The Rise and Fall of the Texas Railroad

By theadmin

Texas may be a huge state, but in its earliest days, settlers remained clustered largely in the southern and eastern areas. This had everything to do with how difficult it was to move through Texas’ vast, rugged landscape.

Texas’ rivers — shallow, twisting, and prone to flooding — were notoriously difficult to navigate. Settlers tended to follow Native American paths or the old Spanish roads to get around. Entrepreneurs opened ferries, which charged travelers to cross the many muddy creeks and rivers. But slow travel, unreliable trade routes, and unpredictable weather ensured that the frontier remained open and Texas stayed wild.

That would all change with the arrival of the railroad.

The Earliest Railroads in Texas

Even during the republic years, Texas’ founders understood that the introduction of the railroad would be key to the development of their new country. The railroad was still a new technology. When the First Congress of the Republic of Texas chartered the Texas Railroad in 1836, the first public chartered railroad in the United States was less than 10 years old.

Texas’ effort to build its own proved a little overeager. Through the 1830s and 1840s, numerous companies planned — and failed — railroad projects in Texas. The first successful project wouldn’t be completed until 1853, when Gen. Sidney Sherman developed a 20-mile stretch called the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado Railway, which ran from current-day Houston to Stafford.

The Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado was followed in 1856 by the Galveston and Red River Railway line — later called the Houston and Texas Central Railway Company — which connected Houston and Cypress. By the start of the Civil War, nine additional railroad companies had contributed to constructing 470 miles of track in Texas, mostly clustered around Houston and connecting sea and river ports to inland destinations.

Rail Expansion and the Birth of Urban Texas

One of the challenges facing early railroad expansion in Texas was capital. East Coast investors were wary of investing in infrastructure in a frontier state that was still struggling to close the frontier and establish the rule of law. The state of Texas stepped in to close the funding gap, offering land grants and other incentives to help spur on rail development.

It worked. Although the 1860s saw existing railroads struggling to reconstruct damaged rail, by the 1870s, most of the railroad companies were ready to resume new construction.

The decade saw a massive expansion. The Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway Company crossed into Texas in 1872. The Houston and Texas Central Railway extended north through Dallas and had crossed the Red River by 1873. The Houston and Great Northern Railroad Company connected Houston to Palestine in East Texas where it connected to the International Railroad Company’s line, which connected Palestine to Hearne and Longview. By 1879, there were 2,440 miles of rail in Texas that connected the state to the national rail grid.

The new connections helped create access to new resources, goods, and markets, and they transformed formerly sleepy towns like Dallas into burgeoning centers of commerce and trade. But these new rails were still concentrated in the eastern half of the state; most of Texas’ large landmass was still open frontier.

Rail Consolidation and the Race Across the Continent

The 1880s brought consolidation and expansion. Many of the Texas companies that had constructed the early rail network were bought out by large national companies that were consolidating rail empires.

One of these was the Southern Pacific, which bought up rails connecting southern cities and towns in an attempt to eventually construct a new southern transcontinental railroad route to compete with the Union Pacific, which famously laid its golden spike in 1869. They were followed by the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad Company, which had similar ambitions.

Railroad magnate Jay Gould, a director of the Union Pacific, also purchased Texas railroads, including the Texas and Pacific, the International and Great Northern, and the Missouri, Kansas and Texas. This consolidation had a detrimental impact on Texas trade. Most of the state’s railroads were controlled by a handful of powerful companies, who were accused of charging exorbitant rates, practicing favoritism, and fostering corruption.

In 1891, the state established the Texas Railroad Commission to help oversee the industry. The commission would become one of the most powerful regulatory bodies in Texas, overseeing all matters of transportation as well as, eventually, the oil and gas industry.

Closing the West and Retiring the Rails

Railroads expanded rapidly in the last quarter of the 19th century, but there were still parts of the state — including the South Plains, Panhandle, West Texas, and Rio Grande Valley — that were disconnected from the rail network.

The beginning of the 20th century saw a steady expansion to these sections of the state, as well as an expansion of rail networks in and around the cities that the railroad had largely created. In the first decades of the 20th century, interurban rail networks connected Dallas and Houston to the many towns and smaller cities surrounding them. By the 1940s, electric rail, streetcars, trolleys, and passenger service on larger rail lines meant that Texans could travel throughout much of the state on some form of rail service. It was not to last.

The introduction of the mass-produced automobile in the early 20th century saw the beginning of a rapid shift from rail to car. After World War II, much of the urban rail in the state was torn up and replaced with new roads, highways, and bus service. Although railroads still play a huge role in transporting goods around and through Texas, passenger rail service is largely limited to a few Amtrak-operated routes and nostalgia-powered historic train journeys.

For all the glory and might of Texas’ railroad industry, passenger transport was born and then vanished in little over 100 years.

New Horizons

Even though most Texans don’t ride the rails anymore, railroads remain an important part of the state’s transportation and commercial network. Long trains hauling containers from the port of Houston or oil from the Permian Basin make their way across Texas every day, often following the very rights-of-way that were established by Texas’ railroading pioneers in the 1850s. They are the steel ribbons that once tied together this massive state and connected it to the world.

Time travel to the Old West on these historic Texas train rides.