The Royal Gorge War

The Arkansas Valley Railroads

In 1872, Palmer’s former Kansas Pacific Railroad began construction of their Arkansas Valley Railway from Kit Carson and 76 miles south into Las Animas, which they reached in 1873.  They planned to continue onto Pueblo.  Meanwhile, the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe (AT&SF) was enjoying great success in Kansas and, in accordance with the Congressional Act of 1863, was owed an area larger than the state of Connecticut in federal land grants.  This land occupied an area extending 200 miles west of Emporia into Ford County, and then a further 135 miles west of Dodge City to the Colorado line, falling within the central portion of the Arkansas River Valley.  The Arkansas River begins near Leadville and passes through a narrow canyon to Cañon City.  From there, the river opens and continues through the Eastern Plains of Colorado and onto the fertile valleys of Kansas and Oklahoma, and finally empties into the Mississippi River in Arkansas.  This produces “the only arable land extending the whole distance between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains.”  After finishing its business in Kansas, the Santa Fe began carefully expanding into the drier and agriculturally unreliable regions west of Dodge.

Following their first rejection by the Denver & Rio Grande, the desperate citizens of Fremont County formally invited the Atchison Company to construct into their county along the proposed Kansas Pacific route in January 1873, but few railroads were willing to build in 1873 due to the unstable conditions leading up to the Depression.  The company was only able to get as far as Granada, Colorado, twelve miles from the Kansas border.  Still, in 1874, the company directors announced their plans to extend far into Colorado, via a subsidiary, intending to reach the coal reserves at Trinidad and Cañon City which was superior to any coal to the east.  Additionally, they hoped to harvest the abundant Colorado timber desperately needed in the plains of Kansas.  Unfortunately, their expansion into Colorado was further delayed by the aftermath of the financial panic and local depressions in Kansas, and the Denver & Rio Grande tapped these resources before them.  

Westward expansion resumed in 1875.  On March 24, the Santa Fe incorporated a new and independent company, the Pueblo & Arkansas Valley Railroad Company, which absorbed the Santa Fe’s previous subsidiary and all its charter privileges in Colorado.  The Pueblo & Arkansas then set its eyes on Pueblo, 135 miles west of Granada, where a connection would be made with the Denver & Rio Grande.  From there, they could extend north to Denver or follow their New Mexico ambitions by following the old Santa Fe trail from Trinidad to the south.

On September 13, 1875, the Pueblo & Arkansas reached Las Animas where Kansas Pacific already had a connection.  With two railroads expanding west of Las Animas, the delighted citizens of Pueblo had to make a choice.  In 1876, both Kansas Pacific and the Santa Fe submitted a bond request to the town of Pueblo for $200,000 to finish the line from Las Animas into their town.  The citizens of Pueblo voted in favor of AT&SF and Kansas Pacific canceled all remaining contracts west of Las Animas.  The line was completed on March 1, producing Colorado’s second connection to the East.  After the Pueblo & Arkansas completed its line into Pueblo, traffic shifted away from the Kansas Pacific who abandoned the Arkansas Valley Railway in 1877.  At only five years of existence, the Arkansas Valley Railway represents one of the shortest-lived railroads in the United States and the first abandoned railroad in Colorado.  This doomed Kansas Pacific’s transcontinental dreams and the company would be consolidated into the Union Pacific in 1880.

