[DL] The Great Rail War that almost was (long)

[phadris <phadris@mciworld.com>]

Howdy -

I've been hoping to find this account for a while now, and finally came
across it in our local library.  An historic Great Rail War almost happened,
right here in my hometown.  One cross word, one bullet fired in anger, and
the whole concept of Great Rail Wars wouldn't have been fiction so much as a
twist on very real history.  It's all the more dramatic for me because it's
local heroes that we're talking about.  I live in Colorado Springs, founded
by General Palmer (and I avoid the intersection dominated by his statue if I
can).  The places are all within a few miles of here, and the events almost
bring my hobby completely to life.

Shoot, to make all this into a GRW campaign would require just a few simple
words, like "General Palmer is a Harrowed Zombie Cowboy Killer" or something
similar.  Almost all the pieces are here, and the only problem is that there
isn't a cinematic ending.

To give you an idea what's going on, here's a couple quick definitions for
you:

o  D & R.G. is the Denver and Rio Grande railroad, which still runs cars
through town.

o  Colorado City and Colorado Springs are separate towns, but are very close
together (nowadays, they are all one big happy spot on the map).  Both lie
just east of Manitou Springs.

o  "Grand Canyon" was later renamed Royal Gorge, as the first name was
already taken by a canyon that was just a bit grander.

o  Yes, we are talking about *the* South Park.

Here goes .

=======================

. At their backs, beyond the mountains, in the offices of the cities and the
foothills round Pueblo, the great battle with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa
Fe Railroad was drawing near. The Santa Fe, as we saw, had through its
subsidiary reached Pueblo in 1875, and no lasting agreement could be come to
about traffic and rates, while the new rival was now threatening to build
competing lines to Colorado Springs, up the Arkansas, and south to New
Mexico.

At the same time the D. & R. G. was hampered by financial troubles. The
Philadelphia investors were worried about their investments, and frequently
complaining, and some of the stock was passing into hostile hands. The cost
of constructing the new lines, especially the La Veta extension, had been
very high, and the obligations of the construction company became a severe
drain upon the earnings of the railway. Finally, in May, 1877, the railway
company found itself unable to make the interest payments due, and the
trustee for the Eastern bondholders asked for a receiver to be appointed.
General Palmer was to effect an arrangement for funding the interest coupons
to May, 1878, to ten-year certificates, thus securing the use of immediate
earnings, but his position was not strong for the battle which was to
follow.

Early in 1878 the war began.  The first clash was on the Raton Pass over
which the Denver and Rio Grande was at last preparing to extend the line
into New Mexico. It has often been told how Mr. A. A. Robinson, of the Santa
Fe, met D. & R. G. officials traveling down to occupy the a construction
crew and rushed it down the pass. The D. & R. G. crew, arriving too late,
found the pass full of men and teams, and armed guards posted on the hills.
They were forced to withdraw, leaving to their rivals that road to the
south.

A few months later the struggle entered on its second and more violent
phase.

Far up the headwaters of the Arkansas, among the mountains of Lake County,
the placer deposits of California Gulch had boomed eighteen years ago. In
five years from 1861 some three million dollars worth of gold was produced
there, the miners cursing the apparently useless rocks and heavy black sand
that choked their sluices. By 1876 the output had fallen to twenty thousand
dollars, and the valley was all but deserted again. But in that year a W. H.
Stevens discovered, as he thought, a profitable vein of lead on the south
side of the gulch. The ore was assayed, and the nature of the stubborn rocks
and heavy sand revealed -- it was carbonate of lead, carrying silver, twenty
to forty ounces to the ton. At once there was a rush to Leadville, houses
sprang up, mines multiplied; Tabor, Chaffee, Fryer, and a dozen others shot
from poverty to millions in a few months.

