Genesis of a Fabled Railway

Birth of the Baby Road

After the Civil War, Palmer joined the Kansas Pacific Railroad, which had purposed itself with finding a route between Kansas City and California, as secretary and treasurer. In 1867, Palmer became managing director and was put in charge of extending their line into Colorado and to the south. Hearing this, the citizens of Cañon City and Fremont County, who desperately needed transport facilities, eagerly invited Kansas Pacific to build a line through South‑Central Colorado. As a result, enlisting the help of chief engineer Colonel William Henry Greenwood, Palmer organized an expedition in the region to survey the best route into New Mexico from that area. In 1868, they recommended to the company directors that Kansas Pacific’s line should be diverted to the south at Ellsworth, Kansas, and go straight to Pueblo, follow the Arkansas River Valley until they could reach the San Luis Valley, and then turn south to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Instead, the Kansas Pacific board of directors decided to build straight to Denver, and they completed the line on August 15, 1870. With this rejection, Palmer visited Colorado City (now part of Colorado Springs) to see if there was a viable north-south route from Denver to Mexico City for his own railway. He decided the project was viable and, with Colonel Greenwood and others, he cofounded the Denver & Rio Grande Railway on October 27, 1870.

A year earlier, in April 1869, a woman by the name of Mary Lincoln Mellen was on a trip with her father to see the West. She and her father were returning to their home in Flushing, New York, and Palmer was on the same eastbound train. They met on the train, fell in love, and became engaged a month later. They were married on November 7, 1870. On their honeymoon in Europe, Palmer saw narrow-gauge for the first time at the Ffestiniog Railway in Wales. His interest in the narrow-gauge was piqued.

Palmer returned and, on February 17, 1871, he announced that the Denver & Rio Grande would be built as 36-inch narrow-gauge. This was decided because of decreased construction and equipment costs compared to standard gauge, which would prove especially useful when conquering the valleys and passes of the Rockies. In their articles of incorporation, it was announced that the Denver & Rio Grande intended to build a line south from Denver and follow Palmer’s originally suggested route from Pueblo, up the Arkansas River Valley’s Royal Gorge, into the San Luis Valley, south into El Paso and eventually uniting with Mexico (hence the name Denver & Rio Grande). These goals were officially acknowledged by an Act of Congress on June 8, 1872. (Eventually, the Rio Grande’s plans would be amended to prefer a route south over Raton Pass, but the original articles of incorporation and Act of Congress would still stand.) The first rails out of Denver were laid on July 28, 1871, and they reached the Palmer-founded Fountain Colony (today called Colorado Springs) near Old Colorado City on October 21, and construction continued onto Pueblo.

Greenwood was assigned to survey the Rocky Mountain portion of the Arkansas River Valley to estimate the cost of construction. Greenwood fully embraced the secrecy of the route, as he first surveyed Raton Pass before heading to his actual destination of the Royal Gorge “to look at that pass, but in reality to throw people out there off the track.” In August 1871, Palmer surveyed the canyon himself while returning from a wider scouting trip that included Raton Pass. While in the canyon, several of their mules rolled down the cliff and suffered severe bruising, but still survived. This reminded Palmer of his earlier escapades in Verde Canyon, Arizona, where he entered a battle with the local Indians and lost his horse while on a survey mission for Kansas Pacific. Although the obstacles in the Royal Gorge were merely natural, he still described the canyon as “a fearful gorge.” The same year, Rio Grande engineers John A. McMurtrie and Ray Morley began staking a preliminary line in the Gorge, with subsequent surveys in 1872 and 1873, finally surveying the entire route between Cañon City and the Arkansas River’s headwaters near Leadville. Here, the Rio Grande made its first blunder. On March 3, 1875, Congress’s Right‑of‑Way Act became law, requiring all railroads to file a plat with the Department of the Interior detailing all plans for construction so that these lands could be reserved. Despite all their surveying efforts, no one from the Rio Grande filed any documents with the General Land Office, and yet the directors of the D&RG clearly understood the importance of this Act. But with several rival railroads rapidly approaching, it is possible that Palmer and his associates, ever-valuing secrecy, felt the undue necessity of keeping their activities clandestine, lest another railroad should steal their route. Nonetheless, their previously established priority claim never entered the General Land Office's records. In hindsight, this would prove a costly miscalculation.

