TRACKS ACROSS TEXAS
by Matt Walter
Photo courtesy the Yana and Marty Davis Map Collection,
the Museum of the Big Bend, Sul Ross State University, Alpine.
This 1886 map by George Cram, entitled simply “Texas,” shows the railroad
in the western portion of the state along with the towns and watering holes
along the railroad.
B efore the Republic of Texas period,
transportation in Texas was
largely limited to coastal and river
navigation and a few primitive wagon
roads. That is why most all early Texas
settlements, during both the Spanish
and Mexican periods, were along the
coast or up rivers.
In 1836, the Republic of Texas chartered
the Texas Rail Road, Navigation
and Banking Company to build the first
railroad in Texas, but the company collapsed
within two years without ever laying
a mile of track.
A couple of subsequent charters also
ended in failure, but following the
annexation of Texas by the United
States, the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and
Colorado Railway Company was chartered.
By 1852, this company had laid
25 miles of track between Harrisburg
(now Houston) and Stafford’s Point and
purchased its first locomotive. It was the
first railroad in Texas and is the oldest
component of the present Southern
Pacific. In 1870, the name was changed
to the Galveston, Harrisburg and San
Antonio Railway.
Three years later, the Galveston and
Red River Railway Company was chartered.
Shortly after laying its first tracks,
the company’s name was changed to the
Houston and Texas Central Railway
Company. In 1856, the city of Houston
built its own 7-mile railroad, the
Houston Tap, which linked the HTC
with the BBBC. By 1860, there were
nine railroad companies operating on
some 470 miles of tracks in Texas, mostly
centered around the Houston,
Galveston and Brazoria area. The capital
for building these railroads came primarily
from state land grants and loans.
With the exception of the Texas and
New Orleans Railroad Company, the
Civil War (1861-1865) brought railroad
construction to a virtual halt in Texas.
Begun in 1857, the Texas and New
Orleans Railroad Company had laid 80
miles of tracks between Houston and
Beaumont when the war broke out. By
1862, soldiers had finished laying the
rest of the 30 miles of tracks needed to
link the two cities, and the railroad was
used extensively as a Confederate supply
line for the duration of the war. Despite
the name, however, the Louisiana portion
of the tracks would not be completed
until 1880. A year later, this company
would be purchased by C. P.
Huntington and the Southern Pacific
Railroad Company.
During Reconstruction (1865-1877),
various companies – along with occupying
federal forces – laid tracks which
linked Dallas and Austin with the rest of
the state. In 1870, the Missouri-Kansas-
Texas Railroad was incorporated,
becoming the first railroad to enter
Texas from the north. The “K-T,” or
“the Katy,” as it was commonly called,
eventually would link Kansas City and
St. Louis with Dallas, Waco, Temple,
Austin, San Antonio, Houston and
Galveston. In 1872, the Houston and
Texas Central Railway Company
reached Denison, becoming the first
Texas railroad to link up with the national
railway system. The Houston and
Great Northern Railroad and the
International Railway Company, both
operating in East Texas, combined in
1873 to form the Great Northern
Railroad Company. Three years later,
the only federally chartered railroad in
Texas, the Texas and Pacific Railway
Company, finished laying tracks that
linked Texarkana and Fort Worth.
By the end of Reconstruction, the
railway system in East Texas had
become well developed, but the western
half of the state remained isolated. This
changed in the early 1880s, however, as
the Galveston, Harrisburg and San
Antonio Railway (partly owned by
Collis P. Huntington, owner of the
Southern Pacific) and the Texas and
Pacific Railway Company (owned by Jay
Gould) both raced to lay tracks across
West Texas. As the GH&SAR laid
tracks westward from San Antonio, the
T&P took a more northerly route out of
Fort Worth. Meanwhile, Huntington
and the Southern Pacific laid tracks eastward
from Yuma, along a route which
had been surveyed by Gould’s men.
Gould filed suit against Huntington for
having used a route that had been surveyed
by his company, but the dispute
ended up being settled by a handshake
between the two men. The “Gould-
Huntington Agreement” of Nov. 26,
1881 resulted in both railroads joining in
Sierra Blanca and then sharing operations
along the single line west of there.
Gould himself drove the silver spike at
Sierra Blanca on Dec. 15, 1881.
It would be two more years, however,
before travelers could actually make the
journey directly between San Antonio
and El Paso, due to the difficulties
encountered with building a railway
across the Pecos River. The first crossing,
constructed near the mouth of the Pecos
as it empties into the Rio Grande,
involved cutting two tunnels and the
construction of a steep and winding rail
known as the Loop Line. The first
bridge across the Pecos River was completed
in 1883, and the “Sunset Route,”
as it was nicknamed, finally began carrying
passengers between San Antonio
and El Paso. Due to rock slides, however,
the Loop Line was abandoned less
than a decade later in favor of the construction
of a bridge five miles further
upriver, a route which also shortened the
journey between San Antonio and El
Paso by more than 10 miles. The Pecos
High Bridge, which stood 321 feet above
the river, was opened on March 30,
1892, becoming the highest railroad
bridge in the country.
During the next two decades, the
Texas railroad systems went through a
series of consolidations, as larger railroads
like the Southern Pacific, the
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Rail -
road Company and the Missouri Pacific
Railroad Company bought up numerous
of the smaller railroads in the state.
At times, bribes, favoritism, nepotism
and secret monopolies were the order of
the day, and thus in 1890 the Texas
Railroad Commission was established
with the goal of cleaning up the railroad
companies who were violating the Texas
Constitution.
As the 20th century began there were
still major areas in Texas which were not
reachable by railroad. Between 1900
and 1930, tracks were laid that joined
the Rio Grande Valley and the Texas
Panhandle with the rest of the state. By
1930, Texas had more railroad tracks
than any other state in the country, a
position it still holds today.
With the building of the interstate
highway system, following the Second
World War, passenger travel by rail
decreased dramatically in Texas. In
1971, Amtrak took over the remaining
passenger railroad services in Texas.
However, the use of rail to ship freight
continued to expand, with rail lines
transporting everything from agricultural
products to oil to cars across the country
and the state. Consolidation of railroad
companies also continued, to the
point that today most all the tracks in
Texas are operated either by the Union
Pacific Corporation or the Burlington
Northern and Santa Fe Railroad.
10
Cenizo
Fourth Quarter 2011