General Palmer, with Dr. Bell and McMurtrie, had visited the place in the
summer of 1877, when August Meyer was building the first smelter; Tabor,
soon to be a millionaire, sold Dr. Bell a clump of dates in his little
store. Now Leadville was booming, and the rush had only just begun. There
was an immense influx to the Arkansas, and even more by the quicker route up
the Ute Pass from Colorado City; that mountain road was jammed with mule
teams, an endless stream of wagons carrying up supplies, lumber, machinery,
all the material of a town that doubled itself week by week. At one time
12,000 mules and horses were used in freighting up the pass.

It was vital to capture that immense traffic, and Palmer prepared to build
the line, long planned, westward from Canon City up the Arkansas, through
the vast Grand Canyon, and to extend it northward to Leadville. At once it
was clear that the Santa Fe men were attempting to seize that route too
(having surveyed it a few years ago), though at first they did not show
their hand openly but acted through a subsidiary company, the Canon City and
San Juan Railroad, which had been organized the year before. At the same
time a third line, the Denver and South Park, was pushing on from Denver up
the Platte and across the Kenosha Range toward the upper Arkansas.

On April 18, 1878, the D. & R.G. was ready to begin work on the line through
the Royal Gorge, the first stage of the Grand Canyon, and orders were sent
to El Moro for a construction crew to start from there for Canon City. The
Santa Fe learned of this (it is said by intercepting Palmer's telegram to El
Moro), and Robinson, chief engineer of the Santa Fe, set off at once to
forestall them. He too was at El Moro, and asked the D. & R.G. for a special
train to Pueblo; when that was refused, he wired to an engineer named W. R.
Morley, at La Junta, instructing him to take an engine and race at once to
the canyon.  Morley reached Pueblo at three o'clock in the morning; here he
was at the end of the Santa Fe track, and the D. & R.G. refused to take him
on. He rode on by horse to Canon City, flogging his mount over the
forty-five miles of road, and hurrying into the canyon with a spade, began
symbolic digging. At dawn he was reinforced by officials and workmen of the
C.C. & S.J., and the D. & R.G. forces, on their arrival, found themselves
again forestalled. This time, however, they refused to withdraw.

Both parties entrenched themselves and occupied their positions with armed
men; one must remember the wild history of Western America to realize how
little it would have taken to bring bloodshed. One rash word, one shot,
would have precipitated a tragedy.

That shot, providentially, was not fired, and while the two parties stood
their ground, armed and ready, the lawyers of the two companies prepared to
take up the fray.

After various skirmishes in the Fremont County Court, and the issuing of
injunctions now against one side, now against the other, and now against
both, at the end of April the case was brought up before Judge Hallett in
the United States Circuit Court at Denver. Actions and cross actions dragged
on through May and June, the forces of the D. & R.G. being led in their
legal battles by Lyman K. Bass and Hanson Risley, the engineers testifying
that they had surveyed the canyon and planned a road through it in 1871 and
1872, their opponents contesting this and claiming the priority. Finally, on
August 24, Judge Hallett rendered a decision which allowed the C.C. & S.J.
the right to go on and construct its line through the canyon the twenty
miles allowed by its charter, and compelled the D. & R.G. to give them
priority. The D. & R.G. proceeded to appeal from this decision to the
Supreme Court of the United States. Meanwhile they prepared to continue the
construction of their line beyond the canyon toward South Arkansas.

In September the Santa Fe consolidated its subsidiaries, the Canyon City and
San Juan and the Pueblo and Arkansas Railroads. As they too proceeded with
construction above the canyon, the confusion in the courts and tension in
the mountains were intensified.

Meanwhile the D. & R. G.'s financial troubles were pressing. The stock in
the East had been changing hands, much of it passing actually to Santa Fe
ownership, and the stockholders were growing more and more restless. General
Palmer's opponents exerted pressure by market operations and by the threat
of building competing lines, and finally, after long negotiations, and, it
is said, against his better judgment, he was forced to accept an offer of
the Santa Fe to take a thirty-year lease of the Denver and Rio Grande lines.
This lease was signed in October, 1878, and the lines and rolling stock
handed over in December.

