THE GREAT RACE

When I began writing my debut novel, The Crows’ Omen, easily one of the more interesting and thrilling pieces of history that I researched along the way involved the great race between two railroad companies vying for the right to be the first line to pass through the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). This race largely occurred between 1868 and 1870, but in many ways it began in 1866 with a treaty with the Cherokee Nation, the same treaty whereby the tribe sold the Cherokee Neutral Lands (i.e., Cherokee and Crawford Counties and the southern end of Bourbon County) to the US government. This treaty also allowed for the construction of one railroad through the nation but only one. Whichever company got there first would win the prize.

Admittedly, I went straight down the rabbit hole on this one. One of the protagonists in my book, Sawyer Pendleton, wasn’t the only one fascinated by the great American railroads. I became quite enthralled with them, too, as I learned more than I ever thought possible about the expansion of the railway system across the western United States.

Let’s first start by introducing the contestants. In the first lane (well, not literally), there was the newly organized Missouri River, Fort Scott, and Gulf Railroad, a.k.a. the Border Tier, which had just absorbed a smaller company in 1868; that company already had started construction of a line hugging close to the Kansas-Missouri border. The Border Tier was owned by a railroad builder named James F. Joy, who that same year had acquired the Cherokee Neutral Lands, a massive tract of prairie some 800,000 acres in size. (For more on that, see my post “Were Lucius and Johnston in the Land League?”). One interesting fact about this company: it would later change its name to the Kansas City, Fort Scott, and Memphis Railroad, a.k.a. the Memphis Route, which features prominently in my story.

In the other lane, so to speak, there was the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Railway, a.k.a. the Katy. This line was first organized in 1865 as the Union Pacific Railroad, Southern Branch, but it was reorganized in 1870 under the new name in the midst of the race. To keep things simple, I will refer to this line as the Katy only. At this time, the Katy was under the control of judge Levi Parsons (Parsons, Kansas is his namesake). Here’s an interesting aside: control of the Katy was later assumed by Jayson Gould, the same man from my story. In real life, Mr. Gould was a prolific railroad investor who held interests in many railroads, including the Missouri Pacific. He’s the one who came up with the name the Katy.

There was a third competitor in the race as well, at least sort of. It was called the Leavenworth, Lawrence, and Fort Gibson Railroad, but insofar as it too was owned by James Joy at the time, I won’t highlight this railroad here. Mr. Joy largely focused his attention on whichever line he felt had the best chance to win the race; in the end, that was the Border Tier.

By 1868, the Border Tier had already completed construction of a line from its point of origin in Kansas City, Missouri, traveling southerly through Rosedale, Merriam, Olathe, Paola, and Fort Scott. The plan was to proceed in the direction of Baxter Springs, near the border with the Indian Territory. The Katy had started near Fort Riley and ran southward through Junction City, Council Grove, and Emporia; it was well on its way to Chanute by 1868.

Early in the race, the Border Teir had the clear advantage, as it was only sixty miles from the Indian Territory, whereas the Katy still had one hundred miles to go. However, the Border Teir faced certain intangible problems in the Cherokee Neutral Lands that were causing delays. Namely, I am referring to the problems with the members of the Land League, that group of illegal inhabitants (white settlers) standing in the way of construction. James Joy had purchased the great tract of land in 1868, but only under suspicious and possibly illegal circumstances, or so the Land Leaguers claimed. They caused Mr. Joy no shortage of headaches over the next few years. (Again, for more on that, see my post “Were Lucius and Johnston in the Land League?”)

By 1870, the companies were running hard into the last stretch of the race. At the time, a casual observer might have predicted the Border Tier to win easily. After all, in spite of trouble with the Land Leaguers, the line had been completed through Girard, Cherokee, and Columbus, and it was now heading toward Baxter Springs. The Katy, by contrast, was just then passing through the newly formed town of Parsons. For all intents and purposes, it was the Border Tier’s race to lose.

But what happened next was truly unexpected, a good old-fashioned hoodwink. After the citizens of Baxter Springs arranged for the Border Tier to pass through their city, a celebration was planned for their arrival, which happened on May 12, 1870. Present at this event was a Cherokee man, in full native garb supposedly, who welcomed them to the finish line. The company was so relieved and jubilant for having been the first to reach the Indian Territory that it quickly let go of much of its workforce, claiming the next leg of construction would not require so many workers. The race had been won, after all, so they could now cut costs.

There were two problems with this announcement, however. First, Baxter Springs did not sit on the border of the Cherokee Nation, as the man had represented. It sat on the border of the Quapaw Nation. Second, the Quapaw Indians had not promised any railroad the right to build across its land. By the time the Border Tier officials realized the trickery, it was too late. The line had terminated at a point where they could not go any farther south, and there was too little workforce left to do anything about it before the Katy crossed the border first. 

