had set out from Santa Fe with a big wagon train and all kinds of money to buy goods at Westport or Inde- pendence. A band of reckless fellows was at onee formed and rode ont to meet the Spanish merchant.
IIere the stories of historians differ as to what followed, or rather as to just where what followed occurred and how the robbers fared. All accounts agree that Senor Perez and a number of his men were killed One account had it that the holdup was pulled off just south of West- port and that, after murdering the men and stampeding the wagon train, the robbers got no money after all, the wagon containing it being capsized in a creek by its mortally wounded driver-so that some $30,000 in Mexican silver was lost. According to this account, too, some of the robbers were tried and hanged in St. Louis.
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According to another authority, on the other hand. the holdup took place a long distance west of this locality-though perpetrated by Missouri youths-the robbers got the money, and all of them slipped through the fingers of the law.
Both stories seem to have elements of plausibility in the light of the present day.
THE BATTLE BETWEEN THE "POTTAWATOMIE" AND THE " WYANDOTTE."
"Coom quick, ride away, Sharley, der pote she vistles and vistles like she haf lots of vraights."
This was a familiar ery, frequently heard in the night, in the old village of Wyandotte in the sixties, when steamboats came up the Missouri river laden with freight consigned to the Union Pacific, then the only railroad running west from Wyandotte. Steamboats often came up during the night time. On hearing the whistle Gottleib Kneipfer, the watchman, would hurry off to the boarding house and awaken Charles E. Smith, whose duty it was to receive the freight con- signed to the Union Pacific. Kneipfer's "Coom quick, ride away, Sharley." and his banging on the door of the room, would awaken everybody in the house. Then all would go down to the old Wyandotte levee and there would be no rest in the village during the remainder of the night.
"One night Kneipfer had more business on his hands than he could handle," said John D. Cruise, who was superintendent of telegraph for the Union Pacifie and who roomed with Smith, the freight receiver. "It was the memorable night of the battle between the Pottawatomie and the Wyandotte. Ever hear of that battle ?"
The writer could not remember that he had heard of it.
"It was on a cold October night," Cruise went on. "We were sleeping soundly in our room in the boarding house, when we were awak- ened by Kneipfer. The whistles were blowing and blowing loud enough to awaken the dead, and the old German watchman was pounding on the door and calling to Smith in his usual way. But Smith was some- what disinclined to get out of his snug warm bed and brave the chill night wind that was sweeping down the river. Kneipfer, becoming im- patient of delay, came back a second time. He was all excited and had another ery.
.
"'Coom quick, ride avay, Sharley, der "Pottawatomie" haf jumped on der "Wyandotte, " und she vas in der hole! I don'd know vat in der teufel to do, und haf one dime down by der roundhouse. Und der pots she vistles all der dime like she haf lots of vraits.' "
"The whole village turned out and there was more exeitement in the place than if a band of Quantrell's men had come to saek and burn
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it. Down at the roundhouse it was discovered that the throttle valve of the 'Pottowatomie,' which was the name of a large locomotive, was leaking and she had pushed the 'Wyandotte,' an engine of a smaller type, into the turntable pit. It took three days to lift that little 'Wyandotte' out of the pit. But, what fun they had."
CHAPTER XXXIX.
MID-CONTINENTAL INDUSTRIAL CENTER.
THE BEGINNING OF FLOUR MILLING-ELEVATORS-THE LIVE STOCK MARKET-MEAT PACKING INDUSTRY-GREAT SOAP MANUFACTORIES- COOPERAGE AND BOX FACTORIES-FOUNDRIES AND MACHINE SHOPS-IM- PLEMENT FACTORIES-THE COTTON INDUSTRY-MANUFACTURE OF COTTON PRODUCTS-THIE CEMENT INDUSTRY-AN OIL DISTRIBUTING CENTER-A GREAT STEEL PLANT-UNITED ZINC & CHEMICAL COMPANY -- WHERE FIRE ENGINES ARE MADE-BAKING COMPANIES-ICE MANUFACTURING COM- PANIES- OTHER MANUFACTORIES-FUTURE POSSIBILITIES,
Not one in one thousand of the settlers who came this way fifty to sixty years ago gave a thought to the possibilities of the region round- about the mouth of the Kansas river as a manufacturing center. The vast territory lying west of the Missouri river and along the Kansas river was looked upon by the settlers as presenting possibilities for farm- ing and cattle raising. Manufacturing was not considered as a part of the industrial and commercial activity of the region. Yet in a few years there were those far-seeing men who regarded the choice of loca- tion, with reference to supplies of raw materials, labor, fuel and the means of marketing manufactured products, as of some little impor- tance. Thus it was that Kansas came not only to its own, as foremost among the states in the production of farm products, but also in a few years began to attract attention as a manufacturing state, and the metropolis of Wyandotte county advanced to the exalted position, by the year 1900, of seventeenth among the manufacturing cities of the United States.
This growth of manufacturing and commercial activity can truly be said to be neither the result of accident or design. It came about as a result of the natural fitness of the location, with reference to tradi- tional lines of communication-the railroads from all directions con- verging at the point where but a few years before the old trails came to meet the steamboats that brought up supplies for the prairie settlers and took baek cargoes of home products. This was the gateway to the southwest, the west and the northwest.
