The Development of Santa Fe’s Plains Division Borger District
The Warbonnet Third Quarter 1996. By Bob Burton.

Santa Fe Railway opened a new office building in Amarillo, Texas in 1930. Shining in white brick and tile, the structure towered over the city and was visible for miles across the plains, a Gothic testimony of prosperity. Blueprints had been drawn and land purchased years before, but the railroad had not felt that it was time to construct a new office. However, by 1928 that feeling had changed and ground was broken. A clue to the reason behind this change of heart may be found in the fact that workmen digging the foundation for the office discovered mammoth bones. There was fossil wealth under the wind blown Texas soil.

     Conventional oil prospecting wisdom said to avoid the Texas Panhandle. Except where it was cut by river gorges, the Panhandle was a flat plain devoid of the domes and ridges that promised crude. Then, Charles N. Gould, geology professor at the University of Oklahoma, said to drill in the valley of the Canadian River. During 1903-5, he had examined the Panhandle for potential water well sites. While so engaged, he had discovered that the seemingly flat Texas plain was actually a gigantic talus slope. The Panhandle’s true geography was buried under rubble eroded from the Rocky Mountains. He did not try to profit from this discovery, and said little of the matter until fifteen years later when he was asked a direct question.

     Drilling started late in 1918. When the well tapped a subterranean pocket, it was not oil that rushed forth from trembling ground, but natural gas. Further exploration produced more gas and a little oil, but there was not enough oil to get excited about. It was poor quality and much too thick. By December of 1925 only 56 wells had been bored. Some had been shot with nitroglycerin to improve production, but with marginal success. Then the owners of a well in Hutchinson County had a thought. They had erected a derrick to perform periodic maintenance on the well. Why not drill deeper while the rig was up?

     Deepening this well came to an abrupt halt on January 11, 1926. On that day a moan arose from the ground that quivered underfoot. From the well belched a ghastly stench, the reek of millions of dead animals whose tomb had been breached. Roughnecks and roustabouts ran. Behind their fleeing backs a ball of black shot into the brittle winter sky, tearing timbers loose from the derrick and showering black crude over the Texas Countryside.

     More wells exploded into existence, and—quantity outweighing quality—the boom was on. By October the field contained 726 active wells and 600 more were being drilled. The field ran east-west for about 120 miles and was about thirty miles wide. A few miles south of the heart of the field lay the city of Panhandle, a place of negligible importance and facilities on the main line of the Santa Fe Railway. The town’s first inkling of what was about to happen came on the day that homely engine No. 1188 (a 2-6-6-2 type), its four cylinders and twelve drivers moving without hurry, set out the first large shipment of oil drilling equipment. It was the last slow thing the town would see for a while. The railroad hurriedly laid eight miles of sidings at Panhandle and built an enormous depot as the field developed. Initially, the Santa Fe laid spurs into all parts of the oilfields, loading the crude oil near the wells, then moving solid trains of tank cars north into Oklahoma and Kansas for refining. The Phillips Oil Company very quickly determined that Borger would support a refinery. After the start-up of he refinery, the trackage then decreased as pipelines were laid from the wells to the refinery. Shortly, the little town was second only to Chicago in producing revenue for the railroad. Oil traffic alone averaged 370 cars daily, with 648 cars the record. Five cars of machinery, steel, and lumber were required to erect each drilling rig—and rigs were put up by the hundreds Vast amounts of food, building supplies and various commodities arrived for the burgeoning population of new towns to the north.

     Freight moved by wagon or motor truck over dirt roads that became impassable in bad weather. No pipelines had yet penetrated the field, but it was uneconomical to pipe this oil anyway. It had a high paraffin content and began to jell at temperatures below 55 degrees. Piping over long distances required heating stations at intervals. It was easier to load the crude aboard the railroad.

     Another of the field’s products was not susceptible to piping. Casing-head gasoline leaked easily and evaporated readily. The loss on the 3-inch pipe to Panhandle was 10%. It was proposed to abandon this line if a railroad loading rack could be located near the plant. Vapors over the rack could be collected and returned to the plant.

     The Santa Fe needed a line into the field. Less than two months after the first big well was brought in, the railroad was before the Interstate Commerce Commission seeking permission to build from Panhandle… down on the twenty-seventh. However, the railroad was in such a hurry that it began construction four days before having permission. A good bit of work was done even before a contractor was hired.

     The thirty-mile line, which opened on October 16, was heavily built with 90 pound rail and rock ballast. The depot at the terminal was the largest frame depot on the Santa Fe: properly 376 feet long, but with the roof extending out over the freight platform making a total of 584 feet. The name painted on this immense structure, which quickly became cramped and crowded was “Isom,” but that soon changed to “Borger.”

     Asa P. “Ace” Borger, a lumber and real estate man who had built several towns in Oklahoma oil fields, founded the town on March 8, 1926. Lot sales for the first day grossed over $60,000. The population growth was phenomenal, with several hundred new citizens almost daily.

