The Rock Island Line. Bill Marvel
in 1866 and was replaced by a second wooden bridge. When that bridge was damaged by a tornado, a third bridge, this one constructed of iron, was built on a new alignment. Today, a fourth bridge spans the river.)
M&M: Beyond the River
Although traffic crossed the river—12,586 freight cars and 74,179 passengers by August 1857—it didn’t move much beyond it.
The Mississippi & Missouri Railroad had made slow progress since June 1855, when the first spikes were hammered down on the line west toward Iowa City. The first locomotive, the Antoine LeClair, had arrived and pulled an excursion 12 miles to the end of track at Walcott. Then 13 miles beyond, at Wilton, track gangs veered south toward Muscatine. That town had been clamoring for a railroad, and it had Thomas Durant’s ear. Iowa City and Council Bluffs would have to wait.
The first train slogged into Muscatine in mud and driving rain on November 20. To get railroad moving their way again, citizens of Iowa City raised a $50,000 cash bonus, to be paid M&M provided a train arrive before the end of the year. At Christmas, work gangs were still about 2 1/2 miles short, laboring to lay track across the frozen ground. Townspeople hurried out to help them. On the last day of December, temporary tracks were laid to the station, but the engine froze to the rails a scant 200 yards away. Workers and bystanders descended on the stalled locomotive and, with the minutes ticking away, managed to manhandle it the final yards. It was reported that the engineer collapsed beside his engine, either from exhaustion or hypothermia. The temperature was 18 degrees below 0.
With the nation sliding into a recession, there would be no further construction for several years. Over the next year and a half, more than 5,000 businesses would fail. Prospects were bleak for completion of the line, Farnam wrote to a New York associate. He was out of money and hoped only to salvage enough for “my dear wife and family.”
The Land Grant Act, passed by Congress in May 1856, helped some. It assigned to states certain public lands that could then be passed on to railroads for sale or settlement. But with the M&M dead in its tracks at Iowa City, that state’s citizens were not feeling very generous. Those to the west still waiting for rail service demanded that the state withdraw M&M’s charter. In 1858 construction crews managed to push the Muscatine Branch 27 miles to Washington. But it would be 1862 before the main line from Iowa City would creep into Grinnell, 66 miles west. There was a war on.
As rails reached Grinnell, President Abraham Lincoln signed the first Pacific Railroad Act, setting Council Bluffs as the eastern terminus of the proposed transcontinental railroad. Four railroads were already racing across Iowa toward the Missouri River. M&M seemed to be in position to reach it first. Still, its rails did not move.
Daisies are blooming along the right-of-way in July 1978, as U33B No. 290, temporarily separated from its usual companion, road slug No. 282, brings an eastbound through Oak Forest just outside of Chicago. Terry Norton
The Keokuk, Fort Des Moines & Minnesota Rail Road had been building northwestward up the Des Moines River Valley since 1853. Reincorporated as the Des Moines Valley Railroad, it reached its namesake city, now the state capital, in August 1866, causing the M&M to forfeit the $10,000 bonus the city had offered for an early arrival.
Loss of the bonus was the least of M&M’s problems. A month before, the now-bankrupt railroad had been sold in foreclosure on the steps of the Davenport courthouse. In one of those complications that only a lawyer could love, the buyers had incorporated themselves as the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad (“Pacific No. 1,” for legal purposes). Shortly thereafter, Pacific No. 1 was consolidated with Pacific No. 2, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad, and the modern Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific was born.
Back in Illinois, the Rock Island prospered. The road was hauling as much traffic eastbound as westbound, a sign that its territory was settled and producing goods as well as consuming them. Gross income rose from $1.2 million in its first full year of operation to $1.5 million in 1863. Farnam took the opportunity to step down. Charles W. Durant took his place, and in 1866, John F. Tracy replaced Durant.
Fort Worth’s busy Tower 55 presides over passage of a transfer for Southern Pacific behind a dog’s-breakfast assortment of motive power in October 1978. A smoky U30C No. 4596 leads GP7 No. 1267, GP9 No. 1331, and SW1200 No. 930. Ed Seay Jr.
Tracy, a bachelor married only to the railroad, guided the Rock Island for the next 11 years, with a steady hand on the throttle and a keen eye on the track ahead, according to Frank P. Donovan in his collection of essays, Iowa Railroads. The new president got construction moving forward again, pushing the line into Des Moines, where it was greeted with less than enthusiasm. Though harried by a flock of shareholder lawsuits challenging purchase of the M&M (Tracy was briefly arrested), he lobbied the Iowa legislature, persuading lawmakers to recognize the consolidation, allow Rock Island to keep M&M’s land grants, and set a date of June 1, 1869, for completion of the road to Council Bluffs. Failing that, Rock Island would forfeit all further claims to land grants.
The road beat the deadline by 19 days. But its May 10 arrival in Council Bluffs was anticlimactic. Just one day before and some 1,090 miles west on a windswept sage flat near Promontory, Utah, the last rail was laid and the last spike driven, uniting the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific railroads and bridging the nation with rails from coast to coast.
Furthermore, the Cedar Rapids & Missouri River Railroad—a component of Rock Island’s perpetual nemesis, Chicago & North Western—had pulled into Council Bluffs more than two years before, in January 1867. It was followed in August 1868 by the Council Bluffs & St. Joseph. Both received the lion’s share of Union Pacific traffic. It was an omen of things to come.
John Tracy tried to make the best of the situation. In 1867, Grant Locomotive Works of Paterson, New Jersey, had built an engine for display at the 1869 Paris Exposition. Clad in burnished German silver from smokestack to boiler and from cylinders to domes, it was named America, and the gleaming 4-4-0 had won the exposition’s grand prix, or gold medal. When it was shipped back to the States, Rock Island’s chief purchasing agent suggested to Tracy that the railroad buy it. It was placed on display at the railroad’s new station at Van Buren and La Salle streets in Chicago. On May 15, 1869, coupled to four other engines and a long string of coaches, America steamed into Council Bluffs’ Pearl Street station, an elegant, if belated, tribute to the nation’s first transcontinental railroad.
It’s May 4, 1980, and what began almost exactly 111 years ago when Rock Island rails arrived at the banks of the Missouri River is ending as GP38-2 No. 4355 leads the last train out of Council Bluffs. The units arrived the day before, returning a string of GP40s and U28Bs to owner Union Pacific. Jim Rasmussen
One of only 28 C-C units on Rock Island, U3OC No. 4592 was purchased for grain trains, but in April 1975, it leads piggybacks on the Golden State Route east of Columbus Junction, Iowa. Terry Norton
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