THE Denver & Rio
Grande Railroad was projected before there was a foot ,of track in Colorado. While actual
work of construction did not begin until July, 1871, when the first spike was driven at
the foot of Fifteenth street, in Denver, the project had been mapped out and preliminary
plans made by General William J. Palmer in 1867, three years before any rails had been
laid in the then Territory of Colorado.
Dr. Win. A. Bell, whose association with General Palmer began on the Kansas Pacific Survey
of 1867, said, at a dinner given to the employes of The Denver & Rio Grande Railroad
at the Union Station Denver, January 28, 1920:
"On the Kansas Pacific Survey, General Palmer and I shared the same tent for many
months, and over the campfire we discussed his plans. The Kansas Pacific Railway, a St.
Louis company with John D. Perry as its head, had reached Salina, Kansas, and, from his
knowledge of the country, General Palmer endeavored to persuade his co-directors to change
the route they had then determined on, to reach Denver by the Smokey Hill route, the way
the road now follows, -and instead of doing this to follow up the Arkansas river to
Pueblo, and thence north to Denver, thus occupying the valley of the Arkansas as well as
the mountain base from Pueblo to Denver.
"General Palmer's project was this, that if he could not persuade his directors to
follow up the Arkansas, he would build a road of his own from Denver southward
indefinitely along the mountain base, of such character as to reach the mines in the
mountains through the canons abutting on the plains, as rapidly as they were discovered,
and so tap the sources of business ahead of all other competitors."
His directors would not follow his advice, but this did not daunt Palmer.
Since he had been engaged on the survey of a route to the Pacific along the 32nd parallel
for a proposed extension of the Kansas Pacific to the western coast, which never
materialized, General Palmer had had greatest confidence in the future of the territory
which The Denver & Rio Grande now traverses, even though it was at that time scarcely
more than a wilderness.
This confidence was no doubt strengthened through his acquaintance with A. C. Hunt,
afterwards Governor of Colorado, whom he met when he passed through Denver on this survey.
Hunt was a dreamer. Like General Palmer he had dreamed of a trunk line railway stretching
from Denver to El Paso, with branches radiating westward among the mountains. Hunt knew
-or thought he knew, which answered just as well -that those mountains held inexhaustible
deposits of gold, silver, copper, iron, coal and other things like that, to say nothing of
the timber and vast areas of arable lands among the foothills and in the valleys.
General Palmer seized on Hunt and his ideas, and when the Kansas Pacific reached Denver in
September, 1870, and he got this construction off his hands, he set to work to materialize
the plans he and Hunt had made. To this end The Denver & Rio Grande Railway was
chartered October 27, 1870, six years before Colorado was admitted as a state. The
original incorporators were: General William J. Palmer, A. C. Hunt, and Colonel W. H.
Greenwood. The board of directors were: General W. J. Palmer of Colorado; R. H. Lamborn of
Philadelphia, W. P. Mellen of New York, A. C. Hunt of Colorado, and General Thomas J. Wood
of Ohio. The officers of the original company were: President, General W. J. Palmer;
vicepresident, R. H. Lamborn; secretary and treasurer, Howard Schuyler; solicitor, Samuel
E. Browne; manager of construction, Colonel W. H. Greenwood; chief engineer, J. P.
Mesereau. The capital stock of the company was $15,000,000. Bonds were to be issued at the
rate of $16,000 per mile of road constructed. The following financiers were appointed
trustees for the bondholders: J. Edgar Thompson, Samuel M. Felton and L. H. Meyer.
The projected railway, as described in the Articles of Incorporation, was to lead from
Denver to the City of Mexico. Branches were contemplated from points on this trunk line
wherever found convenient, extending into the mountainous territory lying adjacent on the
west, even as far west as Salt Lake City, the center of the Mormon population in the Great
Basin.
Since the route was quite clearly defined along the Rio Grande del Norte, after reaching
some objective on that stream, to El Paso, (thence to the City of Mexico), it was
concluded that the most difficult portion of the undertaking would be the opening of a
thoroughfare over the front ranges to the drainage area of the Rio Grande. It was quite
natural, therefore, that the name should indicate the initial point and at least one of
the principal objective points to be reached, hence the designation of the project as
Denver & Rio Grande.
General Palmer's central idea about which all others seemingly gravitated, was of the
possibilities in supplying the great isthmian country of Mexico with fuel, manufactures,
products of the soil and other natural resources for which he thought the Rocky Mountain
Region was destined to become an unsurpassed center of activity. In exchange for these
exports he felt there would be a return haul of tropical and semi-tropical goods needed
for the requirements of the large population necessary for the harvesting and accumulation
of the rich resources of the then undeveloped and isolated mountainous region embraced in
the Colorado Rockies.
It was a pretentious, though feasible plan, and had it been carried out there is little
doubt but that the outcome would have been just as Palmer anticipated. However, later
developments and conditions which had not been anticipated, changed this original program
and brought about the subsequent building of The Denver & Rio Grande Railroad lines in
their present order.
The original articles of incorporation clearly emphasize the facts mentioned in the
preceding installment of this series that the country to the west of the proposed trunk
line was virtually unknown and unexplored. The descriptions of such branch lines as the
projectors had anticipated at that time were very general, indeed, and prove that even to
them, the whole country to the west of that along the base of the Rocky Mountains, was
veiled in an atmosphere of mystery.
THE stimulus of transportation that was
furnished this great unexplored area by Rio Grande rails, has since made Colorado what it
is today. Colorado's greatest wealth in
agriculture, mining and other natural resources has come from this very wilderness. Had it
not been for the confidence that General Palmer had in the future of this then potential
empire; had it not been for his great ambition to develop its natural resources with
railroad iron; his wonderful - imagination; his genius for charming the reluctant dollar
from its lair; his great constructive ability; his tireless energy, and above all, his
hopeless capacity to understand when he was beaten, there would have been no Colorado.
