The Southern Pacific Railroad Across Texas view links July 3, 2007 By Douglas Braudaway Special to LIVE! As the Amistad Dam dedicated in 1969 by President Richard M. Nixon and Presidente Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, the Southern Pacific Railroad and the Texas Department of Transportation created rail and vehicle traffic access across the filing reservoir on the Devils River arm of Lake Amistad. The vehicle bridge is on U.S. Highway 90 West, just west of Del Rio. This photo was shot by Robert Warren. (Contributed photo/Warren Studio, Del Rio) click to enlarge A great deal has been written about the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads and their joint creation of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869. Less has been written about the second transcontinental line which crosses through southwest Texas. That second transcontinental line came about after the Central Pacific consolidated control of California’s railroads and reorganized under the name “Southern Pacific.” The Southern Pacific’s plan to build the second line came from two concerns: dissatisfaction with the revenue-sharing arrangement with the Union Pacific and line blockages due to winter weather. Even with the fifty-seven miles of snow-sheds and numerous snowplows, trains were getting snowed in. If a railroad cannot move the freight, it cannot make the money. And so, Collis P. Huntington of the Southern Pacific decided to build his own transcontinental route, and this second transcontinental route had a tremendous impact on people and industry of Texas. The year 1877 proved to be landmark for railroad in two ways. The Galveston Harrisburg & San Antonio Railroad arrived in San Antonio, connecting those cities on February 19. This accomplishment was independent of the Southern Pacific Railroad. The SP, in that same year, built track into Yuma, Arizona, leaving California behind and continued across the Arizona and New Mexico Territories, reaching El Paso during the spring of 1881. The Rio Grande presented a problem for the Southern Pacific Company—not so much a physical or geographic problem, but rather a legal problem. At that time Texas law required that railroad companies operating in Texas be chartered in Texas. Under law, the Southern Pacific was prohibited from entering the state. However, that law did not deter Collis P. Huntington and his old CP Associates from doing what they wanted. They had a plan. Meanwhile, construction on the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Railroad had stalled out in San Antonio. The route was significant, connecting major Texas cities, but it still only qualified as a short line, one of many in the state. That situation changed when Huntington contacted the GH&SA’s Thomas Peirce and made him an offer. Peirce, originally from Boston where he traded in Texas hides and cotton, had gotten into the steamship business in Louisiana and East Texas and had helped Charles Morgan diversify into railroads. A steam locomotive and five passenger cars cross the famed Pecos River High Bridge, 321 feet above the canyon floor. Today a modern bridge crosses the same canyon at about the same elevation, thrilling Amtrak passengers headed toward the Big Bend Country. The old bridge seen here was 1,515 feet long, and was made of more than eight million pounds of iron and steel, completed in March 1890, according to notes on this photo from photographer Herman Lippe. (Contributed photo/Warren Studio) click to enlarge Morgan died in 1878, but his steamship company would soon anchor the southeast corner of the SP network. Peirce had then hooked up with the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos & Colorado Railroad (the first and oldest railroad in the state of Texas) converting it into the larger Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Railroad and building the line into San Antonio with great fanfare. But that is where the line ended until Peirce was approached by Huntington. The GH&SA had little cash, but it had another piece of paper of much greater value—a charter right to continue building track through the State of Texas all the way to the Rio Grande. The SP provided the money, and the GH&SA provided the right-of-way, and the deal was done. And so, when the SP construction crews crossed from New Mexico Territory into Texas, they became GH&SA construction crews. El Paso was quickly reached, and commercial traffic opened. The construction crews continued eastward across Texas. El Paso became a major rail hub as other companies built track into the city. The original Southern Pacific Railroad depot is photographed (above) in the early 1900s. Del Rio’s historic train depot now houses the city’s Transportation Department, a bus terminal, and a variety of community events and activities. The high ceiling and fan windows allow a quality of light not often seen in modern structures. (contributed photo/Warren Studio, Del Rio) click to enlarge But control of an all-weather, southern route relied less on El Paso and more on the Sierra Blanca Pass some eighty miles east of the city. The West Texas mountain range near the Sierra Blanca Pass presented a formidable obstacle, and the surveys suggested that only one gap was suitable for laying rail. The rail line and now where Interstate 10 goes through the Sierra Blanca Pass. East of the Pass, where the town of Sierra Blanca now sits, the line hooks up with the Texas & Pacific Railroad line from Dallas and Fort Worth. The SP construction crews veered southeast into the sparsely populated Big Bend Country creating towns and stops wherever they needed to do so. Valentine, Marfa, Alpine, Marathon and Sanderson were all created as railroad towns. Much of the construction in far west Texas went quickly. Tangents such as the one near Valentine cross level ground and go on for miles straight as a ruler’s edge. But then the construction crews approached Val Verde County, or rather the future Val Verde County, and the Pecos River Canyon Country.