The War Begins at Raton

The Santa Fe’s advancement disrupted the cozy relationship that the Rio Grande had with the Kansas Pacific.  The D&RG would funnel traffic from the Front Range and send it east via the Kansas Pacific.  Now that the Santa Fe had connected directly with both Pueblo and Kansas City, they could easily disrupt Rio Grande and Kansas Pacific traffic.  Hesitantly, the three railroads entered a pooling arrangement.  The Denver & Rio Grande would divide its eastbound traffic evenly between the Kansas Pacific and Santa Fe.  In return, the Kansas Pacific would not build from Denver into Pueblo, and the Santa Fe would not build into Denver.  But this agreement quickly collapsed under the “pressures of mutual distrust and conflicting ambitions.”  But even as the Rio Grande had successfully constructed a branch west from Cuchara Junction (near present-day Walsenberg) over La Veta Pass into the San Luis Valley in 1877, many traders still hauled freight across the old Santa Fe Trail and over Raton Pass to connect directly with the Santa Fe Railroad at La Junta.  A Colorado railroad conflict was quite clearly heating up.  The AT&SF’s connection with Pueblo had stolen even more of the D&RG’s traffic, which would lead to strained finances by May of 1878.  The Rio Grande feared that the Santa Fe would continue to radiate lines into their most profitable districts; but the Rio Grande’s claim to Western Colorado appeared, at the time, to be safe, and they felt the necessity of securing a route into New Mexico.  Meanwhile, the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe was becoming increasingly desperate.  If the Denver & Rio Grande gained control of just one of a few strategic passes, the Santa Fe could be blocked from its transcontinental dreams and forever remain a local Kansas road just a few hundred miles in length.  The Santa Fe was already dependent on the Rio Grande for its eastbound coal exports, and further dependency would have proven disastrous.  Additionally, the Southern Pacific was lobbying a legislation in New Mexico that would protect the fearfully nationalist territory from a “Yankee invasion” by another railroad, which was quite clearly calculated to prevent any advancements from the Santa Fe.

The Denver & Rio Grande was an aggressive railroad that had clearly claimed Colorado under the strong direction of General Palmer, and the Santa Fe needed that same kind of leadership.  On November 1, 1877, the directors of the Atchison Company elected an outside man, William B. Strong, as general manager.  Within a few weeks, he was also elected vice president, and he would become president and director of the company within a few years.  Strong was a natural leader and a hard fighter who “loved opposition for the sake of overpowering it,” and it is because of his leadership that the Santa Fe has become the sprawling network that it is today.  First, Strong secured his company’s rights from the New Mexico legislature in opposition to the Southern Pacific’s efforts, and then he turned his eyes towards Raton Pass.

Part of the old Santa Fe Trail between Kansas City and the city of Santa Fe, Raton Pass is the only practical route over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains across the Colorado-New Mexico border.  The pass was already in regular use by the 1830s, but its rocky and inhospitable terrain made it difficult for wagons to cross.  After the Mexican-American War, the region became part of the United States under the ownership of Lucien Maxwell, who sold it to a venerable old man named Richens Lacey Wootton.

Wootton was the epitome of the Old West.  Give him just about any title—guide, frontiersman, Indian fighter, Indian trader, rancher, or moonshiner—and it was probably accurate.  Wootton was a bit of a celebrity and pioneer in Colorado.  On Christmas of 1858, when he was traveling through fledgling Denver, Wootton broke open two barrels of “Taos Lightning” whiskey that he brought with him from his hometown in New Mexico, which he offered free to any takers.  By the end of the day, the locals had given him the endearment of “Uncle Dick” and had convinced him into staying in Denver.  He gained a reputation for feeding poor visitors free-of-charge in his restaurant and hotel.  

After moving to Trinidad in 1861, Wootton set his eyes on paving a road into New Mexico by way of Raton Pass.  In 1865, Wootton secured franchises from the territorial legislatures of Colorado and New Mexico to build a 27-mile toll road over Raton Pass south of Trinidad.  Assembling a group of Ute laborers under Chief Conniack, Wootton cut down hillsides, blasted rocks, built bridges and graded the trail.  He constructed a tollgate in front of his home and charged $1.50 for a wagon, or 25¢ for a horse, but Indians were allowed to use the road free of charge.  The pass proved an immediate success, with over five thousand wagons using the pass in 1866, but as the Kansas Pacific and other railroads advanced, the old Santa Fe Trail became shorter and shorter, and it eventually fell into disuse.  The Junction City Union reported on August 31, 1867, that, “A few years ago, the freighting wagons and oxen passing through [Kansas] were counted by thousands, the value of merchandise by millions.  But the shriek of the iron horse has silenced the lowing of the panting ox, and the old trail looks desolate.”  Still, as the Santa Fe Railroad had already claimed the majority of the old trail with its tracks, most of the company’s New Mexico business still came from wagons over the pass, and it was critical that the Santa Fe gained control of Raton.