One of the first difficulties, encountered by General Palmer in the building of his
railroad was the acquisition of a right-of-way. Practically the whole territory covered by
the mountain ranges at that time was public domain. The Government had discontinued the
practice of making land grants to new railroads. Right-of-way could not be purchased, for
but a small part of the country had been patented to bona fide settlers.
It was imperative that additional federal legislation be enacted before it was practicable
to proceed with actual construction of the railroad, and General Palmer set out to bring
this about.
As a result of his efforts, coupled with those of his co-adjutors, a special bill for an
act was introduced in the National Congress confirming to The Denver &-Rio Grande
Railroad a right-of-way 200 feet wide, and twenty acres of public domain for depot
purposes, limited to one tract in every ten miles of road, and granting also certain
assistance in the way of allowing construction materials to be collected from adjacent
public lands. This bill was passed after a stormy session, on June 15th, 1892, and
immediately became a law. This law served as a pattern for the general Right-of-Way Act of
1875.
While this legislation was pending, General Palmer directed his activities toward securing
funds for the execution of his project. As was usual in the case of pioneer railroad
builders, the projectors had no money of their own, but looked to others to furnish the
capital. To induce any man of common sense to invest in a railroad, the first and most
promising section of which was to supplant a tri-weekly stage line between Denver and
Colorado City, on which business was so poor that the owner was forced into bankruptcy,
would have been difficult enough tinder the most favorable circumstances. But in addition
to the lack of any visible traffic from which the railroad would derive its revenues, it
had no credits whatever, for it had no assets-not even a right-of-way.
Investors looked upon the project as an extremely doubtful experiment, and Palmer, through
lack of funds was forced to make it even more doubtful by announcing that he proposed to
build a narrow gauge railroad. Since railroads had been invented, engineers had devoted
more energy up to this time wrangling over the proper gauge for railroads than they had to
other and more profitable work. Railroads had been built of all sorts of widths up to
seven feet. Newspapers and magazines were burdened with arguments on the gauge question.
ABOUT this time somebody in Wales built
a coal road of 2-foot gauge, called the "Fastiniog Railway." At first it was
operated by horses, but later locomotives were
adopted. When it was found that cars big enough for people to ride in could be run, the
engineer who built this road became so puffed up that he went fairly daft over it. The
press made such a fuss over that 2-foot gauge railroad, people from all over the world
journeyed to Wales to gaze upon it and admire, it. It was predicted that all railroads
would soon be of 2-foot gauge.
General Palmer went to Wales, inspected this railroad, and became converted to the narrow
gauge idea, and adopted a three-foot gauge for the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad. It
was the first narrow gauge railroad to be built in the United States, and the General's
announcement of his plans gained widespread attention at a psychological moment. With his
unparalleled gift for persuasion he made investors believe that narrow gauge railroads,
and particularly his own narrow gauge railroad, was the only sure highway to fortune. He
proved on paper beyond the possibility of contradiction that a narrow gauge railroad could
be built much cheaper than any other kind of a railroad, while it could earn just as much
money as a broad gauge, if not more. The people of Denver became so obsessed with Palmer's
logic that they had narrow gauge on the brain. They ate narrow gauge hash, drank narrow
gauge drinks and played narrow gauge poker. It was the talk of the hour. A burro was fixed
up with banners and paraded the streets as a "Narrow Gauge Mule."
Stolid Dutch investors of Philadelphia and some wealthy Englishmen in London, who would
have given the cold shoulder to any promoter with a decent regard for established
practices in railroad building, were so fascinated with Palmer's little road of small cost
and big returns that they gave the guilders to him generously. Most of the first money
that was used in the building of the road came from these two sources.
The technical war of the gauges proved a boon to the General in that it secured his
project much publicity and free advertising at a time when it was most needed in raising
sufficient funds to materialize his dreams.
AS. a matter of fact, it was only
partially because of his difficulty in securing funds that Palmer resorted to the novel
expedient of adopting a narrow gauge railway. This move was coupled with his confident
conclusion that a standard gauge was impracticable, and in certain cases impossible. To
build a railroad through a territory of the most precipitate mountain region within the
confines of the Nation, it was considered by him advisable to utilize the three-foot
gauge. It was his conclusion that the nature of the country, the unlikelihood of
interchange of equipment with standard gauge lines, the relatively small amount of capital
to be invested, and the practicability of later substituting more permanent and standard
types as the country became developed and revenues increased, made it logical to pursue
the adoption of the narrow gauge.
Additional advantages were offered by Palmer to investors in his project in the form of
subscriptions to pools, which were formed in the following way: Land companies were
formed, to which townsites along the road were conveyed, such as Colorado Springs, Manitou
and Pueblo, and the stock of these companies was given to the subscribers with the
railroad securities. In the same way the coal and iron fields, which were discovered
further south, and the Nolan grant of some 40,000 acres, covering the land immediately
south of the Arkansas river up to the borders of the old Mexican town of Pueblo, were
conveyed to a company called the Central Colorado Improvement Company, which was organized
by General Palmer, and incorporated in January, 1872, which company, when its coal fields
became developed, was converted in December, 1879, into the Colorado Coal and Iron
Company, and since has become the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company.
And so it happened, after Palmer had secured the necessary finances to go ahead with his
project, that a small crowd assembled at the foot of Fifteenth street in Denver, July
28th, 1871, to see Colonel W. H. Greenwood, the construction engineer, drive the first
spike in The Denver & Rio Grande Railroad.
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Denver's Arapahoe & 14th 1880.
Denver Station, Kansas Pacific, Denver Pacific and Colorarodo
Railroads 1874.
Leadville's Chestnut street 1880
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