A Despotic Denver & Rio Grande

Instead, Palmer and his railroad ran afoul of local sentiment. While the Denver & Rio Grande generally has been known for mining silver and other precious metals, black diamonds have been historically proven to be a far more stable source of income. Thus, the Rio Grande sought to reach the coal deposits near Cañon City and Trinidad. Facing rejection from Kansas Pacific, Cañon City and surrounding Fremont County submitted a bond of $50,000 to the D&RG in March 1871 to aid construction of the narrow gauge road (as railroads routinely required bonds for a line to be built into a town) with a stipulation that the Rio Grande should build directly from Colorado Springs and circumvent Pueblo. Palmer refused the bond and continued his planned extension into Pueblo that October. They reached Pueblo the next year, on June 19, 1872. That fall, the Rio Grande worked west from Pueblo and completed 36 miles of track into the coal fields at Labran (now part of Florence). Then, they graded the remaining seven miles of trackbed to the outskirts of Cañon City, but refused to lay rails, citing the unstable economic conditions that would eventually lead to the Depression of 1873. Ordinarily, this excuse would be acceptable as it appeared that expansion throughout the West, especially across the inhospitable terrain of the Rockies, was unlikely; but it seemed dubious, to Cañon City citizens, that the railroad had enough finances to grade 43 miles of trackbed from Pueblo into their county, place rails on top of 36 miles of it, and then fail to have the capital to put rails on the remaining seven miles. (In reality, the Rio Grande was rushing to reach the coking coal deposits near Trinidad to the south.) Their suspicions were confirmed when General Palmer demanded a bond of $100,000, double that of the original bond, for completion of the remaining seven miles, claiming that he could easily secure Cañon City’s business at Florence without the additional cost of an extension.

The despotic power of a railroad in those days was proven when, on May 21, 1873, chagrined by continual rejection, Fremont County acquiesced to Palmer’s long list of demands and voted to accept $100,000 in bonds to build track within three-quarters of a mile of Fourth and Main Street, in the downtown section of Cañon City, within six months; but when the issue reached the county commissioners they refused to issue the bonds. The ballot measure had passed by a bare majority of two votes, and the county commissioners did not see sufficient reason to bury themselves further into debt. So for a year, Florence enjoyed an economic boom from proximity to the railhead, while Cañon City merchants were forced to haul their freight, by wagon, seven miles into town. Finally, Cañon City, without the support of Fremont County, voted $50,000 in town bonds, plus an additional $25,000 worth of town real estate, if the Denver & Rio Grande would finish the line into their town as previously outlined. The railroad accepted and, in April 1874, they promptly laid track from Florence to the county seat, but only as far as three-quarters of a mile from Fourth and Main Street, as they were legally obligated, and not a single tie farther. Then, they acquired the $25,000 worth of real estate surrounding their new railhead. As can be predicted, the land that the railroad obtained blossomed quickly, while the downtown businesses expecting to receive service were still forced to haul passengers and freight some distance away, and their sector fell behind. The citizens of Cañon City began to resent the railroad.

Cañon City wasn’t the only town the Rio Grande abused. Construction halted in 1874 as a result of the Depression of 1873. Work resumed in 1876 as the crews marched southward to tap the coal mines at Trinidad. But the Rio Grande had developed a tactless habit of establishing its own townships near towns that already existed. Colorado Springs, South Pueblo, Labran, and El Moro were all established within close proximity of another town: Colorado City, Pueblo, Florence, and Trinidad. The town of Trinidad eagerly celebrated the Rio Grande’s advance, but in April 1876, a line was completed to rival town El Moro, five miles from Trinidad, as the terminus for the coal fields. The citizens of Trinidad were outraged as they felt they were being blackmailed for bonds, as Cañon City had been, just as they were hotly debating a similar enticement for the Kansas Pacific. For the next two decades, industry thrived in El Moro while Trinidad continued to be bludgeoned by each economic depression. This further infuriated the townsfolk in Trinidad, and they refused to do business with a railroad that supported their rival. They also refused to do business with merchants in Denver, and other towns along the Rio Grande, or any railroad that used the Rio Grande as a connection. One correspondent from the Colorado Tribune remarked, “the people [of Trinidad] will not purchase from [them] as long as the Denver and Rio Grande is the only road to carry the goods on. They will not patronize a railroad that was doing everything to injure them by building up a rival town.” Even as the Denver & Rio Grande was rapidly becoming associated with the Centennial State, the many towns and counties spurned by Palmer and his railroad were looking for a savior, and they would find that savior in a rapidly encroaching rival.