The question of the canyon, however, was still undecided, the D. & R.G.
maintaining that the right of way to Leadville had been excluded from the
lease, and the Santa Fe declaring that in any case it belonged to their C.C.
& S.J. line, or rather to its successor, the Pueblo and Arkansas. Tension
was in no way relaxed, each side maintaining its construction crews and
armed guards in the mountains, while the Santa Fe continued with the task of
blasting the road through the gorge, and, in the cities, the various legal
and political maneuvers went on.

In the spring of 1879 the D. & R.G.'s appeal from Hallett's decision came up
before the Supreme Court, and on April 21 Justice Harlan reversed Hallett's
decision, dissolved the injunction against the Denver and Rio Grande, and
confirmed their prior right to build a railway through the canyon. This
right, however, was not to prevent the C.C. S. J.  from laying a parallel
track where possible, or from using the D. & R.G.'s track where the canyon
was too narrow for two. The portions of the track which the C.C. & S.J. had
already built, since the decision of, and so under the authority of, the
Circuit Court, should be paid for by the D. & R.G. at a price to be
determined.

This seemed a clear victory for the Denver and Rio Grande, but when it filed
the Supreme Court mandate in the Circuit Court, its execution was delayed,
the Pueblo and Arkansas being allowed by Judge Hallett to file a
supplemental bill, in view of the situation created by the lease, which, as
a matter of fact, had been already considered by the Supreme Court. Decision
was still delayed, and the armed guards stayed in their stone forts on the
sides of the canyon, while both sides continued as well as they could with
the grading of their roads above the gorge.

 The battle now shifted back to the Santa Fe's lease. During the months that
they had been operating the D. & R.G. line, it had become clear to General
Palmer that they were working it entirely for the profits of their own
Kansas trade and their long Eastern haul, and neglecting the local Colorado
traffic, while to insure that all freight should be brought from the East
over their lines, they were charging as much for freight from Denver to
Pueblo as from Kansas City to Pueblo. Moreover, it appeared that they were
allowing the track and rolling stock to deteriorate, and in many other ways
violating the terms of the lease.

Finally, in June, 1879, the D. & R.G. brought suit against them for breach
of contract, before Judge Bowen of the District Court at Alamosa, and
obtained a writ authorizing them to repossess the road. The Santa Fe,
however, refused to accept that decision, declaring that the District Court
had no jurisdiction in the case. They referred it to the Federal Court,
where Judge Hallett had given them their decision before, in the canyon
case. Meanwhile they refused to hand over the road.

They adopted every means to prevent or delay the signing or execution of the
writ. Colonel Dodge tells how a Santa Fe agent actually stole the county
seal with which the writ should be stamped (some say the county clerk went
with it), and how he had another seal made in Denver and rushed down to
southern Colorado by a son of Governor Hunt. Then the Santa Fe raised a cry
that the Denver and Rio Grande was planning to use violence, and appealed
for protection. According to Dodge, Governor Pitkin tried to call out the
militia, but they refused to move against the D. & R.G., whose cause had
strong public sympathy in Colorado.

Finally, on the night of June 11, the D. & R.G. struck its blow. The Santa
Fe held the lines, stations, telegraph offices, and roundhouses, and while
in many cases the staff were friendly to the Palmer cause, and would welcome
him, in others they were hostile, armed, and prepared to resist. Copies of
Bowen's writ were given to the sheriffs of Denver, Colorado Springs, Pueblo,
Canon City, and other places, to be served in those places on the same
night; these officers being accompanied by the officials of the D. & R.G.
The station at Denver surrendered; at Colorado Springs, Sheriff Beecher
seized the depot and handed it over to Palmer, From there General Palmer and
Colonel Dodge set out in a special train for Pueblo, to occupy the stations
along the way. With them was the young Chase Mellen, who would long remember
that exciting night.

He wrote years later:

"One of those who accompanied them was a small boy who had been learning the
art of telegraphy, and thought that he could operate the telegraph station
at Fountain, provided the other operator would slow up in sending him
messages. He was the proud possessor of a very large horse-pistol which was
strapped round his waist. When the train stopped at the station, the agent
was cautiously approached and found to be not hostile, so the small boy was
relieved of the necessity of taking charge.

