Peter A. Hansen - Crossroads of a Continent: Missouri Railroads, 1851-1921

Table of Contents

Crossroads
of a Continent

Railroads Past and Present

H. Roger Grant and Thomas Hoback, editors

Recent Titles in the Railroads Past and Present series

Narrow Gauge in the Tropics

Augustus J. Veenendaal, Jr.

Amtrak, Americas Railroad

Geoffrey H. Doughty, Jeffrey T. Darbee, and Eugene Harmon

The Panama Railroad

Peter Pyne

Last Train to Texas

Fred W. Frailey

Transportation and the American People

H. Roger Grant

American Steam Locomotives

William L. Withuhn

My Life with Trains

Jim McClellan

The Railroad Photography of Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg

Tony Reevy

Chicago Union Station

Fred Ash

John W. Barriger III

H. Roger Grant

Riding the Rails

Robert D. Krebs

Wallace W. Abbey

Scott Lothes and Kevin P. Keefe

Branch Line Empires

Michael Bezilla with Luther Gette

Indianapolis Union and Belt Railroads

Jeffrey Darbee

Railroads and the American People

H. Roger Grant

Derailed by Bankruptcy

Howard H. Lewis

Electric Interurbans and the American People

H. Roger Grant

The Iron Road in the Prairie State

Simon Cordery

The Lake Shore Electric Railway Story

Herbert H. Harwood, Jr. and Robert S. Korach

The Railroad That Never Was

Herbert H. Harwood, Jr.

James J. Hills Legacy to Railway Operations

Earl J. Currie

Railroaders without Borders

H. Roger Grant

The Iowa Route

Don L. Hofsommer

The Railroad Photography of Jack Delano

Tony Reevy

Crossroads
of a Continent

Missouri Railroads, 18511921

Peter A. Hansen,

Don L. Hofsommer,

and Carlos Arnaldo Schwantes

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

This book is a publication of

Indiana University Press

Office of Scholarly Publishing

Herman B Wells Library 350

1320 East 10th Street

Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA

iupress.org

2022 by Peter A. Hansen, Don L. Hofsommer, and Carlos Arnaldo Schwantes

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.481992.

Manufactured in China

First printing 2022

Library of Congress

Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hansen, Peter A., author. | Hofsommer, Donovan L., author. | Schwantes, Carlos A., author.

Title: Crossroads of a continent : Missouri railroads, 1851-1921 / Peter A. Hansen, Don L. Hofsommer, and Carlos Arnaldo Schwantes.

Description: Bloomington, Indiana : Indiana University Press, [2022] | Series: Railroads past and present | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021058684 (print) | LCCN 2021058685 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253062369 (hardback) | ISBN 9780253062376 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: RailroadsMissouriHistory.

Classification: LCC HE2771.M8 H36 2022 (print) | LCC HE2771.M8 (ebook) | DDC 385.09778dc23/eng/20211213

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021058684

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021058685

Unless otherwise noted, all illustrations are from the Schwantes-Greever-Nolan Collection of Travel and Transportation Ephemera.

Dedicated to the Memory of Ed Boyce, Jr.

(19352018)

Who Loved Trains and Inspired Us to Write This Book

Ed Boyce Jr. (right) shares a light moment with Mike McCarthy (left), the now retired president of the Terminal Railroad Association of Saint Louis, and with the three coauthors of Crossroads of a Continent as we enjoy a pleasant journey across Missouri from Kansas City to Saint Louis aboard a private train car that Boyce had chartered. What a classy way to launch a book about Missouri railroads! With the untimely death of his father a few weeks later, E. J. Boyce kindly provided the support needed to complete this book project.

Contents

Carlos A. Schwantes

I have written several books during my lifetime, but never have I felt compelled to launch one in quite this way. Books are traditionally introduced with a preface or a foreword, but there is no common label to describe the conversation I need to have with readers before you continue Crossroads of a Continent. This is the section I never expected to write. It is occasioned by the sudden death of our coauthor and original editor, Peter A. Hansen.

Pete was in the middle of editing the entire manuscript that he, Don Hofsommer, and I had composed together, at the behest of Edward Boyce, when he unexpectedly suffered a seizure that doctors revealed, alas, was the result of an aggressive and soon fatal brain tumor. Modern medicine could do nothing to reverse its destructive course over the next two months. Pete died on May 15, 2020, never having been able to return to his editing. The following month, I flew to Orlando, Florida, to retrieve everything and continue the good work as he had left it. I freely admit that my editorial skills are not equal to those of Pete, who not only edited the biannual journal Railroad History for thirteen years but also was an accomplished writer of his own essays, including several of the chapters that appear in this book. I was greatly relieved when Indiana University Press hired a professional editor to review everything that Pete and I had done.

Petes death was the second tragedy to befall Crossroads of a Continent. Our patron, Ed Boyce, a Saint Louisan with a deep interest in the history of Missouri railroads, died suddenly just three months into this project. The authors decided to proceed as planned, with Pete editing the entire manuscript after we had completed each of our assigned chapters. At the very beginning, even before any of us had typed a single word, we agreed to divide the history of Missouri railroads into twenty-seven chapters, with each author choosing to compose nine chapters based on his particular interests and skills. Thus, I tended to concentrate on Saint Louisbased railroads, Pete focused on those based in the Kansas City area, and Don, who had previously written several books on Iowa railroads, followed their tracks south across the border and deep into Missouri.

As will often happen, our original combined manuscript of twenty-seven chapters got longer and longer, and that was before we had added any illustrations or explanatory sidebars to our text. During our last conference call before tragedy struck Pete, we chose to divide Crossroads of a Continent into two volumes, the initial one focused more or less on the first century of Missouri statehood. We agreed, too, that our proposed narrative divided best following a watershed event in the history of American railroads: the return in March 1920 of the individual railroads to private ownership after more than two years of federal operation during and immediately after World War I. The authors have on occasion continued their essays well past the artificial chronological boundary of 1921 in order to pursue a chapter theme to its logical conclusion. In like manner, we have not hesitated to include railroad history from surrounding states, most notably Illinois and Iowa, to provide context for our individual essays on Missouri developments.