The Junior Historian, Volume 28, Number 1, September 1967 Page: 8
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THE JUNIOR HISTORIAN
ROUNDHOUSE TO ROUNDHOUSE
by JAMES L. WALL
Marfa High SchoolAFTER THE CIVIL WAR, Presi-
dent Abraham Lincoln urged
Congress to unite the East and
the West with a rail belt. The first rail-
roads to streak across the West were
the Central Pacific and the Union Pa-
cific. On May 10, 1869, the celebrated
gold spike was driven at Promontory,
Utah, to unite the first transcontinental
railroad, from Sacramento to Omaha.In the nineteenth century, America
traded with China and India. America
had not developed steamships at that
time, so all they had were sailing ves-
sels. In order to sail from California to
China, the ships would have to sail to
the Tropic of Cancer to get into the
trade winds from South America to
the eastern ports of China. This brought
about the need for a more southern rail-
road in the United States.
The first mention of a southern rail-
road from the Mississippi River to the
Pacific coast was made in Baton Rouge,
Louisiana, on February 9, 1855, in an
address to the legislature of the state.
This address was given by a lawyer from
New Orleans speaking in behalf of a
group of businessmen. He urged the con-
struction of a railroad from Louisiana to
California for the purpose of getting
American merchants to trade with the
Far East.
Since 1851, there has been a large
group of short-line railroads in Louisiana
and Texas. Some of these were the Mor-
gan, Louisiana, and Texas Railroad fromNew Orleans to Lafayette; the Louisiana
Western Railroad from Lafayette to Sa-
bine; and the Texas and New Orleans
Railroad; plus other small lumber rail-
roads that grew into what is known to-
day as the Southern Pacific Lines.
The Southern Pacific received its im-
petus in 1874, when C. P. Huntington,
a stockholder in the Central Pacific Rail-
road, formed a business venture with
T. W. Pierce, who lived in Galveston.
They acquired an interest in what was
called the Galveston, Harrisburg, and
San Antonio Railroad. This line was built
from Houston to San Antonio. By 1885,
they had obtained other short, connect-
ing lines all the way to New Orleans.
As the Galveston, Harrisburg, and
San Antonio pushed the rails from San
Antonio toward the West, the Southern
Pacific arrived in El Paso from San Fran-
cisco in 1880-just forty-five days ahead
of the Santa Fe Railroad. The Southern
Pacific was the first railroad in El Paso.
At that time, Huntington and Pierce
were pushing westward, the Texas and
Pacific Railroad engineers were con-
structing its line from Dallas to El Paso
also. Because of the mountainous coun-
try, two different railroads cannot go in
the same direction in West Texas with-
out using the same pass. The shortest
way to El Paso is via Sierra Blanca. The
United States government granted land
near Sierra Blanca to the first company
that built tracks through the pass. The
Texas and Pacific began their construc-
tion in El Paso but stooped because the
Southern Pacific had continued its work
from El Paso through the pass and
claimed undisouted ri ht-of-wav and
land title to the Sierra Blanca Pass.
The Southern Pacific construction gang
and the Galveston, Harrisburg, and
San Antonio gang met each other at 2:00
P.M. on January 12, 1883. This was at
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Texas State Historical Association. The Junior Historian, Volume 28, Number 1, September 1967, periodical, September 1967; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth391552/m1/10/?rotate=90: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.