Railroads and Cattletowns Chapter 7 and 8

Railroads and Cattletowns
Chapter 7 and 8

Economical Terms

Corporation --Group of individuals that own a business

Proprietorship -- when a company is owned by an individual

Partnership -- Owned by two people who share company

Monopoly -- have no competitions for business

Free Enterprise -- owners compete freely for business

Subsidies -- Governmental gift of money or land

Railroads

Railroads wanted to be universal

During Civil War - found that tracks needed to be universal in size (gage)
4 feet 8.5 inches
Roman Empire
Wanted to build a railroad across the "whole United States"-- Transcontinental

Railroads

Received land grants from the Federal Government -- also Kansas City and State Governments gave grants

Use land for building tracks on or sell to homesteaders or businessmen

Many immigrants laid track for cheap labor

Irish in Kansas

"Hell on Wheels"

Wanted a town every ten miles on the tracks

Railroads

Railroads important to survival of early statehood Kansas had to have railroads
Brought people and supplies to Kansas easily
Change Nation from Rural to Urban

Rural - Small farms independent

Urban - Major industries and commercial farms

Missouri River, Ft. Scott and Gulf railroad

1st in Fort Scott

St. Louis, Fort Scott and Wichita Railroad (????-1883)

St. Louis, Fort Scott, Wichita and Western Railroad

Missouri Pacific Railroad

Kansas City, Fort Scott & Memphis Railroad Company

Frisco

The St. Louis, San Francisco Railroad ( Frisco )was a major employer in the Fort Scott area. As were all railroads in every community.

Kansas Pacific RR

The Kansas Pacific became a southern branch of the Union Pacific.
In September 1863, the Kansas Pacific Railroad began building the main line for passengers (immigrants) westward across the Great Plains -- from Kansas City--Wyandotte to Denver, CO.
The Kansas Pacific was the long-line railroad in the state for two or three years.

The first 40 miles was open in 1864 (from Wyandotte to Lawrence).

(Oct./Nov. 1866) -- One thing that added greatly to the growth and importance of Junction City after the completion of the Kansas Pacific Railroad to that point, was the fact that it was made the end of the first division of the road. This of course, necessitated the building of a roundhouse, and other workshops at that place which naturally drew a good many people to settle in the town.

Leavenworth became one of the termini, connections with the main line being made at Lawrence. In November 1866, trains commenced to run from Leavenworth to Junction City.

Through the efforts of Col. William A. Phillips, the Union Pacific Railroad was extended to Salina in 1867.

In 1868 it became the Kansas Pacific so that it was easier to refer to it.

Building starts to slow up possibly due to financial problems 1867/1869.

On April 3, 1870 the division was changed from Junction City to Wamego.

The Kansas Pacific was more profitable to build than to operate.

It remained the Kansas Pacific until it was consolidated with the Union Pacific in 1880 and takes that name again

Many Kansas towns owe their existence to the Railroads

Hoxie, Kansas was named for a vice president of the railroad when the Union Pacific decided to come through Sheridan County.

Skiddy, Kansas was named for a railroad man, Francis Skiddy of New York, a magnate of the Union Pacific Railroad.

Kansas Pacific RR

Kansas Pacific (Union) -- 1st to cross state

Build tracks from Wyandotte County along the Kansas and Smoky Hill Rivers to Denver Colorado

Hooked Up with the Union Pacific

Started 1866 reached Denver 1870

Many Irish emigrants used to build

Went bankrupt in 1873 -- Jay Gould merged with Union after purchase

Santa Fe RR

Santa Fe -- Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe -- Clyde K. Holliday, President wanted railroad to extend to California -- Southern route

Most famous of all Kansas Railroads

Santa Fe

1859 The Atchison Topeka Railroad was chartered by the state of Kansas. 1863 Santa Fe was added, a name which was and is popularly used for the whole road.

1871 In some places it was built directly over wagon ruts on the Santa Fe Trail.

1871 It was not until the spring of 1871 that the first seventy-five miles were extended to Newton, Kansas.

A branch line was built from Newton to the southern Kansas cattle town of Wichita, which assured its success as an important cattle shipping point.

Ten years later most of the trail herds headed for Dodge City, another shipping point on this famous railroad line.

Santa Fe RR

Topeka -(Jan. 66) Colorado ("73)

Owned Hotels and vast land holding in Kansas

Harvey Houses

Fred Harvey -- Harvey lunch counters in train stations, later developed into the "Harvey Houses" only hire single young women from back east to work "Harvey Girls"

KATY RR

KATY - Missouri, Kansas, & Texas (1865) Union Pacific Southern Branch
1868 started - 1869 to Fort Scott
First Railroad to lay track across Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma
eventually linked Kansas with Gulf of Mexico
Major in the Cattle boom years

There were several roads competing for a route to the Indian Territory. Their promoters were ambitious to extend their lines to the Gulf, to Mexico, or to the Pacific. Colonel Robert Smith Stevens and Judge Levi Parsons, New York promoters of the road that later became the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas, called the "Katy."

