CHAPTER 1
From the time of its formal founding in 1706, Albuquerque was primarily a modest farming community. As Brian Luna Lucero observes, “Residents of the Middle Rio Grande Valley considered Albuquerque as one of a dozen villages along the river, and often not the most important one.”1 For about 173 years, Albuquerque changed almost imperceptibly. A description of the town written by the Franciscan friar Atanasio Domínguez in 1776 would apply broadly to the town at virtually any moment before 1880: “[It] consists of twenty-four houses near the mission. The rest of what is called Albuquerque extends upstream to the north [along the Rio Grande], and all of it is a settlement of ranchos on the meadows of the said river for the distance of a league from the church.” In total, Domínguez reported a population of 763.2 Albuquerque’s population was estimated still at only 800, 70 years later.3
There was a small segment of Albuquerque’s population that engaged in trade at least part time. Manufactured and exotic goods were carried to Albuquerque and the rest of New Mexico by long-distance overland transport. For many decades, such imports were brought by mule train, carreta (cart), and wagon from the Mexican cities of Chihuahua, Durango, and Parral, and the mining areas of north-central Mexico, as well as points farther south. But once Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821, merchant traffic with the United States steadily increased. New Mexican merchants, including some from Albuquerque, became regular players in the Missouri-Santa Fe-Chihuahua trade. In October 1846, Susan Shelby Magoffin, whose husband was involved in the Chihuahua trade from the United States, briefly visited the Albuquerque store of Rafael Armijo. She recorded this description in her journal: “The building is very spacious, with wide portals in front. Inside is the patio, the store occupying a long room on the street—and the only one that I was in. This is filled with all kinds of little fixings, dry goods, groceries, hard-ware, etc.”4 During the middle decades of the nineteenth century, Rafael, his brother Manuel, and cousin Salvador, all doing business in Albuquerque, were among the most prosperous merchants in the territory. They had business connections throughout New Mexico and across the United States and northern Mexico. And they were joined in long distance wholesale and local retail trade by at least six other merchant members of their family.5
Figure 1.1. West side of Old Town Plaza, Albuquerque, NM, ca. 1880. Courtesy of Center for Southwest Research, University Libraries, University of New Mexico; CSWR PICT 997-001-0006.
As American trader Josiah Gregg made clear in the 1840s, the staple of trade goods carted from the United States to New Mexico was fabrics, especially “cottons, both bleached and brown.”6 Nevertheless, “the economy of New Mexico [including Albuquerque] at mid-century operated mostly at a subsistence level.”7
That situation began to change significantly with occupation of New Mexico by the US Army in 1846. The stationing of between 700 and 1,000 US troops in New Mexico—soon to be a US territory—and the army’s renting of buildings as post quarters and purchasing supplies of meat and fresh produce brought a significant infusion of cash to New Mexico. The army in New Mexico “injected comparatively large sums of money into what had been primarily a barter economy. The money was widely, if unevenly, distributed, reaching all segments of the population, including the Pueblo Indians. Not only did the army provide a market for some of New Mexico’s traditional products; it created a demand for products that earlier had not been available at all or had been produced in very limited quantities.”8 The presence of the army affected Albuquerque’s economy especially, since it housed an army garrison and even served occasionally as headquarters of the military Department of New Mexico.9 A young US Attorney, William W. H. Davis, commented about Albuquerque in the early 1850s: “The army depots are located here, which causes a large amount of money to be put in circulation, and gives employment to a number of the inhabitants.”10
With eventual profound consequences for Albuquerque and the rest of New Mexico, in the 1850s, Congress directed the US Corps of Topographical Engineers to undertake four ambitious surveys across the West. Their aim was to determine the most practicable route for a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Coast. As the leader of one of those surveys, Lt. Amiel W. Whipple wrote in his report to Congress, “Notwithstanding the richness of her mines of gold, of silver, of copper, and of iron, the deposits of coal that have been discovered in New Mexico have probably a more direct and practical bearing upon the project of a railway.”11 The summary map of the reconnaissance route prepared by Whipple depicts much of the corridor eventually followed by the main line of the Santa Fe Railway across central New Mexico. Sectional rancor followed by eruption of the monumentally destructive Civil War put the transcontinental railroad project on hold for nearly a decade after completion of the surveys.
The end of war in 1865 had further economic consequences for Albuquerque and New Mexico Territory. First, many uprooted veterans headed West, including some to New Mexico. This was especially true for Confederate veterans because the US Southeast had been devastated physically and socially by the war. As but one hint of the resulting movement, the 1870 census showed fifty-four residents of Albuquerque born outside of New Mexico.12 Overall, Albuquerque’s population grew by just under a hundred between 1860 and 1870, but more than half of that growth comprised newcomers to the region.
