Rio Grande Western

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From Daughters of Utah Pioneers, Our Pioneer Heritage, Vol. 10, pages 137-192 (published in 1967)

The Rio Grande Western Railway

In the year 1870, newspapers told of a railroad being planned for the west. It would crowd out the wagons hauling away newly found wealth. Up to that time, the early settlers figured they had the best they could hope for--stages for mail and passengers and slow freight wagons to haul in freight. William Jackson Palmer, a surveyor before the Civil War and a general when the war ended, put his blue coat and his ribbons aside and started working for the Kansas-Pacific Railroad because it was stretching westward. Four years after the war ended, the ex-general came with the railroad as superintendent, laying the first rails into Denver.

Then he decided to go into business for himself because a pan or a sluice box just would not produce enough daily "dust" to keep a man in grub. It was the "hard rock" miner's turn now. But large-scale gold mining at high altitudes required heavy machinery up near the peaks, and economical transportation to bring down the bulky ores. That is where Palmer and his Rio Grande entered the picture. He needed money, and his friend, William Bell, knew how to raise money and he did, but not enough to build in the usual way. The easiest way was to make everything smaller--the passenger vehicles, the freighting units, track layout, and the locomotives.

To build a railroad through the mountains was very expensive. The ties for the narrow gauge railroad had to be shipped from England until Mr. Palmer formed a company, The Colorado Coal & Iron Company, to make the rails for his train to run on instead of the imports. To lay cross ties and rails on long roundabout routes in the remote rugged areas was expensive construction. To get locomotive fuel, new coal fields had to be found and tapped. Ties had to be hand-hewn at "tie camp" villages in the forests. Road beds had to be gouged in cliffs a thousand feet high; canyons spanned by trestles. Everything to support a railroad would have to be developed. Impossible grades had to be ascended and there were tunnels to cut through granite peaks. On July 28, 1871, a spike anchored a rail, a yard of it weighed only 30 pounds. It came from England.

A mule was the original switch engine and a piece of plain paper served as a timetable. When three miles of track had been laid, a couple of weeks later, a miniature train was pointed south [p.172] from Denver. Sure enough it moved, up to 15 miles per hour. The baby narrow gauge D. & R. G. Railway had taken its first step.

The Green Light

An interesting description of living conditions during the building of the Colorado division of the road was found in the diary of John Barker of Logan:

We arrived in camp on Wolf Creek--shoveled away 18 inches of snow and camped in tents. The track layers should have been farther ahead, and H & H (Hammond and Hendricks) took the train--so the R. R. furnished tents, stoves, tools, and work until we do get on the construction train. On Jan. 1, 1881, opened store in the tent and sold $80.00 of goods. Hammond & Hendricks took charge of the camp. C & F men are all working for H & H. In one corner of our tent sleep Bro. Hendricks and one of his sons, in another corner Bro. M.D. Hammond and in another next the store our bed--hay spread on the ground divided by ties--the goods near the door. I was very busy for several days, Wille went to help in the kitchen. We had 2 cook tents, 3 stoves, 4 or 5 cooks and 2 dining tents and about 12 sleeping tents--the night guard came along in the mornings at 5, calling, "Roll out boys." I got up, lit the fire, thawed out Wille's boots and started him to the Kitchen, and often Breakfast was eaten while it was freezing on the table, and the cry came, from Bro. Orchard "All aboard" and men started out to work before daylight in gum boots, overshoes, big coats, gloves, etc., with all short-handled shovels with iron handles, shoveling snow off the grade. Bro. Orchard's wife and 3-year-old boy and J. W. Hendricks' wife are here and eat in their tent with the Bosses. I also have charge of the kitchen supplies. About the 10th or 15th we moved camp down here to Chama, for the train had passed us, and now we are camped on a small willow bottom 1/2 mile from town. The wagon road 2 Rods on one side the R. R., 10 rods on the other, but here the ground was not frozen under the snow H & H has a camp of 25 men and teams 20 miles down the road hauling in 40,000 ties. And now that I have caught up with my books in which I have 200 accts., I have a very easy time.

Again quoting from The Green Light:

For the next three years he (Palmer) moved ahead, then for four years there was a depression and a court battle, which the D. & R. G. won against the Santa Fe in the U. S. Supreme Court. During the years of idleness, the Rockies had been invaded by surveyors--over 500 of them. They made the way easier with their transits. They also saw rich fertile valleys good for farming and grazing, forests of timber, rich veins of ore, all waiting for a railroad. They talked about it to [p.173] other men, so then came the miners, the stockmen and the men looking for homes.