The man who would secure the Santa Fe’s rights was the extraordinary engineer Captain William Raymond “Ray” Morley.  Ray Morley, it will be reminded, had already surveyed various parts of Colorado for General Palmer, both when he worked for the Kansas Pacific and later for the D&RG and, by the summer of 1876, his surveys had been instrumental in the Rio Grande’s La Veta Pass project.  But later that year, Morley left the Rio Grande to join the Santa Fe Company as staff engineer.  Exactly why he abandoned his employer after so many years of loyalty is unclear, but it’s possible that he disapproved of Palmer’s heavy-handed tactics against Colorado’s towns.  His first task would be to secretly plot a route over Raton Pass for his new employer.  Fearing recognition, Morley disguised himself as a Mexican sheepherder, complete with a serape and a black slouch hat pulled over his eyes, befitting of a covert operative.   

In Pueblo, Strong would have to convince company president Thomas Nickerson to take the drastic measure of seizing Raton Pass.  One of the company’s East Coast investors, Nickerson was a conservative man who weighed the possible risks of every action.  It was vice president Strong’s unrelenting attitude overruling Nickerson’s moderation that allowed the Santa Fe to push forward with any reasonable speed.  And yet, the fact that Nickerson was in Pueblo and not at his headquarters in Boston indicates that he understood the gravity of the situation.  On February 20, 1878, the two began plotting their next course of action.

Morley was instructed to make acquaintance with Wootton, but not to act.  Adopting his prior disguise, Morley ascended the mountain accompanied by a flock of sheep that were being driven up the pass.  He arrived at “Uncle Dick’s” home and saloon and sat at a table in the back sipping some of the famous Taos liquor.  Soon, he would convince Wootton to sell his right-of-way to the Santa Fe, but General Palmer had already done most of Morley’s work for him.  As a Trinidad resident, Wootton already bore a resentment against Palmer and his railroad.  Additionally, Wootton’s tollhouse had gained a reputation for being the “devil’s own playground,” and Palmer, with his strictly Quaker values, had instructed his employees to keep clear of the establishment, earning Wootton’s ire.  In the end, “Uncle Dick” would turn down a large sum from the Santa Fe for his pass, instead asking for lifetime passes and $50 monthly credit for him and his wife to spend at the Trinidad general store.

After a long discussion, Strong convinced Nickerson to allow him to build south from La Junta, and then to conduct preliminary surveys of Raton Pass and Southern Colorado in the spring in whatever manner he thought best, authorizing only $20,000 for that purpose.  Instead, Strong chose to skip La Junta and begin construction immediately at Raton Pass.  On February 26, 1878, he promptly went to Chief Engineer Albert A. Robinson, who also happened to be in Pueblo, and instructed him to immediately go to the pass, occupy and hold it against all opposition.  Despite their stringent financial situation, the Rio Grande would not go down without a fight.  It appeared that General Palmer had kept himself apprised of the Santa Fe’s movements and had already placed a team at Raton Pass.  Palmer sent his chief engineer, John A. McMurtrie, to secure the pass for the Rio Grande.  It happened that both McMurtrie and Robinson traveled on the same Denver & Rio Grande train to El Moro, the nearest railroad town to the pass.  The distinction was that McMurtrie, after arriving in El Moro late that evening, had promptly gone to bed, while Robinson secured a horse and hurried overland to the home of Wootton on the north side of the pass, ready for any emergency.