pt 2 Restoration to save the crumbling Del Rio, Texas train depot began in 1988, and was completed in the early 1990s. The earliest depot on the site was only 5,000 square feet, but the current building – with restoration and an addition on the east end of the building – contains 58,000 square feet, and a 15-foot-wide concrete passenger platform running trackside the length of the building. (LIVE! photo/Bill Sontag) click to enlarge In 1881, Thomas Peirce’s GH&SA, with an infusion of SP money, resumed building from San Antonio after a four year hiatus. The construction crews left San Antonio in a southwesterly direction paralleling the International & Great Northern Railroad line which was also being constructed out of San Antonio heading for Laredo. The question around San Antonio and Laredo was whether the two lines were going to battle it out for control of railroad traffic into Mexico. Then, the GH&SA crews peeled off to the west. They bypassed Castroville and D’Hanis and built their own towns of Hondo and New D’Hanis. They continued along the old San Antonio-El Paso Wagon Road to Sabinal and Uvalde. They passed south of Fort Clark and Brackettville in favor of Spofford. The word is neither Castroville nor Brackettville would pay the bonus demanded of them by the company. No bonus meant no railroad service to the town. At Spofford the SP-controlled company finally did send a branch line south—to Eagle Pass. There the company could capture some of the railroad trade with Mexico, and, in fact, Piedras Negras across the river became a huge railroad town. A 19th Century locomotive of the Galveston Harrisburg & San Antonio Railroad negotiates a crossing in the mid-1880s on an early bridge just above the Pecos River. The GH&SA completed the final stretch of the Transcontinental Railroad Southern Route, from this point snaking its way west along the bluffs of the Rio Grande. Note the two men armed with rifles, one in the clearing, the other leaning out of the caboose. (Contributed photo/Warren Studio) click to enlarge The main line, though, continued westward to Del Rio and its prodigious springs. The San Felipe Springs are the fourth largest in the state of Texas and had all the water the railroad would ever need. Most communities in Val Verde were built as railroad communities; Comstock, Langtry, and Pumpville all originated as railroad depots. Soon enough, Del Rio would become division headquarters and the people of Del Rio successfully petitioned the Legislature to give the community its own county. Val Verde County was organized less than three years after the arrival of the first train. Del Rio was also the end of the easy work for the west-bound construction crew. A few miles west began some of the roughest countryside in Texas. The tracks had to enter the canyon of the Rio Grande west of town and enter the Devil’s River canyon at its mouth some twelve miles from Del Rio, exactly where Amistad Dam now sits. The 1948 flood rolled this bridge off its piers, and the mess required a great deal of reconstruction. The reinforced bridge was purposefully destroyed in 1968 to prepare for the creation of Amistad Reservoir. The track followed the canyon wall for a mile then crossed over at a point called Castle Canyon and used the slope of the canyon to elevate to the Edwards Plateau. The Pecos River Canyon was the greatest obstacle. As the grading crews approached the river, they turned southward to the Rio Grande and, literally, drove the line into the canyon. They blasted a grade on the north face, slowly easing the grade towards the bottom. They had to blast two tunnels, the first tunnels in the state of Texas, to bring the grade in to the point where the Pecos River empties into the Rio Grande. But they were not quite finished. “Finished” happened a few miles west of the Pecos Canyon. The two construction crews had hammered away at West Texas and the Trans-Pecos for nearly two years and finally met in the canyon of the Rio Grande, west of the mouth of the Pecos, near the Vinegarroon construction workers’ camp. The celebration was not as grand as the Golden Spike Ceremony at Promontory Point in