In 1881 Palmer incorporated the Rio Grande in Utah. His Colorado Company was rapidly approaching Grand Junction and his Utah forces had to rush to make their appointed rendezvous at the Colorado-Utah line. In less than two years, his hardy Mormon track gangs scaled the Wasatch and raced across eastern Utah to make contact with the west-bound track gangs on April 8, 1883. A month later the world's longest narrow gauge railroad--720 miles from Denver to Ogden--was open for business. (End of quote.)

The Deseret News, commenting upon the completion of the line to this point said:

The Rio Grande Western road enters Utah a few miles south of what is the Book Cliffs. It passes over a most uninviting country from Grand Junction to Sunnyside. Here it begins to enter a fertile valley among some mesas, and nine miles farther, at Castle Gate, it enters the coal camps, following up Price River Canyon until that gorge opens out into Pleasant Valley at its head. It then ascends this high plateau and crosses the range at Soldier Summit about 7,464 feet above the sea. Thence it descends Spanish Fork River, passing through the Wasatch at Spanish Fork Canyon, thence out into Utah Valley, circling around Utah Lake along the line of fringing settlements to the lower end, where it follows the Jordan River for a few miles and then enters Salt Lake Valley. It traverses the center of this valley to Salt Lake City, and thence runs northward to Ogden. It derives its surname, "The Scenic Route" from the many beauties and wonders of nature through which it passes.

General William J. Palmer, David C. Dodge and William A. Bell now turned their attention to furthering the road in Utah. The Salt Lake Herald of May 14, 1881, carried this message:

The railroad law in force in this territory makes it necessary that of the incorporators of any railroad to be run within the limits of Utah, two thirds shall be actual residents of this territory. Now the Denver and Rio Grande is a private corporation, and did not get its charter from Congress, as did the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific, and for that reason it is forced to comply with the provisions enacted by the legislatures of the several territories and states through which the road intends to run. For this reason the Denver and Rio Grande people induced some friends in this city to organize a company as required by the laws of Utah to secure the right-of-way for its line through this territory.

The smaller railroads acquired by the Denver and Rio Grande were those built to Utah mines; such as, the Bingham Canyon and [p.174] Camp Floyd, the Wasatch and Jordan Valley, and Utah and Pleasant Valley.

In 1881 the stockholders of the Denver and Rio Grande were offered the option of buying stocks and bonds in the new corporation "at six percent interest, plus a bonus of $500.00 of stock, or every bond taken at par." Although the Western was not finished, the Denver and Rio Grande leased it in 1882 for a period of thirty years, and this involved 300 miles of track, running from the Colorado boundary to Salt Lake City. Other small lines later aggregated 469 miles. The management of the road was given to a chosen superintendent who was assigned the responsibility of operating and actually managing all the services of the new railroad. It must be said that the two companies, the Denver and Rio Grande and the Denver and Rio Grande Western, were different companies, although they were officered by about the same men.

Both the people of Colorado and Utah seemed worried about who would obtain control of the trade of the agricultural products and other branches of business.

From an editorial in the Deseret News we quote:

The Denver papers are having a great deal to say about the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad and its connection with Salt Lake and Ogden. Some sensible remarks are made and some not so sensible. It is conceded that Utah will, by means of the new line, obtain control of the grain and vegetable trade with western and southwestern Colorado, and perhaps of other branches of business. But the fear that the new road will discriminate in freight for the special benefit of Utah dealers and against the Denverites, appears to us ill rounded and unreasonable. Also, the notion that special efforts will be made in favor of the "Mormons" seems to us groundless and absurd.

Completion of the narrow gauge railroad line will no doubt prove as beneficial to Utah as to other sections of the country. The road which offers the best facilities and rates to patrons will gain their trade. One road will doubtless prove the more advantageous to some shippers and buyers and the other road to others. There will be trade enough for all. Utah is bound to grow and advance in business of every kind, and whichever road gains the greater patronage will obtain it on business principles, into which mere sentiment will not enter. It will be neither "Mormon" nor "Gentile" distinctively--it will be neither Union Pacific nor Rio Grande as a matter of friendship or hostility. There is room for both roads and traffic also and we wish them both success.

On March 30, 1883, the Denver and Rio Grande crews met those of the Western at Green River, Utah, and here the last spike was driven and the rails joined together. The Saturday Evening Deseret News of March 28, 1883, published the following:

[p.175] The Denver and Rio Grande Railroad is expected to complete its line connecting the capitals of Colorado and Utah by Friday, March 30th or Saturday the 31st at the latest. Regular passenger traffic however will not be commenced just yet, but the road will be open for freight by the 1st of April.

