WHEN THE RAILROADS WERE KINGS.   TROOPER (Arlie D. Wood), 29 June, 2017

While the struggle to design a practical and successful steam locomotive was in its infancy, our country was experiencing many growing pains with the war of 1812, the Trail Of Tears for the Native Americans, migration to Mexico (Now Texas), Mexico abolished slavery and Texas won their independence and became the Republic of Texas.  Jesse Atteberry brought his son Nathan to the Republic of Texas in early 1840s.  (Nathan was the first to spell the family name with the singular ‘r’). 

Nathan fought with what the Mexicans called “Los Diablos Tejanos” until taken down with fever and discharged.  Nathan fathered two children, Robert Watts and Margaret and died from the fever when my grandfather Robert Watts Attebery was an infant.  The Hill family took the children in and Margaret eventually married a Hill son.  What does this have to do with Railroads? Locomotives have evolved to practical efficiency but mostly in the northeastern states.

1861 to 1865 brought a different evolution to Texas.  Hoof and mouth disease killed many cattle but an ugly mean strain with extremely long horns proved immune to the disease and they seemed to breed like rabbits.  By the close of the war between the states, longhorns were everywhere and worthless.  There was no market for these plentiful cattle and there was no money.  At twelve years of age, my Grandfather thought to make it easier on the Hills and went to join bison hunters in west Texas.  According to his little pocket note book, they found more Comanche than bison.

Railroads had pushed westward to Iowa’s corn fields and to Kansas with its promise of wheat   The wheat promise didn’t come true until someone planted a strain of Winter Wheat which could survive the Kansas weather.  Corn and wheat was much needed but they didn’t keep the trains busy all year and the need for beef was not being satisfied.

Cattle drives up the Chisholm and other trails had been taking cattle to railheads in Kansas where the market far exceeded their best efforts   If everything went just right, a herd of cattle might gain twelve miles in a long day.  People on the east coast and in Chicago were begging for more beef.   Buyers waited in Kansas with money to pay top dollar for cattle that was worthless and plentiful down in Texas and trains sat idle awaiting another  trail driven herd.

To fully picture the role of railroads must require both a forward view and a distant look backward.  My personal views started in the late 1920s through 1930s period.  I often visited the pictured farm as a small boy.  My mother and I walked over a mile to the Rock Island Railroad Depot ln Lawton to catch the train to the Rock Island Railroad Depot in Waurika.  Three miles on a wagon pulled by mules and we would arrive at this farm where another Rock Island Railroad line ran not far behind the barn.

The Railroads saw opportunity staring from Texas.  Indian Territory had to be crossed.  Rights of way were obtained and roadbeds quickly laid.  Cattle started shipping from Texas on trains that traveled further each hour then trail herds had traveled in one day.  These trains often ran night and day.

Texas Ranchers now needed pasture to fatten their large herds,  Those easterners wanted Grass Fed Beef instead of skinny trail worn.  Quanah Parker agreed to renting pasture rights in the Kiowa/Comanche/Apache lands of southwest Oklahoma Territory.  Moving and tending those herds required young tough men who came to be known as cowboys.  One of those was my grandfather, Robert Watts Attebery.  Days and weeks alone and often eating with the Comanche; he observed the land never dreaming that it might one day be his home.

On a trip back to Cooke County, He met a little red headed young lady named Sarah Elizabeth Barnes and he started thinking about farming.  Sarah (Liz) and Robert (Bob) were married and crossed Red River to set up farming near the bend that was the start of the Chisholm Trail.  A man named Fleetwood had encouraged a community on land that was, in fact, Chickasaw land.

Treaties were broken and land was opened to settlement that had belonged to the Native Americans.  Eventually, in 1901, Oklahoma Territory was opened.  Bob remembered a place where the grass grew tall and water continuously dripped from the walls of a dry wash.  It was in what they called Bourland Township in Jefferson  County.  That is where he obtained his farm and moved his family.  A railroad crossed his land but they were having a problem with building a trestle across Red River toward Byars, TX.  The current was especially forceful at that point.

Bob Attebery died Christmas morning, 1921.  No trestle had bridged Red River toward Byars, TX.  That first trestle was completed, the last spike driven on 25 February, 1923.  In a two room shack across the road from Waurika’s first high school, I too was completed that day 

The city of Waurika became the county seat of Jefferson County and also became a maintenance center for Rock Island Railroad.  Crews rotated at that point and kept all hotel and rooming house space occupied.  Waurika was a bustling city. Grandpa’s notebook recorded times that he accompanied cattle shipments on the railroad to Oklahoma City Stockyards.  He mentioned some events while he was there.

Bob Attebery died Christmas morning, 1921.  No trestle had bridged Red River toward Byars, TX.   His funeral at the little Presbyterian church that he had helped to found was with a crowd the church could not contain.

That first trestle was completed, the last spike driven on 25 February, 1923.  In a two room shack across the road from Waurika’s first high school, I too was completed that day.   You can’t see that shack but it is still there inside of two bedrooms of a present day house. 

Roles change and the railroads passengers have taken to the air and that cousin I played with on that farm became an airline captain flying them across the Pacific Ocean.  I became the old guy that some call Trooper Wood.  The railroads, second only to water transport, in low cost per mile, can be seen loaded with semitrailers and moving them from one distant point to another 24 hours per day; a schedule the tractors cannot keep.  At destination, the trucks/tractors take over and deliver from door to door.

Not many travel via train any more but I did; from Portland, OR, to Oklahoma City, OK.  It was such a pleasure; three days on a train with friendly people.   

The crown may sit a little less jauntily but the king still reins in moving massive cargo over great distance at lowest possible cost in the least time possible.