At about 11 o’clock that night, Robinson heard, by special messenger from Trinidad, that the Denver & Rio Grande had organized a group of workers and were hurrying to Trinidad and then to the pass.  Chief Engineer Robinson, accompanied by Staff Engineer Morley, hurried to Trinidad.  It will be recalled that the Denver & Rio Grande had made deadly enemies of Trinidad for building up its chief rival of El Moro.  As a result, Robinson had no difficulty in procuring an emergency work crew while the town citizens stalled their opposition.  In the early morning hours of February 27, the Santa Fe workers, with the help of old Wootton, returned to the pass and began desperately grading under lantern light in the bitter winter cold.  By five o’clock they had begun work on the most difficult parts of the pass.  After he awoke, McMurtrie assembled a similar work crew in El Moro and began ascending the pass himself.  When the Denver & Rio Grande forces arrived at daybreak, they found their rivals in complete possession of Raton Pass.  Some bitter threats were exchanged between armed gangs of workers, but the Santa Fe declared that they would fight for possession of the pass.  Realizing their defeat, the Rio Grande men withdrew and briefly attempted to establish a rival line at nearby Gallinas Creek.  That route quickly proved impractical and, on April 18th, 1878, the Rio Grande, fearing threats and facing bankruptcy, ceded the pass.  The Rio Grande men returned to Cañon City while Palmer reorganized his drained company’s finances by May.  The Santa Fe continued onto New Mexico.

There is a question of why Palmer did not simply circumvent the Santa Fe Railroad at Trinchera Pass just another 35 miles east of his railhead at El Moro, especially as many of his associates were familiar with the region from their Kansas Pacific days.  But with his recent success at surmounting La Veta Pass, and with Alamosa only a few months’ work away, it’s possible that he felt he could still reach the city of Santa Fe by way of Cumbres Pass.  Regardless, the consequences of the Raton Pass dispute cannot be understated.  Had the Denver & Rio Grande claimed the pass, they could have been lured onto Mexico and become a truly great system.  Instead, the Santa Fe would become part of the second transcontinental system, with today’s impressive BNSF network spanning the United States and Canada, while the Denver & Rio Grande would be forever confined to three states.

It was thought that, after its victory at Raton Pass, the Santa Fe would lose interest in Colorado and abandon its interests up the Arkansas River Valley, but the war was far from over.  Dominion over New Mexico and transcontinental dreams weren’t enough for William Barstow Strong as the Santa Fe began looking towards Colorado’s Western Slope, and just as Raton Pass led to Northern New Mexico, the Royal Gorge is the gateway to the Rockies.

Morley's Great Ride

For 55 miles above Cañon City, the Arkansas River produces a narrow valley as it makes a mad dash down the Sawatch Range for the plains and prairies of Colorado and Kansas; and yet no part is as impressive as the eight miles immediately upstream from Cañon City.  Here the destructive power of water has cut a magnificent chasm out of solid granite.  Its rock walls rise for more than one thousand feet and it is only thirty feet wide at its narrowest point.  This imposing feature was aptly named the Grand Cañon of the Arkansas, but its sheer magnificence better lent itself to the title of the Royal Gorge.  The intrepid explorer Zebulon Pike once peered into the slender ravine and thought it best to circumvent it, only to mistakenly enter it from the opposite end a few weeks later.  Subsequent travelers established a wagon road around it over Eight Mile Hill, so-called because it was eight miles from Cañon City.  This narrow defile probably didn’t have enough room for a small footpath, and yet, for all of the Grand Cañon’s notoriety, this inhospitable terrain had an unmistakable appeal for a railroad.  The Royal Gorge boasted a consistent and railroad-friendly water grade of one percent leading directly into the richest portions of the Rocky Mountain country.  There is no contest that General Palmer and his associates were the first to identify this feature during their Kansas Pacific days in the 1860s, but it had been almost two decades since then, and now the Arkansas River’s siren song was inviting competitors from across the West.