The benefits of this new outlet for Utah will be very soon perceived. Leaving out all considerations of the competition which it may promote for the passenger and carrying trade to and from the east, there will be new fields opened for local enterprise. Between Salt Lake and Denver, supplies will be needed by the settlers in new places, and our farmers and gardeners will find a market for their produce all the way to the Colorado center.

Utah vegetables and fruit are noted for their excellent quality and flavor. The new road will afford facilities for their shipment to points both in Utah and Colorado, where they are not raised at present and will not be for some time to come.

The connection of this city with Denver, of this Territory with the flourishing State of Colorado, cannot fail to be beneficial to our commercial interests, if our business men and producers are only wide awake to the opportunities that will be afforded them by the completion of the new road. We congratulate the Denver and Rio Grande Company on their enterprise, and wish it full and complete success in every way.

The editors of the Young Women's Journal, a publication of an auxiliary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints published the following in 1896:

Utah's most important railroad is the Rio Grande Western Railway--at least that progressive corporation has been closely identified with the growth and development of the State since March 1883, when the last rail connecting the east with the west, was laid. It begins and ends in Utah except that small part of the main stem which dips into the Centennial State to join forces with its strong eastern connections. A brief outline of its history is all that this space will permit, but in that short delineation it will be the purpose to place before our readers the fact that the Rio Grande Western Railway has made itself by building Utah. It has been sufficiently enterprising to realize that in the ambition, purposes and development of this great State lay its own success. The railroad therefore, has always joined hands with the elements that have led in the prosperity of the State. It has been a puissant case of casuistry with the officials of the company, that to develop the natural resources of the State their efforts must lie in the direction of reclaiming the vast arid regions,--and, while it must be admitted that the railroad is not the result but the very means of civilization, and that the penetration of the desert with these drastic threads of steel would naturally result in the ultimate reclamation of all available soil and resources -- nevertheless, these men of the R.G.W. have [p.176] encouraged and fostered every enterprise, every hope, every thought, until now the State with the added stimulus it has received in becoming one of the union of States, has its diversified abundant resources in the trend that leads to perfected development.

The Rio Grande Western Railway was not the first to push its way into the desert and valleys of Utah, nor is it the last. Others will come, but while we are waiting, the R.G.W. is silently forging through in the valleys and passes in its onward march to the sea. Its Sanpete and Sevier branch, completed to Manti in December 1890, and to Salina in July of the following year, and now in the course of construction to Richfield and Marysvale, is perhaps the only line of railway extension now being built between the Missouri River and the western coast. The total mileage of the Rio Grande Western is not great--it has but 530.9 miles in its system, but its branches to Eureka and the Tintic mining district (completed in December 1891), to Bingham, to Scofield, and to Salina, thread the valleys of the State, making it possible for the husbandman to market his goods, and the miner to sell his product. This little line of railway has kept abreast of the times in other ways. Its road bed and equipment have been fashioned after established successes of the older allies of the east. All modern appliances for the safety, convenience and comfort of its patrons are ferreted and adjusted to its requirements.

If the future of a new State is dependent upon its enlargement, liberality and aid of its transportation facilities and influence, then the young State of Utah with an organization of the character of its greatest railroad, may front the future without fear of disappointment. (End of quote.)

The Rio Grande Western was originally a narrow gauge line, hence its other surname: "The Little Giant." Later, its business having demonstrated the necessity of a closer tie between its connections east and west for the purpose of handling' more efficiently its increasing through traffic, and preventing or postponing the building of paralleled and rival lines, it was determined to broad gauge the road. The necessary funds were promptly raised and the work forwarded to a finish.

Tintic District

In 1891 the Rio Grande Western entered Tintic by way of Homansville Canyon from the Utah County side, and gave the district the advantage of two railroads. By 1905 thirty-one mines were shipping by way of the Rio Grande and the Salt Lake Railroads, and in 1906 the unusually large production for the year was valued at eight million dollars. This was helped by the Beck Tunnel and the Colorado Consolidated, which had come into production. In 1908 a custom ore sampling mill was erected at Silver City and could be served by both the wide gauge railroads as well as the narrow gauge of the Eureka Hill Railway, which was built by the Knight Syndicate to haul their ores to this sampler, as well as to the smelter which the Knights were also building near Silver in that year. -- History of Juab County, DUP

Thistle to Manti

[p.177] A standard gauge roadbed was graded from Thistle southward to Manti in 1890, on which narrow gauge track was laid, the purpose being to plan for standard gauging later. This line was completed on December 29th. In 1891 a separate corporation, the Sevier Valley Railway Company, was organized for the purpose of extending the Thistle-Manti branch. This extension was leased to and operated by the Rio Grande upon completion July 15th. In the meantime, the original Thistle-Manti branch was standard gauged, thus creating a through standard gauge line running from Thistle to Salina. This branch was built to give the Rio Grande entrance into the fertile valley of the Sevier River. Sanpete County had developed by this time into one of the richest agricultural areas of the state.