A factor of major importance for New Mexico’s future was the post–Civil War explosion of railroad expansion westward from the Mississippi River. As part of the US military strategy during the Civil War, the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 authorized creation of the first transcontinental railroad. Pivotal to Albuquerque’s future, following the Civil War the US rail network expanded from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Coast based on the 1850s surveys. The immediate task was to choose among four rival corridors: one through the northern Rocky Mountains, one through the central Rockies, another skirting the southern Rockies, and a southern desert route.13 The central Rockies route was given priority. As later amended, the 1862 act authorized special financial support and incentives to the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads, which would together create the first transcontinental rail line.14
Map 1.1. Central New Mexico, detail from A. W. Whipple, Map No. 2, Reconnaissance and Survey of a Railway Route from Mississippi River . . . to Pacific Ocean . . . 1853–4. In Senate Ex. Doc., No. 78, 33d Congress, 2d Session, Vol. III. Actual survey route highlighted.
That long line of track would result from the Union Pacific Railroad building westward from Council Bluffs, Iowa, while the Central Pacific laid track eastward from Sacramento, California. No construction started until 1863, and then only from Sacramento. That work was extremely slow, both because the Sierra Nevada presented a formidable obstacle and because most construction materials had to be sent by ship from the eastern United States via the isthmus of Panama.
Construction westward from Council Bluffs did not begin at all until the end of the war in 1865, nor did it progress far at first. There were plenty of potential laborers, with the release from military service of hundreds of thousands of men at the end of the war. “The labor competition of the eastern manufacturing plants was lessened because of the depression which immediately followed the war, and many of the soldiers went west because there was no other opening for them.”15 Construction materials, though, were another matter. Rails and other parts were urgently needed to rebuild Southern railroads that had been heavily damaged during the fighting. The result was that by the end of 1865 the Union Pacific had laid only forty miles of track. A year later, however, found the railhead at North Platte, Nebraska. One more year carried the end of track to Cheyenne, Wyoming. By the end of 1868, the Union Pacific line had passed the Green River. And on May 10, 1869, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific joined at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory.
That single string of track was never considered to be the end-all of railroads in the West. Even before the union ceremony at Promontory Summit, other railroads were pushing slowly westward from the Mississippi and eastward from the Pacific Coast. During the 1870s, constructed railroad mileage in the West swelled to 151 percent of what it had been at the end of the 1860s. The decade was one of proliferation of small rail lines running on at least six different gauges of track. As long-distance, east-west train travel became increasingly common, and especially after completion of the first transcontinental lines, it became obvious that, for convenient and accurate scheduling of long runs, there would have to be consistent standardized time zones. By 1876, a timetable convention established a version of the time zones we are now familiar with in the lower-forty-eight United States. Seven years later, in 1883, the American Railway Association adopted standard time zones for the United States. That seemingly small and obvious step brought a welcome order to railroading chaos. Likewise, the gradual widespread adoption of a 4-foot, 8 1/2-inch track gauge (straddle or distance between the inside edges of the rails) moved Western railroads toward compatibility and the possibility of national interconnectedness by rail.16
The extraordinary acceleration of freight and passenger movement across the country in the 1870s and its clear profitability stimulated an explosion of railroad building in the West. Among revitalized ventures was the Atchison and Topeka Railway, which had been founded in 1860 and focused at first on shipping Kansas wheat to eastern mills. After completion of the first transcontinental railroad, though, the Atchison and Topeka expanded its horizons, adding “Santa Fe” to its name, and slowly lengthening its line westward. By fits and starts, and after bankruptcy, reorganization, and the name change, the AT&SF had reached as far west as the Kansas–Colorado border by the end of 1872.17 Western railroad building was given a powerful added impetus by the continuing discoveries of gold and silver deposits in Colorado throughout the 1860s and 1870s, as well as the lure of an all-weather rail route to the West Coast.
Figure 1.2. Celebration of completion of Transcontinental Railroad, May 10, 1869. Photo by Andrew J. Russell. Note cracked photographic plate.
Lingering effects of the national economic panic of 1873 forced a slowdown in AT&SF construction, but gradually crews laid track across southeastern Colorado, arriving at Trinidad in 1876.18 In this stretch, the route of the tracks generally followed the Mountain Branch of the Santa Fe Trail. As the culmination of an intense and protracted rivalry between the AT&SF (through its subsidiary the New Mexico and Southern Pacific Railroad) and the Denver and Rio Grande Railway (D&RG), a Santa Fe survey and track crew took control of key sections of Raton Pass in the frigid early morning hours of February 27, 1878. By doing so, that crew shut out the D&RG from the traditional travel route and assured AT&SF’s dominance among railroads of New Mexico and much of the rest of the Southwest.19
All that railroad-building activity had an effect even on distant Albuquerque. The decade of the 1870s, including the final months of 1879 and the first months of 1880, during which the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway tracks were extended toward Albuquerque, saw an increase of more than a thousand people in Albuquerque’s population.20
Historian Victor Westphall has offered this snapshot of business in Albuquerque in 1879, on the eve of the arrival of the rail line:
The leading merchants at this time were Franz Huning and Stover and Company. In 1870 the town had five lawyers and two doctors while now [in 1879] there were three of each. John Murphy’s was still the only drug store. William Brown had dropped his advertisement as a chiropodist and dentist and was confining himself to the barber trade. He was still the only barber in town. Two blacksmith shops had been added to the one owned by Fritz Greening in 1870, while Wm. Vau and Wm. H. Ayres still had the only carpenter shop. Of bakeries there were still only two, however there were now three butcher shops instead of the one owned by Tom Post a decade before. There was still only one saloon but the merchants continued to sell liquor by the gallon. Major Werner had abandoned his hotel venture when his work as notary public and probate clerk began to take all of his time. That left two hotels owned by Tom Post and Nicholas Armijo respectively. This was one more than there had been in 1870. A few new ventures had been started since the beginning of the decade. There was one watchmaker or mender, one tailoring establishment, and two cobblers. Such was the picture of Albuquerque on July 4, 1879, when the railroad reached Las Vegas.21
Figure 1.3. Engine at Raton tunnel, 1886–1888? Photo by J. R. Riddle. Courtesy of Palace of the Governors, Photo Archives, (NMHM/DCA), negative number 038211.
