The Most Important Railroad Race in Texas History And Almost Nobody Knows It Happened

On November 25, 1881, a construction crew in West Texas drove a spike into the desert floor near Sierra Blanca, Texas. Ten miles to the east, Jay Gould's Texas & Pacific Railroad was still coming. They were ten miles too late. The southern transcontinental route which Congress had chartered the Texas and Pacific to build belonged to Collis Huntington. This is the story of the Race to Texas the Gilded Age railroad war between Jay Gould and Collis Huntington that fixed the geography of American southwestern railroading for over a century. We follow the full arc: the 1871 federal charter, Gould's 1879 takeover of the stalled Texas and Pacific, Huntington's unilateral decision to keep building east past Yuma, the race through West Texas in 1881, the Gould-Huntington Agreement signed one day after Sierra Blanca, and the 115-year legacy of a deal made in a New York office to settle a race decided in the desert. The Amtrak Sunset Limited still runs on the route Huntington won. The route Gould built still carries Union Pacific freight. The race ended in 1881. Its consequences are still moving. Subscribe to Rail Hunters USA for more stories of the trains, decisions, and people that built American railroads. #texasrailroadhistory, #gildedagerailroads, #southernpacifichistory, #texaspacificrailway, #railroadwars, #transcontinentalrailroad, #railroadexpansion, #wildwesthistory, #industrialageamerica, #railroadrace, #westtexashistory, #1880shistory