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Rails to the Rockies: How Denver Got Two Railroads (Sort of), but Not the One It Really Wanted
- University Press of Colorado
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Contents Forward! v Building Denver Rails to the Rockies: 3 How Denver Got Two Railroads (Sort of), but Not the One It Really Wanted Eric L. Clements Denver’s Pioneer Medical Community: 1858–1900 11 Rebecca Hunt “ A Premonition of Our Future Grandeur”: 21 Building Denver’s First Schools Shawn Snow Women’s Space A More Perfect Machine: 35 Denver as the Birthplace of Women in Party and Electoral Politics, 1893–1897 Marcia Tremmel Goldstein Denver’s Disorderly Women 49 Cheryl Siebert Waite The Colorado Women of the Ku Klux Klan 59 Betty Jo Brenner [54.89.24.147] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 03:23 GMT) Cultural Identity In Search of Wealth and Health: 71 Denver’s Early Jewish Community Jeanne Abrams “I Am a Denver Indian!”: 83 The Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Relocation Program and Denver’s Native American Community Azusa Ono Urban Nature A Gateway Into the Mountains: 95 Denver and the Building of a Recreational Empire Michael Childers Modern Mountain Views: 105 Constructing Summer Homes and Civic Identity in Colorado Melanie Shellenbarger Inventing Cherry Creek: 115 150 Years of the Making of an Urban Environmental Landscape B. Erin Cole [54.89.24.147] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 03:23 GMT) Colorado History [54.89.24.147] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 03:23 GMT) Building Denver [54.89.24.147] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 03:23 GMT) Denver Inside & Out Rails to the Rockies How Denver Got Two Railroads (Sort of), but Not the One It Really Wanted Eric L. Clements Above: Laying the track for the Kansas Pacific Railroad. From New Tracks in North America by William A. Bell (London: Chapman and Hall, 1869). 10027376 4 D E N V E R I N S I D E & O U T solation was the greatest problem confronting Denver City in 1860. Horace Greeley, visiting in 1859, noted Colorado goods selling “at far more than California prices.” He recommended “a railroad from the Missouri to the heads of the Platte or Arkansas.” The locals certainly agreed, but Colorado’s first railroad wasn’t even intended for the territory. The Union Pacific crossed nine miles of northeastern Colorado in June 1867 on its way to Promontory Point, but the company’s decision that same summer to build north of Colorado was received with much dissatisfaction in Denver.1 To understand Denver’s enthusiasm for railroads, consider the alternatives . The town’s first stagecoach arrived in May 1859 after a nineteen-day slog from Leavenworth, Kansas. Service got faster, a week to ten days, but never much easier. Demas Barnes, traveling west from Atchison, Kansas, described the stagecoach experience as “fifteen inches of seat, with a fat man on one side, a poor widow on the other, a baby in your lap, a bandbox over your head, and three or four more persons immediately in front leaning against your knees.” Even the arrival of the railhead at Cheyenne in 1867 only alleviated the stage trip’s agony by decreasing its duration.2 And such abuse did not come cheap. In the spring of 1859, John M. Hockaday & Co. advertised stage service from Atchison to Denver City for $100 per passenger and board, with forty pounds of baggage. If you intended to do more than visit, you would need much more than forty pounds of kit. Pratt and Hunt’s 1859 Guide to the Gold Mines of Kansas recommended that a party of four outfit themselves with 3,000 pounds of supplies for a six-month sojourn at the mines. To haul this household, the guide suggested using oxen at $80 to $100 per yoke or mules for $125. Mules could make the passage from eastern Kansas to the mines in thirty days, oxen in thirty-five or so. The guide put the cost of moving freight by “freight express trains” over the same distance at $250 a ton. That first season one company advertised an ox-team “express” for $50, with a transit of “about 30 days.” One small detail: “Women, children or sick persons only will be allowed to ride by this express. To those accustomed to walking . . . this will be a pleasant and cheap mode of conveyance.”3 Western railroad explorations began even before the Mexican War officially ended. John C. Fremont led an expedition into the Colorado Rockies in December 1848, hoping to demonstrate the practicality of wintertime rail passage through the mountains. His demonstration ended with a third of his thirty-three-man party dead of exposure...