"The train then proceeded south towards Pueblo, and after it had gone about
a mile or so another train was seen approaching from the south. Both
instantly halted. General Palmer and Colonel Dodge walked cautiously towards
the other train, ignorant of its intentions and whether it was being
operated by friends or enemies. Men were seen to leave the other train and
advance with equal caution, but when they were within hailing distance it
was quickly discovered that they were friendly, that the Pueblo station was
in the hands of the Denver and Rio Grande, and that peace prevailed
generally."

 Pueblo, we learn from other sources, had not fallen without a struggle; the
Santa Fe had brought in the notorious Bat Masterson, town marshal of Dodge
City, Kansas, to hold the roundhouse with a gang of roughs, and not until
the arrival of Governor Hunt with two hundred men from El Moro did he
submit. At the same time the sheriff of Pueblo with a posse forced the door
of the train dispatcher's office after an exchange of shots. The train from
Colorado Springs arrived, bringing reinforcements. Canon City had
surrendered, and by morning the railway and telegraph lines were in the
hands of the D. & R.G.

 They were handed over to Hanson A. Risley, whom Judge Bowen had appointed
receiver, but when the matter was transferred to the Federal Court, Judges
Hallett and Miller restored the line to a receiver appointed by the Santa
Fe. A month later, however, the Court appointed its own receiver, L. C.
Ellsworth, who took over the road on August 14.

Meanwhile financial interests in the East had been rallying to the support
of the Denver and Rio Grande, and in the spring of 1879 a new bond issue was
floated, to which the public subscribed $10,000,000 in a few days. Funds
were now ample for further development, but, as the future would show, these
new interests would make themselves felt in a manner unfavorable to General
Palmer himself.

 The question of the canyon right of way was still unsettled, and now the
battle was resumed. There was no small prize at stake, for this was the
great gateway into the central Rocky Mountains, and, up the river, Leadville
was increasing by 3,000 inhabitants a month; where, two years ago, there had
been six little cabins, there was now a town of 30,000 people, still growing
day by day. The Santa Fe was still holding up the execution of the Supreme
Court decision. On July 14 Judge Hallett gave another decree, admitting the
Denver and Rio Grande's prior right to build through the canyon, but
ordering that they must pay for the line built by the others before securing
possession of the road. He set up a commission to assess the cost of this
work, but even after that commission had made its report, in October, the
final settlement was still delayed, and the legal wrangles dragged on,
until, in January, 1880, the D. & R.G. applied to the Supreme Court for a
writ of Mandamus to force the Circuit Court to execute the decision of
April, 1879. The Denver and Rio Grande was represented by Senator Roscoe
Conkling and Samuel Shellabarger, and the case attracted great attention in
Washington. The application, however, was unsuccessful, the court declaring
that the D. & R.G. should have made an appeal instead of applying for a
writ.

Finally the whole matter was settled out of court. An agreement was made
between the Santa Fe and the Denver and Rio Grande, by which all suits were
withdrawn. The Santa Fe bound itself for ten years not to build north of a
line drawn along the parallel of latitude seventy-five miles south of
Conejos, and not west of a line represented by the Denver-El Moro line and
its protection; while the D. & R.G. under- took for that time not to build
south of the one line, or east of the other. The twenty miles of road
through the canyon, which had been constructed by the C.C. & S.J., were
bought by the D. & R.G. for $1,400,000. This agreement was ratified by the
Court on April 1, 1880.

At the same time an agreement was made canceling the lease, and on April 4
Ellsworth's receivership was terminated by the court, and the line was
handed back to the Denver and Rio Grande.

The building of the line to Leadville was pressed forward, and by July,
1880, the tracks reached the town.

=======================

Quoted from "A Builder of the West:  The Life of General William Jackson
Palmer" by John S. Fisher


Just can't help but notice it would have gotten a lot more exciting if we
didn't have so many danged lawyers back then.

Tom Huntington
The Truth Is Yonder