Levi Parsons had visions of a great empire for the Katy, especially if he could get generous land grants by beating James F. Joy, promoter of the Border Tier Road ("Joy Road") to the Indian Territory.

Originally chartered as the Union Pacific Railway - Southern Branch (Katy), his road started construction (diagonally from northwest to southeast) from Junction City to Chetopa in 1868.

Stevens and Parsons selected the site for a town that they would control.

Parsons was named for Judge Levi Parsons, promoter and president of the Katy Railroad.
The building of the road was a battle for time in competition with the "Joy Men."

To win, F. C. White was instructed to "Bull- whack" the builders of the road.

White City was named for F. C. White, superintendent of the Neosho Division of the Katy Railroad.

F. C. White was responsible for the construction of the road from Parsons to Fort Scott.

On June 6, 1870, the M. K. and T. Railway won a three-way construction race to the Indian Territory border. It earned the sole right to build south through the lands of the Five Civilized Nations to the storied Red River and Texas.

In March 1871, a line from Sedalia, Missouri built southwest to Ft. Scott and joined the main line at Parsons, Kansas.
March 1871 - the founding of Parsons, Kansas
In October 1871, the Katy (main line) reached The Three Forks near Fort Gibson Indian Territory.

On December 25, 1872 the North and South were united all along the churning frontier when the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Lines spanned the storied Red River and Denison, Texas, and linked with the Houston and Texas Central to give America a "new route to the Gulf."

The projected Northeastern Extension of the Tebo and Neosho Railroad (the Katy) went from Sedalia to a junction with the North Missouri Railroad (the Wabash) at Moberly. The construction of this line in 1873 forced open "the Sedalia gateway" and gave the Katy access to St. Louis.
The Katy's Northeastern Extension from Sedalia to Moberly was completed in late 1873.

As the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Extension Railway, the Katy was projected deep into Texas in 1878.
By 1888, it reached deep into Texas also extending the Sedalia, Missouri line to Hannibal.

By 1900, the Katy got a line from Kansas City to Parsons. One point on that line, Paola, had a branch going east to Sedalia, Missouri.
By 1915, the Katy overbuilt lines into Oklahoma and other areas and went into bankruptcy and receivership.

In 1923, it reorganized, spinning off 476 miles in seven lines.
In 1980 it started using a main line of the liquidating Rock Island line from Kansas City and Abilene and Herington south through Wichita, Enid, El Reno, Oklahoma and Ft. Worth, Texas which the Katy later operated as its Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas (O. K. and T.) subsidiary.
August 1988, Katy Industries sold the railroad to the Union Pacific.

Other significant Railroads

MO Pacific - 1870

Chicago Rock Island -- Chicago to west

Cattle towns

Homestead Act 1862 - Settle on land (3-5 years) make improvements. used by government to help settle "Great American Desert"

- Timber Culture Act 1862 - 1/4 section - plant trees (Eastern Kansas) 160 acres

The Timber Culture Act of 1873 was often utilized by homesteaders and pre-emptors alike to acquire additional land from the government, granting 160 acres of land to be utilized to cultivate timber, requiring planting and maintaining a minimum number of trees on a portion of the acreage for ten years (later reduced to eight years).

There was no residency requirement, so the settlers could file both a homestead or pre-emption and a timber culture claim. The purpose was to encourage the planting of trees to supply the requisite firewood and timber requirements of the settlers. The law was repealed in 1891, but allowed for the purchase of the lands for $1.25 per acre with four-year compliance. Settlers who had complied with the law and cultivated trees for eight years could receive patent to the land regardless of the number of trees that survived.

Railroads and towns kept frontier moving west crops and livestock allowed RR. to prosper

Cow towns and Trails

"Wild West" 1865 - 1890

Nickname of Kansas

Charateristics of

The Wild West :
There was a lack of law enforcement for a variety of reasons:

1) the new mining and cow towns sprang up quickly before government officials were in place.

2) the government disinclined to spend money on law enforcement and many appointed law men were unsuitable

3) the West was a vast area, difficult to police

4) there was a wide variety of conflicts between different economic groups - over cattle rustling, claim jumping in mining areas, fence cutting, and horse stealing as well as conventional crime: such as bank and train robberies

5) there were conflicts between different ethnic groups (blacks, whites, Indians, Chinese et al).