Utah. A 1950s Southern Pacific Lines passenger train waits for a few passengers to board before continuing to El Paso, Texas, and Los Angeles, Calif. The Sunset Limited Route now extends from Orlando, Fla., to Los Angeles, run by Amtrak. Warren Studio, 419 S. Main St., Del Rio, preserves a large collection of historic photos. Hand-printed copies from original negatives are available from Rosantina Calvetti, studio owner and photographer. (Contributed photo/Warren Studio) click to enlarge The railroad men may have driven a silver spike at the completion ceremony on January 12, 1883. Cleaning up the line and making certain the water wells and sidings were in place took a few more weeks, but in February, the trains were rolling. The zigzagging that trains had to do to get around the Pecos Canyon cost money and time. The total curvature of the line between Del Rio and El Paso was 47.12, meaning that the track had enough curves in it to make a little over 47 complete circles. James Converse is credited with the idea of the “Viaduct.” This Viaduct, the Pecos High Bridge, was constructed and opened in 1892. The Bridge was 321 feet above the level of the river. But the length of the Bridge was also substantial at 2,180 feet. The magnificent structure was the third highest bridge in the world at the time. High bridges are commonplace now, but at the time, this sort of work was incredibly difficult and rare. Despite the fact that the Viaduct weighed over three million pounds, it was said to be made of spider webs and moonbeams. That is more of an aesthetic assessment; the business people had a different description for it: bonus money. The SP added an extra fifty cents to each ticket as a “Pecos River Bridge Toll.” This, however, quickly ran afoul of the newly created Texas Railroad Commission which had been created to stop this type of over-charging (price gouging). The Viaduct was replaced in 1944 to carry the heavier traffic associated with the Second World War. This new Viaduct-High Bridge is visible from the Shumla highway rest stop (near another old railroad stop) on US Highway 90 west of the Pecos Canyon (where historical markers tell the story). The GH&SA construction provided most of the distance across Texas, but the line only went as far east as Houston (Harrisburg). At the same time the Southern Pacific’s Huntington put the deal together with the GH&SA, he was also buying other railroad properties, notably the Texas and New Orleans (connecting the Houston area with the state line), the Louisiana Western (into the Bayou State), and the old New Orleans, Opelousas and Great Western Railway Company (going from the Sabine River into New Orleans). This last company had originally been chartered in 1852, but Charles Morgan, using his money and lawyers, took control of the line and chartered Morgan’s Louisiana and Texas Railroad and Steamship Company as the railroad component of his company. Morgan lived another year only, but his company became the easternmost link of the system providing rail service from the Pacific Coast into New Orleans, and it brought to the SP a fleet of steamships able to carry passengers to New York and the rest of the East Coast as well as to South America and Europe. A number of other short line railroads were also brought into the fold in the next few years (including another Thomas Peirce line, the Galveston, Houston and Henderson) creating an extensive SP network in East Texas and along the Gulf Coast. As a result of these buyouts and consolidations, the Southern Pacific Railroad line connected the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific, making it one of the most important transportation routes in American history.
Cool reading. For some reason it always bothers be when a history has inaccuracies in it. The article mentions Promontory "Point" for the joining of the first transcontinental railroad instead of "Summit". Promontory Point is out in the middle of the Great Salt Lake where the newer causeway goes and bypasses Promontory Summit. The article did get the spelling of the name Thomas Peirce correct. So many published accounts spell it Pierce.