In a way the growth of industrial life at Kansas City, Kansas, and
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HISTORY OF WYANDOTTE COUNTY
on the Missouri side of the state line was in the face of a determination that it should not be so. The Pacific Railway of Missouri had extended its line from the east on to Leavenworth, at an early day, and boasted that it would make Kansas City nothing more than a whistling station. Cutoff's were built to Lawrence and St. Joseph, from points east of Kan- sas City, with the same intent. The Leavenworth, Pawnee & Western built from Leavenworth to Lawrence, avoiding Kansas City, and the Santa Fe did not fill up its gap between Lawrence and Kansas City for several years after that road was first put into operation. But there were some conditions that no amount of effort could counteract. In the first place, most of the settlers came by steamboat across Missouri for the first few years, and, as has already been seen, the proximity of the Santa Fe trail to the west and the military road south, made the town an objective point for the settlers on that account. Naturally they desired to get their provisions as near their new homes as possible, and, as supplies could be brought from St. Louis by boat in about five days, its trade was soon growing rapidly.
Another thing that helped along the growth of this city, even in the early days of its settlement, was the fact that the bulk of the emi- gration soon after the war was to the Kansas prairies, rather than to the towns farther up the river; it was also aided by the fact that there were no towns in the southern part of the state of Kansas for a long time that had the benefit of railway connections such as would enable them to become distributing centers. Then when the emigration began in earnest to Oregon and California, passing this way as the shortest route by rail or trail, as the case might be, and taking supplies from the country surrounding it, the growth of Wyandotte, or Kansas City, was rapid and permanent. The fitness of the location was soon apparent to the financial world, and the railways were soon either seeking it as a terminus, or, as in the case of the older roads, extending their lines to meet the trade that it commanded. So much for the
advantages. The effort was for a good many years confined to the ex- tension of the importance of the town as a trading and distributing point, and in the meantime the competing towns, disappointed in that respect, were building up their manufacturing interests in all the lines that the conditions of the new country demanded.
THE BEGINNING OF FLOUR MILLING.
One of the first manufacturing ventures of this section was the building of a flour mill after the war, and, with the growth of the country, the output of the flour mills in the county gradually became important. At times in the early history of the mills they had to go into Missouri instead of into Kansas for the wheat to grind into flour, and the town did not for many years display any unnsnal activity in this
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line of manufacture. With the introduction of hard wheat by the Mennonites from Russia, who settled in Kansas in the seventies, the supply of wheat became dependable, and while the progress was slow the possibilities of building up a milling business here were better than those of the other towns in the wheat-raising belt. The hard wheat did not become a practical factor until late in the eighties, so that the growth of the milling business in Wyandotte county received this stimulus at practically the same time that other industries were enlarg- ing their capacities, and the movement toward centralization began to place manufacturing in all lines on the present basis.
The advantages of location and trade that have been outlined made Kansas City an especially favorable location for flour milling as soon as the exportation of Kansas flour began (about 1880, or possibly a little earlier) to surrounding states; and to the fact that the city is the objective shipping point for a large share of the product that is not ground in the wheat belt, must be given credit for much of the recent development. In 1890 the production of wheat began to assume its present proportions, and since that time, and particularly in the later nineties, the largest of the flour mills have been built on the Kansas side of the state line in Kansas City and Rosedale. At the present time the mills of these cities have a daily capacity for abont 11,000 barrels of flour. The principal mills and their daily capacity of barrels are as follows: Rex mill, operated by Southwest Milling Company, 4,000; Southwestern Milling Company's Armourdale mill. 2,500; Ismert- Hineke Milling Company's mill. 2,000; August J. Bulte Milling Com- pany's mill, 1,500; and Arms & Kidder mill at Rosedale, 1,000.
The Rex, Southwestern, Ismert-lfincke and Bulte mills are of modern construction. They stand in a group along the Kansas river valley in Kansas City, Kansas, and together stand among the finest and most modern flour mills in America. With a total capacity of 11,000 barrels daily, they represent an investment of more than $1,000,000 and constantly use nearly as much more in working capital. They supply more than eighty per cent of the output of flour annually that is manufactured at this point. Bonner Springs has a small flour mill that has been operated for several years.
In spite of a tendency toward a wider distribution of mills as near as possible to the wheat fields, the milling interests at Kansas City, Kansas, continue to grow, having doubled their capacity in the last six years ; and as long as Kansas maintains the quality and quantity of wheat that has been sent to the mills in the last decade those interests will continue to grow; hence it is predicted that the capacity of the Wyandotte county mills will reach 20,000 to 25,000 barrels daily.
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HISTORY OF WYANDOTTE COUNTY
ELEVATORS.
Coincident with the production and marketing of Kansas wheat and the erection and operation of mills was the building of large eleva- tors to handle the grain. Twenty years ago there were only two or three small elevators at Wyandotte; now there are seventeen in Kansas City, Kansas, and Rosedale, with a combined storage capacity of 6,500,000 bushels of grain. These elevators are located along the rail- road yards in the valleys from the mouth of the Kansas river to Turner and out the Turkey creek valley in Rosedale. The elevators at those points, with their storage capacity are here given :
Elevators
Bushels Capacity.
Santa Fe
1,000,000
Roek Island,
750,000
Maple Leaf.
500,000
Argentine,
500,000
Ismert mill elevator,
100,000
Standard mill elevator,
250,000
Union Pacific,
1,000,000
Old Santa Fe,
750,000
Friseo,
600,000
Memphis,
450,000
Old Rock Island,
120,000
Rosedale,
100,000
Bulte mill elevator,
60,000
Rex mill elevator,
225,000
Arms & Kidder mill elevator,
60,000
Southern mills elevator,
10,000
Total storage eapaeity
6,475,000
The Kansas state department maintains its headquarters in Kan- sas City, Kansas, for the inspection and weighing of bulk of the one hundred million bushels of wheat raised annually in the state and sent to the market. Of the seventeen elevators named in the above list seven are publie warehouses for the handling of grain at terminal rail- way points.
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