1988                                                                               

                       

WHEN THE RAILROADS WERE KINGS.   TROOPER (Arlie D. Wood), 29 June, 2017

While the struggle to design a practical and successful steam locomotive was in its infancy, our country was experiencing many growing pains with the war of 1812, the Trail Of Tears for the Native Americans, migration to Mexico (Now Texas), Mexico abolished slavery and Texas won their independence and became the Republic of Texas.  Jesse Atteberry brought his son Nathan to the Republic of Texas in early 1840s.  (Nathan was the first to spell the family name with the singular ‘r’). 

Nathan fought with what the Mexicans called “Los Diablos Tejanos” until taken down with fever and discharged.  Nathan fathered two children, Robert Watts and Margaret and died from the fever when my grandfather Robert Watts Attebery was an infant.  The Hill family took the children in and Margaret eventually married a Hill son.  What does this have to do with Railroads? Locomotives have evolved to practical efficiency but mostly in the northeastern states.

1861 to 1865 brought a different evolution to Texas.  Hoof and mouth disease killed many cattle but an ugly mean strain with extremely long horns proved immune to the disease and they seemed to breed like rabbits.  By the close of the war between the states, longhorns were everywhere and worthless.  There was no market for these plentiful cattle and there was no money.  At twelve years of age, my Grandfather thought to make it easier on the Hills and went to join bison hunters in west Texas.  According to his little pocket note book, they found more Comanche than bison.

Railroads had pushed westward to Iowa’s corn fields and to Kansas with its promise of wheat   The wheat promise didn’t come true until someone planted a strain of Winter Wheat which could survive the Kansas weather.  Corn and wheat was much needed but they didn’t keep the trains busy all year and the need for beef was not being satisfied.

Cattle drives up the Chisholm and other trails had been taking cattle to railheads in Kansas where the market far exceeded their best efforts   If everything went just right, a herd of cattle might gain twelve miles in a long day.  People on the east coast and in Chicago were begging for more beef.   Buyers waited in Kansas with money to pay top dollar for cattle that was worthless and plentiful down in Texas and trains sat idle awaiting another  trail driven herd.

To fully picture the role of railroads must require both a forward view and a distant look backward.  My personal views started in the late 1920s through 1930s period.  I often visited the pictured farm as a small boy.  My mother and I walked over a mile to the Rock Island Railroad Depot ln Lawton to catch the train to the Rock Island Railroad Depot in Waurika.  Three miles on a wagon pulled by mules and we would arrive at this farm where another Rock Island Railroad line ran not far behind the barn.

The Railroads saw opportunity staring from Texas.  Indian Territory had to be crossed.  Rights of way were obtained and roadbeds quickly laid.  Cattle started shipping from Texas on trains that traveled further each hour then trail herds had traveled in one day.  These trains often ran night and day.

Texas Ranchers now needed pasture to fatten their large herds,  Those easterners wanted Grass Fed Beef instead of skinny trail worn.  Quanah Parker agreed to renting pasture rights in the Kiowa/Comanche/Apache lands of southwest Oklahoma Territory.  Moving and tending those herds required young tough men who came to be known as cowboys.  One of those was my grandfather, Robert Watts Attebery.  Days and weeks alone and often eating with the Comanche; he observed the land never dreaming that it might one day be his home.

On a trip back to Cooke County, He met a little red headed young lady named Sarah Elizabeth Barnes and he started thinking about farming.  Sarah (Liz) and Robert (Bob) were married and crossed Red River to set up farming near the bend that was the start of the Chisholm Trail.  A man named Fleetwood had encouraged a community on land that was, in fact, Chickasaw land.

Treaties were broken and land was opened to settlement that had belonged to the Native Americans.  Eventually, in 1901, Oklahoma Territory was opened.  Bob remembered a place where the grass grew tall and water continuously dripped from the walls of a dry wash.  It was in what they called Bourland Township in Jefferson  County.  That is where he obtained his farm and moved his family.  A railroad crossed his land but they were having a problem with building a trestle across Red River toward Byars, TX.  The current was especially forceful at that point.

Bob Attebery died Christmas morning, 1921.  No trestle had bridged Red River toward Byars, TX.  That first trestle was completed, the last spike driven on 25 February, 1923.  In a two room shack across the road from Waurika’s first high school, I too was completed that day 

The city of Waurika became the county seat of Jefferson County and also became a maintenance center for Rock Island Railroad.  Crews rotated at that point and kept all hotel and rooming house space occupied.  Waurika was a bustling city. Grandpa’s notebook recorded times that he accompanied cattle shipments on the railroad to Oklahoma City Stockyards.  He mentioned some events while he was there.

Bob Attebery died Christmas morning, 1921.  No trestle had bridged Red River toward Byars, TX.   His funeral at the little Presbyterian church that he had helped to found was with a crowd the church could not contain.

That first trestle was completed, the last spike driven on 25 February, 1923.  In a two room shack across the road from Waurika’s first high school, I too was completed that day.   You can’t see that shack but it is still there inside of two bedrooms of a present day house. 

Roles change and the railroads passengers have taken to the air and that cousin I played with on that farm became an airline captain flying them across the Pacific Ocean.  I became the old guy that some call Trooper Wood.  The railroads, second only to water transport, in low cost per mile, can be seen loaded with semitrailers and moving them from one distant point to another 24 hours per day; a schedule the tractors cannot keep.  At destination, the trucks/tractors take over and deliver from door to door.

Not many travel via train any more but I did; from Portland, OR, to Oklahoma City, OK.  It was such a pleasure; three days on a train with friendly people.   

The crown may sit a little less jauntily but the king still reins in moving massive cargo over great distance at lowest possible cost in the least time possible.

1988