Missouri Pacific Railroad

“ Congress desired to connect by a railway the states on the Mississippi with the Pacific coast, and for that purpose, by the act of July 27, 1866, created a corporation known as the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad Company, and gave it a grant of lands to aid in the construction of a railway between Springfield, in the state of Missouri, and the Pacific coast. ”

“ The purpose is to protect the long haul routes of carriers. It is clear that, within the meaning of paragraph (4) , the mileage of the Missouri Pacific between its Mississippi river crossings and Ft. Smith lies between the termini of all routes through or from such gateways west-bound over the line of the Subiaco. The existing routes include these Missouri Pacific lines and give that company long hauls as compared with the length of the Paris branch. The latter is the only line of the company included in the Subiaco route. ”

“ Competitive groups of Northern capitalists energetically sought to outdo one another in getting the charters and appropriations for Pacific railroads. After a bitter warfare, in which bribery was a common weapon, a compromise was reached by which the Union Pacific Railroad Company was to have the territory west of a point in Nebraska, while to other groups of capitalists, headed by John I. Blair and others, charters and grants were given for a number of railroads to start at different places on the Missouri River, and converge at the point from which the Union Pacific ran westward. ”

“ America is the stage, the world the audience of today, while one act of the drama represents the booming of cannon on the Rapidan, the Cumberland and the Rio Grande, sounding the death knell of rebellion, the next scene has the booming of cannon on both sides the Missouri to celebrate the grandest work of peace that ever engaged the energies of man. The great Pacific Railroad is commenced and if you know the men who have hold of the enterprise as well as I do, no doubt would arise as to its speedy completion. ”

“ If the market shifts from Missouri to Kansas, it is estimated that Union Pacific stands to gain traffic revenues of several hundred thousand dollars annually from the development of the market, due largely to the fact that a railroad on whose line a shipper is located enjoys a substantial advantage in soliciting competitive traffic, and comparable losses may be reasonably expected by the railroads now serving the Missouri market. ”

“ Union Pacific became interested in the development in order to increase the volume of its traffic; for unlike the situation in the Missouri market it was, with a minor exception, the only railroad with tracks serving the proposed Kansas site. Because business in the Greater Kansas City area was believed insufficient to support a split market, partly in Kansas and partly in Missouri, the plan included taking steps to persuade dealers on the Missouri side to move to Kansas. ”

“ Building a railroad from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean was easily the greatest engineering feat that America had undertaken. In their day the Cumberland Road, and the Erie Canal, and the Pennsylvania Portage Railway had ranked among the American wonders, but none of these had been accompanied by the difficult problems that bristled along the eighteen hundred miles of track that must be laid across plain and desert, through hostile Indian country and over mountains. ”

“ Aside, therefore, from any reliance upon the doctrine of stare decisis, the act of 1871 must be considered as requiring the Union Pacific company to permit the trains of all roads terminating at the Missouri river at Omaha to use its bridge up to the fair limits of capacity, and on payment of reasonable compensation. ”

“ The last rail is laid, the last spike is driven. The Pacific Railroad is completed. The point of junction is 1,086 miles west of the Missouri River, and 690 miles east of Sacramento City.’ Signed: ‘Leland Stanford, Central Pacific Railroad. T. C. Durant, Sidney Dillon, John Duff, Union Pacific Railroad.’ The remaining spikes will now be driven, before the passage of the trains; and anybody who desires is invited to strike one blow each, in turn.”
Paddy Miles and Mr. Minkler had rapidly set the spikes; and immediately a regular line of people formed, to seize the sledges. ”

“ Messrs. DeLancey C. Smith, Henry I. Stimson and Forrest P. Tralles, for Protective Committee for Secured Serial 5 1/4% Gold Bonds of Missouri Pacific Railroad Co. and others.
Messrs. David M. Potts and Abraham Wilson, for Empire Trust Co.
Mr. Douglas B. Steimle, for Bondholders Protective Committee for Missouri Pacific Railroad Company General Mortgage Bonds. ”

“ The present Missouri Pacific Company is a different corporation from that which contracted with the Pullman Company. The original company owned and operated a railroad between St. Louis and Kansas City. This company owns and operates that road and others besides. It is a new corporation, created by the dissolution of several old ones, and the establishment of this in their place. ”

“ The high prices were made higher by the speed of construction. The Union Pacific built west from the Missouri River, but at the same time the Central Pacific was building east from Sacramento, under similar conditions as to government aid. ”

“ It was on the part of our government a sublime recognition of the power of steam, that, while it was struggling for existence, it gave its sanction to the Pacific Railroad enterprise. Curiously enough, it is through Kansas and Nebraska—the Epidaurus of our Peloponnesian war—that the two great rival Pacific Railroad routes are to run.
In the summer of 1861, the project of a trans-continental railway connecting our Pacific communities with the older population of the East first assumed a practical aspect. ”

“ A network of railroads covers the northern half of the State, in contrast with the southern half, where the mileage is small and a number of counties have no rail communication. The northern half has the advantage in that it lies in the course of some of the great transcontinental lines, and furthermore is less broken than the southern part of the State. A large number of lines cross the Mississippi at Saint Louis, while Kansas City and Saint Joseph on the western border are also large railroad centres. In 1860 there were 817 miles of railroad in the State ”

“ It was not until 1836, when work was begun on the Erie Railroad, that a plan was adopted for a single line reaching several hundred miles from an obvious point, such as New York, to an obvious destination, such as Lake Erie. Even then a few farsighted men could foresee the day when the railroad train would cross the plains and the Rockies and link the Atlantic and the Pacific. Yet, in 1850 nearly all the railroads in the United States lay east of the Mississippi River, and all of them, even when they were physically mere extensions of one another, were separately owned and separately managed. ”

“ This city has long commanded an important trade with various settlements on the Upper Missouri, the steamboats employed having transported as much as 45,000,000 pounds of freight within a single brief period of navigation. It is the shipping and distributing point of a vast area whose only railroad facilities are those afforded by the great transcontinental line that here crosses the Missouri river. ”

“ The large purchases of stock in other roads have assured it favorable connections in the Illinois Central and in the Baltimore & Ohio, and have modified the severity of competition with the Atchison.539 Including the Southern Pacific, its system reaches from Chicago to Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and the Gulf, and has an influential voice in two of the principal roads connecting Chicago with the Atlantic seaboard. At the same time, the extensive investment of Union Pacific funds to secure gains unconnected with increase of traffic over its lines has provoked merited criticism. ”

“ The “Then and Now” has revolutionized things in many other sections of the West as greatly as it has in this state. For “then” there was no Southern Pacific railway, no Union nor Central Pacific, no Great Northern or Northern Pacific, neither a Canadian Pacific, nor274 any transcontinental railway in existence. “Now” it is safe to say that 30,000 miles of railway have been built west of the Missouri river since “then.” And “now” great cities have sprung up on the sites that were “then” occupied by Indians and wild game. ”