6) the end of the Civil War led to the demobilisation of many soldiers who found it difficult to adjust to civilian life

7) in the absence of law enforcement it was considered appropriate that individuals settled their own differences. This led to widespread shooting and vigilantism. Some men like Billy the Kid and Wild Bill Hickok became famous as gunfighters.

Eventually law enforcement did arrive with the appointment of U.S. marshals, town marshals, county sheriffs and judges. By the turn of the century the West was no longer wild

Abilene

(Joseph G. McCoy) Meat dealer from Illinois moved to Kansas and set up first loading station at Abilene

Shawnee Trail

- Baxter Spring used primarily by Katy railroad

Baxter Springs, Kansas, seemed ideally situated to capitalize on the cattle industry. Located just north of the Indian Nations in Kansas (and there was some debate at the time whether it was in Kansas, or was actually in the Nations), Baxter Springs was also just a few miles west of the Missouri border.

A military trail already led from Fort Gibson in the Nations through Baxter Springs and on north to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas -- an ideal route for cattle to be driven. A man named John Chisholm had already used the trail to supply Fort Scott -- the trail could very easily have become known as "Chisholm's Trail," but that particular name would go to another cattle route.

A man named John Baxter and his family had settled on 160 acres of land near where the military road crossed the Spring River in 1849, and opened a general store called "Baxter's Place." The Rev. Baxter, known as a gun-toting preacher, was gunned down in a property dispute.
Residents in the area, remembering the 6-foot-7-inch-tall preacher, and noting the numerous springs in the area, called their community Baxter Springs.

As Missouri became off-limits for Texas cattle, Baxter Springs welcomed them to Kansas. The community built stockyards with corrals capable of holding 20,000 cattle at a time, with plenty of grass and water.

The town calls itself the "First Cowtown in Kansas" and quickly developed the same sort of reputation that the other cowtowns also would get:

Here was a place for cowboys to unwind after several months on the trail, with lots of flowing liquor, card games and available women. At one time, "every third door was a gambling house or liquor saloon."

At 10 miles per day, it took a cattle herd 100 to 110 days to travel from Texas -- by way of Preston and Fort Gibson in the Indian Nations. A typical herd would be strung out for two miles, guided north by 15 to 20 cowboys

All told, about 25,000 to 35,000 cowboys rode the trails, driving 6 million to 10 million cattle and a million horses. Not all went to the railheads in Kansas and slaughterhouses back east; many went farther north to breeding herds in the Dakotas, Montana, Nebraska and Kansas,

Cattle trails

Jesse Chisholm

Jesse Chisholm was part-Scottish, part-Cherokee. A trader, interpreter, guide, businessman and, occasionally, finder of lost or kidnapped children, he had already traveled the trail numerous times, hauling freight from Kansas to stock his trading post -- or rather, trading posts. I've heard it said he was among the first to create a chain of convenience stores.

Some historians note with misplaced irony that Jesse Chisholm never drove cattle on the trail that bears his name. Imagine! To have a cattle trail named after you -- the most famous cattle trail on the planet -- and never to have driven cattle on it!

- Caldwell southern most loading point in KS
in 1880, Caldwell became a rip-snorting cowtown and continued to serve that purpose through 1885.

- Wichita most famous of larger cities
- Newton
- Abilene
- Ellsworth

Trails come to Kansas

Texas Fever

Caused by ticks

Infected settler’s livestock in Mo.

Cattle trails

Western and Part of Chisholm
- Dodge City-- most famous part of wild west era roughest and most publicized
herds broke off from the well-traveled Chisholm Trail and marched northeast to Dodge City. The "Queen of the Cowtowns" reigned from 1877 through the cattle driving era, in 1885. Cattlemen began using the Great Western Trail, up through the western part of Indian Territory, in an almost direct route north to Dodge City.

The Santa Fe Railroad arrived at Dodge City in 1872 and with it came immigrants, card sharps and buffalo hunters.

The first marshal was appointed in Dodge City after its incorporation in November 1875.

The railroad tracks were known as the dead line. Respectable saloons and businesses were located north of the line. South of the line lawmen made little effort to enforce ordinances unless a complaint was made or an actual fight broke out.

Immigrants -- railroads and settlers

People- - Russians, Chezk, Mennonites, Germans, Swede

Russians --Turkey Red Wheat, Mennonites - stone masons

Exodusters

Benjamin "Pap" Singleton 1879 "Exodusters"

Exodusters

Leader of Blacks - from South

work as miners helped to break up strike

Exodusters

Singleton set his sights on Kansas, where he and a partner named Columbus Johnson staked out a black settlement in Cherokee County (which failed)

he formed a company with Johnson that helped hundreds of black Tennesseans move to Kansas between 1877 and 1879.