     A typical Ace Borger town was wide open since the founder had no interest beyond selling land and lumber. The Town of Borger was a Texas-sized version. Gambling, alcohol, and prostitution were rife. City officials were con artists, protection racketeers, murderers, and assorted crooks. Organized crime spread outward from Borger, operating over several states. Violence was common and Ace Borger was shot to death at the post office by the county tax collector. Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, who would later become famous for killing Bonnie and Clyde, led a trainload of rangers into the town to bust up the booming good times….Three men might share a narrow cot in three eight hour shifts, one man rising as another took his place. Tents and autos sheltered many, but hundreds slept outside on the ground. Lack of municipal services meant no lights or water. A barrel of water, usually foul, cost more than a barrel of oil. Overworked outhouses flooded sewage into dirt streets. Rats and vermin infested the town and disease was rampant. Lungs burned with gases from the hundreds of wells. One observer called Borger “the most perfect picture I ever saw of my dream of hell.”

     The railroad ignored all this as best it could. Early Santa Fe history had been tinted red by the deadly cattle towns of Kansas and many other boom towns. The Santa Fe was there to provide transportation, which it did with efficiency. The railroad organized Borger’s massive traffic by spreading switching among yards in three towns. Inbound freight arrived in nearby Panhandle for assembly into inbound trains. Outbound trains went to Amarillo for disassembly. However, oil bound for refineries on the Gulf coast, about 82% of total production was handled differently. Amarillo yards assembled entire trains of empty cars and dispatched them to the fields in Borger. Switchers moved cuts of cars to the various loading tanks. There were 15 of these, offering 248 risers for crude oil and 62 for gasoline. Switching and loading continued around the clock. Each night 4 to 6 trains each averaging ninety loaded cars departed for the Gulf. They rolled westward on the main line through Amarillo to Canyon, then crept southward via Plainview to Lubbock where they turned on to the main Pacific-Gulf line.

     Although heavy engines prevented “quadrupling” oil trains, locomotive size was limited by light, unballasted track. Doubling and doubleheading was necessary, and there was a limit to that. The railroad set about reforging this link by reducing grades, ballasting, and replacing 75-pound rail with 90 pound. As oil traffic grew, this was not enough.

     Eventually Plainview’s route portion of the traffic was only the loaded trains. The empty, north bounds, sometimes 200 cars long, took a roundabout path between Lubbock and Canyon via Texico.

     Between Canyon and Panhandle, the main line was also taxed to the limit. The usually heavy traffic on the line was extra heavy in 1926. On September 13, 482 cars of California grapes alone moved over the line. Not only were long strings of black tank cars and orange reefers jostling for track space: the livestock movement was the heaviest in a decade. As if the dispatcher did not have enough to worry about, the wheat traffic was four to five times the 1925 levels. Something had to be done to increase track capacity.

     Double tracking began on that segment and sidings were lengthened, but before completion, the project was extended eastward to Pampa. The 72 mile second track opened in 1927. The Canyon-Pampa line was the first in the Texas Panhandle to be fully signaled. By 1930, automatic block signals protected several hundred miles of main line through Texas.

     The extension of doubletrack beyond Panhandle was due to oil development to the east. A ten-mile branch from White Deer opened to Skellytown in 1927. Construction of a tank farm at Kings Mill necessitated 2,576 feet of house track and a depot for the place. Pampa’s yard grew by 5.5 miles of track and the depot was enlarged.

     Facilities improved in other directions as well. Borger had no bridge for crossing the Canadian River, so field development north of the river near Stinnett was supplied at Spearman. This was the terminus of a Santa Fe Branch from Oklahoma, and the new yard tracks were emplaced there. At Amarillo trackage grew by 11.2 miles, new floodlights illuminated the yards, and an electric interlocking system protected the junction with the Rock Island and the Fort Worth and Denver City railroads. Lubbock’s yard virtually doubled in size and a second main line eased congestion through town. Construction began on street underpasses to eliminate grade crossings in the yards. At the nearby division headquarters of Slaton, sin 124-foot stalls were added to the roundhouse.

     Fifteen new Mikado (2-8-2) engines of the 4000 class entered service in the Panhandle. Plodding but powerful old Prairie Mallets (2-6-6-2) regularly hauled oil southward. More power was transferred from other areas. In January of 1926 the Plains Division had been home to 70 freight and switching, and 11 passenger engines. A year later, these categories had enlarged by 41 and 10 respectively. During the same period, the tally of freight and switching locomotives on the Slaton Division grew from 39 to 53.

     The Santa Fe’s betterments were indicative of the revenues derived from the oilfield. Such a traffic source could not long escape notice, and other railroads began projecting into the field. In fact one proposal was submitted to the ICC before the big wells were brought in.

     On August 5, 1925, the Rock Island petitioned for permission to build from Amarillo to Liberal Kansas. Liberal was on the Rock Island’s line from Chicago to Tucumcari, New Mexico while Amarillo was on a line connecting Tucumcari with Memphis. At Tucumcari, connection was made with the Southern Pacific for California.