So why did the Cherokee man appear at the celebration in Baxter Springs and make such a claim? The answer is simple: he was on the payroll of the Katy railroad. Yes, you read that correctly. The Katy orchestrated an elaborate plan to trick, or dupe, the Border Tier into believing it had reached the border when in fact it had not. Afterward, much of the former workforce of the Border Teir, now without jobs, made their way to Parsons to get on with the Katy, which accepted them with open arms. As you can imagine, it didn’t take long for the Katy to pass over the border and into the Cherokee Nation. From there it continued the line to Texas and then all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. For the next fifteen years, the Katy operated as the only line running through the Indian Territory.

I cannot think of a more devastating example of corporate warfare than the tactics employed by the Katy railroad against the Border Tier. The Katy knew it was about to lose the race, and thus lose the right to proceed into the Indian Territory, so it conjured up a deceitful plan and executed it perfectly. That the Border Tier voluntarily laid off most of its employees and those workers hoofed it over to Parsons to join the Katy must have been the icing on the cake.

But things didn’t turn out so badly for the Border Tier. Instead of allowing the terminus of the line to remain in Baxter Springs, it soon turned its attention to another area that was fast becoming an important industrial city in the region, that is, Springfield, Missouri. It quickly began extending the line to Springfield by way of Joplin. And only a few years after that, it continued to Memphis, Tennessee, which is why the Border Tier was later renamed the Memphis Route.

In my novel, the great race between the Border Tier and the Katy is never referenced, nor does it play any direct part in the storyline, but it does have a crucial role in the backstories of both Lucius and Johnston. Indeed, when I began writing my book, I thought a lot about the characters I wanted to create. I wondered where they would have come from, why they would have left their families and traveled to southeastern Kansas, and what path they would have taken to get there. After several weeks of pondering, I finally arrived at a particular narrative, and here it goes:

Lucius and Johnston grew up in northern Illinois in the heart of coal country but only met when they were mustered into the same military unit at the start of the Civil War, when they were eighteen years of age. Johnston’s father was a coal miner, with very little money. Lucius’s father, to the contrary, was a wealthy man, though I never assigned him any particular vocation. Nevertheless, family wealth would explain Lucius’s passion for books, something he keeps a secret as an adult. We can surmise that he is (or at least was) an avid reader from the sign he kept above the saloon doors, the one he wouldn’t tell Ian much about. The sign read “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here,” which is a quote from Dante’s Divine Comedy. In that epic poem, these words were engraved above the gates of hell. Lucius would have thought they were fitting for the Crystal Ball Saloon, or at least I like to think so.

When the war was over, Lucius and Johnston returned to their family homes, but only for a while. They were young and restless, as many soldiers were once the fighting had stopped. Plus, these were the early years of greater westward expansion, of Manifest Destiny, and the Missouri Pacific Railroad was just finishing construction of its line to Kansas City, opening up the area. I pictured Lucius and Johnston traveling westward on the rails to the small but bustling young city, eager to explore the possibilities but clueless about what they really wanted to do. When they arrived, of course, they needed jobs, so I thought what easier way for two young men to quickly find work than in the burgeoning stockyard industry in the West Bottoms. It would have been a perfect place for them to spend time, possibly a year or more, while getting acclimated to the area. It also would have been the place where they’d eventually find a new job laying track for the Border Tier railroad, which ran along the cliff overlooking the bottoms.

For the next two years (1868 to 1870), Lucius and Johnston worked for the Border Tier during the great race to the Indian Territory. This work was hard but gratifying, at least in a certain way. Here were two young friends working side by side all day and sleeping out under the stars (or in tents) at night. They hadn’t been raised on a ranch, or worked as cowboys, but constructing a line for a railroad in those days must have felt quite similar.

When the Border Tier lost the race and let go of much of its workforce, this would have included Lucius and Johnston. But while many others made their way to Parsons to get on with the Katy, these two men chose not to follow. They were done with railroads, or at least working for them. At this point, once again faced with endless possibilities but no real plan, they remained in Baxter Springs, finding work in the stockyards at the split of the Shawnee Trail. This stay lasted for a short while, but destiny had other plans for them. Still restless and growing increasingly hostile and unpredictable, Lucius soon embarked on a long, lonesome, and violent journey throughout the West. He’d invited his friend to go with him, but Johnston declined. Rereading letters each night from a girl back home named Eliza, Johnston couldn’t wait to marry her. He’d asked her in a letter, and she’d said yes. He planned to return to Illinois and marry her after using some of his money to find a place for them to live in Cherokee County. But Eliza wasn’t the only thing on his mind. He wanted to explore the outcroppings of coal that he’d seen between Cherokee and Columbus as they were constructing the line. He was, after all, a coal miner at heart.

So that is how the great race between the Border Tier (later the Memphis Route) and the Katy impacted the backstories of Lucius and Johnston . It’s the reason that brought them both to southeastern Kansas, but when they got there, only Johnston quickly made it his home and began to raise a family. So, when did Lucius return to the area, you might ask? Well, that is something I hope to explore someday in a story all its own.