During the years of 1890-91 the Rio Grande Western Railway was extended through the entire Sanpete County from north to south, connecting all of the prominent cities and towns, and adding over sixty miles to the railroad trackage in the county. Two years later, the Sanpete Valley was extended to Morrison and made a standard gauge. These roads furnished employment to many citizens and opened a market for ties and timbers, thus stimulating a lumber-making industry until the vast resources of the canyons were partially utilized in the rapid accumulation .of homes and property for which the county is noted far and near, wherever its people are known. The railroads opened the dormant channels of trade, established new telegraphic services and express delivery, and placed every colony of the county on the great highway of commercial prosperity.

In the meantime, in 1900, the Rio Grande had extended its main Sevier Valley branch on southward to Marysvale, and into Salina Canyon in 1903. This line was abandoned in 1942.

Provo to Heber

In 1898 the Rio Grande built a branch through Provo Canyon from Provo to Heber City. This same year the Pleasant Valley branch was extended from Scofield to Clear Creek by the same company, and later a branch was built to Sunnyside.

In 1900 the Rio Grande standard gauged the Park City branch, finishing on July 1st of that year. This entailed the construction of a connection from Sugar House to the yards at Roper, the only previous connection being with the Salt Lake and Fort Douglas Railroad, and much regrading and realigning throughout the length of the line. A branch from west of Midvale to Garfield was completed in 1905, and another from two miles west of the same point was begun to run above Bingham to the extensive copper mining operations being developed there by the Utah Copper Company. Completed in 1906, the purpose of the two lines was to haul low grade ore from the mining operations to the mill at Garfield.

Soldier Summit

During 1912 surveys were made to eliminate the four percent grade between Tucker and Soldier Summit. The great tonnage of coal and increasing amounts of through freight had reached proportions which could no longer be crowded through this [p.178] bottleneck. The new line was built in conjunction with the Utah Railway which gave a joint trackage agreement to the new company. Actual construction started in February 1913 along a new roadbed four and one-half miles longer than the original, making a great "S" curve just west of the summit. At the same time, double tracking of the section between Castle Gate and Kyune was done, so that by January 1, 1914, a continuous double track over the mountains from Castle Gate to Thistle was in operation. Double track operations were also possible from Thistle to Springville under the joint trackage agreement with the Utah railway.

Through the years, this railroad, like others, experienced its ups and downs, its financial, construction and labor problems, which were generally solved, but the greatest task of all was the laying of double trackage. The story of the work at Soldier Summit, as only one of the many almost insurmountable feats, makes the accomplishments attained by the officials and workers of this great railroad company a monument to valor and courage.

Later the Salt Lake Herald claimed that the Denver and Rio Grande was one of the most enterprising and active railroad corporations in the world, and that its stockholders were known as some of the wealthiest people in the area. It gave the number of men employed as 33,000 who were digging through the mountain passes, putting in bridges and laying rails. The Herald praised those who were responsible for having Utah a part of this project, knowing well that it would aid in the development of its resources.

Many of the workers who had been associated with other roads expressed their good will toward the Denver and Rio Grande Western, feeling that now the Union Pacific would not have a monopoly of the business of the area. In 1884, after the Rio Grande had purchased the "Calico Railroad," the Salt Lake Directory printed the following:

It has now been incorporated by the Denver and Rio Grande and become a part of its main line. The old organization, naturally, is now defunct. The impending extensions of the Denver and Rio Grande are very numerous, and at this writing there seems to be no really defined determination to push forward in any particular direction. A road to Castle Valley, in Emery County, a line extending south and paralleling the Utah Southern, another branching north through Cache Valley, and running over the same country as the Utah and Northern, with spurs both east and west, have been talked of and some promised, and may even be realized but there is no imminent probability of much being done in the immediate future, particularly in view of the unfavorable east of the western railroad horizon as it appears at present. Mr. W. H. Bancroft is the superintendent for this division; E. H. MudSeer, passenger agent; Mr. S. W. Eccles has charge of the freight department, while J. C. McCadden controls the express department.

[p.179] The progress of the Rio Grande Western Railway, the "scenic line of the world," has noted the progress of the State; its enterprise has marked the enterprise of the people; its interests and those of the people it serves are recognized as identical. It operates in connection with the Rock Island, Burlington, Missouri Pacific and Santa Fe routes. It operates throughout the entire middle portion of this State, and is rapidly reaching out in all directions.

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