     The Amarillo-Liberal line crossed a fairly developed wheat growing region north of the Canadian River, and it was expected that further development would follow construction of a railroad. The Rock Island also planned to use this as an alternate route for transcontinental traffic. The oil boom was an unexpected bonus. The ready availability of the oil caused the railroad to begin converting locomotives that operated from El Reno, Oklahoma and Herrington, Kansas to Tucumcari into oil burners.

     At the ICC hearing in the spring of 1926, the Santa Fe objected that the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railway was not chartered in Texas and therefore, under state law, could not own or construct lines in the state or apply in behalf of a company yet uncreated. The Santa Fe also questioned whether the surveys were as complete as the ICC required.

     These were feeble technical arguments. In 1926, such things did little to stop multi-million dollar projects. When pressed, the Santa Fe admitted that it had no objection to the Rock Island building through the general area, but that the location was objectionable. The route out of Amarillo was not only close to the Santa Fe main line, but also to the proposed Borger branch, which another arm of the ICC was then considering. North of the Canadian, the Rock Island would come within 15 miles of the Santa Fe Branch at Spearman.

     Santa Fe Objections were swept aside and the ICC authorized the Rock Island project on May 4, 1926. Construction soon began out of Amarillo, and the first 4.2 miles opened in July of 1927 and another 15 miles in November. This permitted oil field development at several points, principally Stinnett. Texas based affiliate Chicago, Rock Island and Gulf Railway purchased the existing line and finished the project at leisure.

     Late in 1929, the Rock Island announced plans to build from Liberal to Limon, Colorado, which would have created a Denver-Amarillo line to compete with the Santa Fe’s then proposed line as well as the Burlington’s existing route. Also at that time, the Rock Island and the Frisco were assembling the Trans-Texas Project: a patch-work of existing and projected lines connection Amarillo with Forth Worth and the Gulf of Mexico. This would have created another route for oil bound for the Gulf. However, the stock market crash put an end to the Rock Island’s grand schemes.

     Another railroad proposed to enter the Panhandle from the east. The Clinton and Oklahoma Western Railway was chartered in Oklahoma on October 23, 1908. By 1910, it had meandered westward from Clinton, a regional rail center of some importance, to Butler, then to Strong City two years later. Strong City was a new town, founded with the intent of taking county seat status away from Cheyenne, seven miles beyond the end of the track. Citizens of Cheyenne formed their own company, the Cheyenne Short Line Railroad. Although built with the cheapest of materials and constantly needing repair, the Cheyenne-Strong City railroad did prevent the eclipse of Cheyenne. However, the little line was sold under receivership late in 1916 and emerged under C&OW ownership as the Cheyenne Railroad. The two railroads, popularly known as “Cow” and “Calf,” merged in 1920 as the Clinton and Oklahoma Western Railroad.

     Meanwhile, Frank Kell, a successful builder and operator of several small railroads in Texas and Oklahoma, obtained control of the C&OW in 1914. He immediately announced plans to extend westward to Amarillo and eastward to El Reno. Shortly, Kell turned his attention away from Amarillo towards the wheat lands north of the Canadian.

     Officers of the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway, a Burlington affiliate, noted Kell’s interest and became interested themselves. The FW&DC plotted a line north from Childress to the city of Canadian, then west from there. World War I, however, postponed all railroad construction in the area.

     Kell again took an interest in extending the C&OW when the oil boom began. On April 4, 1927, he petitioned the ICC to permit the C&OW to build to Pampa. This would serve agricultural land in the eastern panhandle, as well as oil interests near Pampa. The portion in Texas had to be owned by a local corporation, so the Clinton- Oklahoma-Western Rail Road of Texas (C-O-W) was chartered on July 30. The Santa Fe made a written protest of territory invasion, but did not appear at hearing. ICC approval was given September second.

The Santa Fe’s inaction was soon explained, for on April 16, 1928, the Santa Fe applied for permission to purchase the C&OW. The two railroads had already come to terms; all that was lacking was ICC approval which came on June 2nd. Construction began two weeks later, and the Cheyenne-Pampa line was officially opened on May 15, 1929.

     Meanwhile, the Burlington had been discouraged from building to the north-eastern corner of the Panhandle by the July 1, 1920 completion of the Santa Fe’s branch from Shattuck, Oklahoma to Spearman. However, the oil boom inspired a revised version of the FW&DC’s projected line from Childress. Early in 1926, a new route was chosen that turned west at Shamrock through the narrow strip of land between the Rock Island and the C.O.W. to Pampa. To construct this line, the Burlington created the Fort Worth and Denver Northern Railway on May 20, 1929.

     The FW&DC proposed to serve the oil industries at Lefors and Magic City. Unfortunately, when the matter was tried by the ICC, only one of the eleven companies to be served appeared to support the proposition. By contrast, the Santa Fe had been asked to build into the area.