Attorney and historian Ralph Emerson Twitchell, who had moved to New Mexico just two years after the railroad reached Albuquerque, recalled,
The principal event occurring during the administration of Governor [Lew] Wallace [October 1878–March 1881] was the building into New Mexico of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad. Under a charter issued by the territory to the New Mexico and Southern Pacific Railroad Company, the line crossed the Raton mountains November 30, 1878, and in February 1879, the first passenger train, carrying members of the Colorado legislature, was run to Otero station, Colfax County. In early December 1878, the Santa Fe tracks had already reached New Mexico’s northern territorial boundary. The line reached Las Vegas, July 1, 1879, and was formally opened to passengers and traffic on July 7th.22
In his 1879 report to stockholders, Thomas Nickerson, president of the AT&SF, announced that after a lengthy negotiation, the Railway had “secured an interest in the valuable franchise of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad company, which gives your road right of way across Arizona and California to the Pacific Coast.”23 That meant that the AT&SF could indeed become part of an integrated transcontinental system, giving it a huge advantage over its southwestern competitors.
Westphall writes, “The year 1879 drew to a close and the scene was set for some remarkably rapid action during the early months of 1880.” By February 9, crews had laid track as far as Galisteo and were “moving ahead at the rate of about a mile a day.” In early April the AT&SF railhead was just a couple of miles from Albuquerque.24
About two years earlier, the AT&SF’s chief engineer and chief surveyor had already come to New Mexico on a scouting trip, “looking for the possibilities of locating a main division point somewhere on the Rio Grande.”25 The main competition was between Albuquerque and Bernalillo. A large Bernalillo landowner asked for payment of a very high price for right-of-way there, which tipped the scales in favor of Albuquerque. The Middle Rio Grande offered a major water source about halfway between Atchison, Kansas, and the California destination of the projected AT&SF Pacific line, as well as proximity to the Cerrillos coal beds. So, Albuquerque became the site of an AT&SF division point and the location for a major steam locomotive repair shop.
Figure 1.4. 9th Cavalry Band on the Plaza, Santa Fe, NM, 1880. Photo by Ben Wittick. Courtesy of Palace of the Governors, Photo Archives, (NMHM/DCA), negative number 050887.
The official welcome of the AT&SF railroad to its future yards and the surrounding town site took place on April 22, 1880. Setting the tone for the festivities was the band of the US 9th Cavalry, an African American regiment, then on detached service at the headquarters of the District of New Mexico in Santa Fe. Leaving the plaza at the Hispanic village of Albuquerque an hour before noon, the band led “a procession to the railroad along newly designated Railroad [later Central] Avenue.”26
Figure 1.5. Arrival of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, Albuquerque, NM, April 1880. Photo by Ben Wittick. Courtesy of Palace of the Governors, Photo Archives, (NMHM/DCA), negative number 143091.
A special passenger train carrying dignitaries from around the territory pulled into the makeshift Albuquerque station a little after midday. The out-of-town guests and a local crowd, many on horseback, then attended a program of mostly self-congratulatory speeches. The keynote of the event was struck by William Hazeldine, one of the principal promoters of and investors in the new railroad town and the station and shops complex: “When on this eventful morn the first struggling beams of light broke over the brow of yonder range of [the Sandia] mountains, grave sentinels standing guard eternally over our beloved and fertile valley, the day was born that was to be the day of all days for Albuquerque, the Queen City of the Rio Grande, a day long expected and anxiously looked forward to by the friends of progress and advancement, a day ever after to be known and remembered as that on which our ancient city of Albuquerque . . . was through the pluck, vim and enterprise of the management of the A. T. & S. F. RR. connected with the rest of the civilized world.”27
The smoking, steaming locomotive with its string of fancy passenger cars sitting on the newly laid tracks underscored Hazeldine’s words. Enthusiasm was abundant that day, and there was also an undercurrent of trepidation. But as it turned out, there was no turning back. Albuquerque would be unalterably changed by the presence of the railroad. In one fell swoop a nineteenth-century industrial city was born and already growing. As writer V. B. Price puts it, “The railroad brought with it a rush of newness, a revolutionary alteration in the rate of change, a ‘future shock’ that has hit the valley in shock wave after shock wave ever since.”28