Connecting Texas: The Texas and Pacific Railroad (January 27, 2026)
by Scott Sosebee
Railroads, if you ask me, were the most consequential economic and technological innovation in American history, and without a doubt were the most important component in aiding the expansion of the U.S. across the middle of the North American continent. The railroad provided relatively cheap, and certainly fast, transportation across the nation, it connected farmers, ranchers, and industrialists to a large national market, and “shrunk” the communication network throughout the nation. Such improvements were momentous and transformative in their own right, but most significantly railroad corporations became the model for modern American corporate organization, and the foundation for how businesses would operate in the U.S. for at least the next one hundred years.
The rails were equally important in Texas, principally due to the need to connect such a large state. The distances in Texas were daunting, and traveling from east to west by wagon train or horseback was a long and arduous journey that one did not make if one did not absolutely have to. The establishment of rail lines in the state began to change that, and while it was not the first railroad in Texas, certainly the most important early one was the Texas and Pacific Railway Company, which commenced building its way across the state in the 1870s. The T&P, as most Texans then and now called it, also holds the distinction of being the only railroad in Texas, and one of only a handful in the nation, to operate under a federal charter.
When the Civil War ended in 1865, national political and industrial leaders once again began to agitate for the completion of transcontinental rail lines. While the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific companies—with substantial subsidies from Congress and a lot of corruption— concentrated on building the route across the middle of the nation, interest in building a southern route once again became a topic of discussion. After much political wrangling—which meant that Chicago based concerns won the argument—the newly chartered Texas and Pacific Railroad Company received a congressional charter to build from Marshall, Texas to San Diego, California. The federal government provided public land grants to the company in New Mexico, Arizona, and California, but the U.S. government had no land to grant in Texas, so it was up to the Texas legislature to make such grants. The body responded with a grant of twenty sections of land for each mile of rail the company would build within the borders of the state, which quickly made the T&P the largest private landowner in Texas.
The T&P immediately began to acquire some smaller lines along the most eastern portions of its route in 1871 and 1872, as well as the original companies’ rights to build. The company hired famed railroad builder Greenville M. Dodge to be the chief engineer. Dodge directed construction to begin in October 1872, and the 125 miles between Longview and Dallas came into service in June 1873. Other trunk lines were built from northeast Texas to Dallas during the same period and by the winter of 1873 the T&P was poised to begin to move from Dallas to the west. However, the Panic of 1873 caused the construction company building the line to fail and the line stalled.
The T&P decided to form its own construction operation and resumed laying track in 1876. Dallas and Fort Worth were connected in July of that year, and with all other connecting lines coming into operation the railroad had 444 miles of track in Texas. However, the costs of construction and equipment, combined with the uncertain economic climate, caused the company to once again have to scramble for financing. That changed in 1879 when financier Jay Gould organized a syndicate to buy the T&P. The newly reorganized company once again hired Dodge to oversee construction and began laying track from Fort Worth westward in April 1880.
Dodge and his crews worked quickly and diligently—if not always efficiently as much of the construction was shoddy and had to be replaced within the next decade—and the T&P reached Sierra Blanca in December 1881. The T&P was originally to construct a line all the way to El Paso, where it would connect with Collis P. Huntington’s Southern Pacific making its way from San Diego. However, Huntington, a man who was no stranger to controversy and, at least, unethical shenanigans, continued west once he reached El Paso and thus the two lines met at Sierra Blanca. The company also had title to almost 6,000,000 acres of land; it had actually only received land for the miles constructed west of Fort Worth. After almost a decade, Texas had a railway that connected the entire state, and the T&P had laid a total of 1,034 miles of main track. The rails had laid a foundation for Texas to begin to enter the modern era.
To some extent, the completion of the Texas and Pacific line was the first step toward creating modern Texas. The state was now more directly connected to the remainder of the nation, which would begin to have consequences for the state almost immediately. By the 1880s, there would be no need for the driving cattle to Kansas as connecting lines began to connect to the T&P and cattlemen could ship their cattle more directly. Cities also began to grow along the rails, most significantly the then small town of Dallas that lay at the junction of the Texas and Pacific and the Houston and Texas Central; within the next three decades it would grow to the one of the largest cities in the state and today is the transportation hub for a large swath of the entire southwest of the United States. Migrants to the state would ride that rail line to come to the state, increasing the population of the state into one of the largest in the nation. Those transportation links begun by the rails remain important well into the twenty-first century. The current path of Interstate 20 in Texas almost parallels the same path the groundbreaking railroad traveled in the nineteenth century.
The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Scott Sosebee the Executive Director of the Association and can be contacted at sosebeem@sfasu.edu or via www.easttexashistorical.org.