In 1860, the region reached national attention when gold was discovered in the California Gulch near the headwaters of the Arkansas River.  Placer miners quickly settled in the boom town of Oro City, but by 1867, the gold had run out and the town was practically deserted.  The few miners whose gilded hopes remained continually grumbled about the ever pervasive “black mud” that clogged their sluice boxes and impeded the discovery of more gold.  But in June 1874, two industrious miners were clever enough to take a sample of the mud to an assay office where they discovered that the “black sand” was actually the lead mineral cerussite, containing twenty to forty ounces of silver to the ton.  This secret was well kept as the two miners staked claims in and around the area under the premise of producing just enough lead to pay for their operations.  But in 1876, ore buyer August Meyer brought a load to St. Louis for processing, and another in 1877.  This shipment had such high silver content that it caused a commotion among the mining community.  The silver was traced to its source, but with most of the California Gulch’s resources depleted, people descended upon an area about a mile away and Oro City was abandoned.   A hastily organized “Slabtown” was established at the site of the bonanza, but soon the “City in the Clouds” reached the same footing as Denver and its residents adopted the more permanent and respectable name of Leadville.

Cañon City was now the gateway to what modern geologists have identified as the “largest pockets of precious ores in North America,” but Leadville’s riches were still a distance away.  Over the small wagon road, freight rates between Cañon City and Leadville were four cents per pound over a distance of one hundred and twenty miles, a little more than the rates between Cañon City and New York, a distance of more than two thousand miles; and so the town sought to upgrade its endeavors through a railroad.  But Cañon City had already been rejected by the railroads on multiple occasions: first by the Kansas Pacific who considered Denver a better investment; then by the Denver & Rio Grande who chose to build to Pueblo; then by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe which was in no financial position to provide aid; and then again by the Denver & Rio Grande who, in the eyes of Cañon City residents, blackmailed them for funding.  Thus, the city felt the necessity of securing an independent railroad, organized to all appearances in February 1877, as the Cañon City & San Juan.  But the independence of this company quickly proved to be a farce—a fiction perpetrated by the Santa Fe Railroad, for the president of the company “did not know how many directors his company had, where his funds came from, or who were the bidders for construction.”  There were no provisions for construction, the company had no planned direction, and several board members later testified that “they had only the vaguest notion of the corporation’s workings or history.”  For answers, one only had to look to Santa Fe general manager William Barstow Strong, elected to the board April 10, 1878, who had ordered his engineer Henry R. Holbrook to survey the Royal Gorge in secret and establish the Cañon City & San Juan as a subsidiary.

General Palmer had become too comfortable in his perceived dominion over the way across the Rocky Mountains, but he was awakened when the Santa Fe stole Raton Pass right under his engineer’s nose even though Strong’s tracks lay almost a hundred miles away at La Junta.  For a while, the Rio Grande tried to establish a competitive route over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains at nearby Gallinas Creek, but this was soon abandoned for a number of reasons.  The Rio Grande felt that competing with another railroad was pointless when, as chief engineer McMurtrie later put it, “there was hardly business enough to support one.” Additionally, in late March, one of Palmer’s associates reported that a Leadville mine owner was headed east at the invitation of Strong.  Clearly, Strong was gathering information about the area and intended to make a move.  

On April 18, 1878, the decision was made to withdraw forces from Gallinas Creek and reconvene at the Royal Gorge.  But Santa Fe chief engineer A.A. Robinson, who had been watching the Rio Grande outfit as he continued his own work at Raton Pass, recognized this not as a cessation of work but as a reallocation of resources.  He immediately sent a telegraph to Strong, in El Moro, and reported his discovery.  Strong ordered Robinson to ensure that they did not “get left in occupying” the Royal Gorge, but the Rio Grande had control of the telegraph lines and were able to decipher his codes.  By April 19, they were preparing to dispatch more than a hundred men from Pueblo and onto Cañon City.  News of this reached Strong and he tried to secure a special Denver & Rio Grande train to Pueblo, but he was refused.  However, Robinson had delegated his task to assistant engineer W.R. Morley as the one least likely to “get left.”  Ray Morley was a logical choice given his recent success at surveying Raton Pass in secret, his earlier surveys of the Royal Gorge with McMurtrie while he was still under the employ of the Rio Grande, and his more recent surveys with H.R. Holbrook just the year prior.  Robinson would quickly learn just how well-placed his faith really was.

Morley secured a special Santa Fe train from La Junta to Pueblo, and he and his Santa Fe workers boarded the Denver & Rio Grande train for Cañon City; but the scheduled departure time came and the train did not move.  They waited longer and still the train would not depart.  They waited until mid-afternoon but the conductor still held the train.  Morley realized that they had been identified and the train would not move until the Rio Grande had occupied the Gorge.  Their suspicions were confirmed when wagons were secured to take the Santa Fe workforce to Cañon City, and the train departed as soon as all of the Santa Fe men were clear of the platform.  But Morley made a tactical decision not to wait for the rest of his men.  The six-wheeled narrow-gauge engine was small, and the track was new and crooked, and he realized that, if he left now, he could beat the train.  Morley procured a horse and began, at full gallop, the forty mile distance to Cañon City.  It was a race between the iron horse and flesh and blood, but flesh and blood cannot charge across the landscape for miles on end.  As the night wore on, the horse began showing clear signs of fatigue as its rider urged it onwards.  Just as Morley was within sight of Cañon City, the animal reached its limits and promptly dropped dead from exhaustion.  Immediately, Morley leapt off the horse and ran the remaining distance to Cañon City.

When he arrived at the offices of the Cañon City & San Juan, Morley demanded that they occupy the canyon on behalf of his employer.  He may not have realized that the CC&SJ was just another one of his employer’s puppets, and that Strong and A.A. Robinson had been hurriedly elected to the positions of general manager and chief engineer just the night before.  Still, the local citizens’ ardent contempt for the Rio Grande was alive and well, and it didn’t take long for a small army of townspeople to march to the Grand Cañon’s entrance equipped with shovels and firearms.  When chief engineer John A. McMurtrie and his assistant James R. DeRemer arrived with the Denver & Rio Grande forces half an hour later they were surprised at the small group of townsfolk who were apparently inspired to take possession of the Gorge.  They had already laid a chain from Cañon City to the mouth of the canyon and graded one hundred feet.  But Morley, the instigator of this usurpation, quickly made himself known and announced that he was a representative of the Cañon City & San Juan, that they had already begun work on the railroad, and that blood would be on the hands of whoever opposed them.  Had anyone else made these intimidations he likely would have been met with ridicule, but the heroics of Captain William Raymond Morley preceded him and the Rio Grande forces retreated to a position a few miles deeper in the canyon.

While Denver and other D&RG allies were dismayed, South-Central Colorado newspapers triumphantly reported the Santa Fe’s victory, with Pueblo’s Colorado Chieftain titling its story, “Catching Weasels Asleep, Or How Morley Outflanked McMurtrie.”  In honor of his efforts, Strong gifted Morley a gold-mounted rifle.  But Palmer had lost more than the Leadville mining prospects: he had lost his route up the rolling peaks and into the Rocky Mountains.  Although neither Palmer nor Strong believed that the conflict could be settled with violence, retaliation was swift and eager.  Both sides persuaded railroad workers to defect by offering higher wages.  Newspapers in Pueblo alleged that the Rio Grande workers cut the Western Union telegraph wires between there and Cañon City for the purpose of cutting off communications.  In a brilliant maneuver, J.R. DeRemer organized a small division of men, circumvented the Santa Fe’s camp, swam across the turbulent waters of the Arkansas River and made a camp on the north bank of that narrow entrance by the morning of April 20.  But this was undone when the Cañon City & San Juan obtained an injunction the same day and quickly served writs against John A. McMurtrie and Rio Grande treasurer Robert F. Weitbrec.  They were put on trial immediately and both were put under bonds for violating the injunction.  Denver’s Rocky Mountain News reported that, as a final retort, the Rio Grande men attacked the Santa Fe workers and threw their tools into the river.  From there, the battle moved to the courts.

DeRemer's Defense

In-Progress

The Battle at Pueblo

In-Progress