The Iron Horse Reaches Texas:
The Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado Railroad
The Republic Era: Early Visions of Texas Railroads
The Republic of Texas won its independence just as railroad expansion took hold in the United States. Its leadership recognized the same needs for railroads within the new country and the economic and societal benefits they would bring. The harsh reality of the young nation’s finances, however, proved difficult to overcome. Congress authorized a bond issue of $5 million backed by “public lands and a pledge of the public faith” in 1836, but no investors emerged, and the government continually increased the circulation of paper money, thereby driving down its value against the American dollar.
In December 1836, the Texas Congress chartered the Texas Railroad, Navigation, and Banking Company with the goal to link the Rio Grande and Sabine River using railroads and canals. The company faced fierce public backlash, however, and it failed amid the Panic of 1837. That same year, New Orleans cartographer H. Groves published a map that included the first depiction of a proposed railroad in the republic, running from Washington-on-the-Brazos to Richmond via Houston (see map below).
H. Groves, Map of the Republic of Texas shewing [sic] its division into Counties and Latest Improvements too, 1837, Map #476 , General Map Collection, Archives and Records Program, Texas General Land Office, Austin, TX.
The demands of the Brazos River cotton industry were especially prominent in the earliest dreams of Texan railroads. Transporting cotton down the Brazos to the port at Galveston presented an issue due to the danger and unreliability of navigating the river for existing farmers. Cotton bales often waited, exposed along the river, for transport to arrive, resulting in damaged goods that returned lower prices than American cotton. Improvised transportation methods such as oxcarts (which could haul only six bales at a time) or simply floating the bales down the river were inefficient at best, and further cut into already diminishing profits.
(left) Edward King, A Cotton Wagon-Train, 1874, Illustration. Courtesy of the New York Public Library; (right) A Southern Cotton Yard, Postcard, 1910. Courtesy of the Jenkins Garrett Texas Postcard Collection, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries.
These issues disincentivized prospective new up-river farmers from entering the cotton market and bolstering the republic’s economy as the price of cotton reached a thirty-year low. Following a “total failure of the cotton crop on Brazos and Colorado” in December 1843, the editor of the Brazos Courier argued, “There are many of our farmers higher up on the river who would devote their attention entirely to raising cotton, were not for the difficulty of getting it to a shipping point so great.”
(left) "Cotton-blossoms and seed-bolls," in Artemas Ward's The Encyclopedia of Food: The Stories of the Foods by which We Live, How and Where they Grow and are Marketed, their Comparative Values and How Best to Use and Enjoy Them, New York: Artemas Ward, 1923; (right) Photograph of Bill Boll Cotton in Hastings' Seeds: Spring 1912, Atlanta: H.G. Hastings & Co., 1912.
The desire for railroads in the Brazos River region was not universal, however. Even as would-be developers formulated plans for early Texas railroads during the 1830s, Brazos River merchants continued to promote trade through river navigation. They viewed the establishment of a railroad in Houston as an encroachment to their trade on the Brazos, and interested parties sought to enlist the “capital of river folk and investors of the United States” to “transform the river into a waterway as far as Washington [Texas].” Two steamers were constructed to promote this venture, though the project failed to gain traction and the ships were sold shortly after.
In addition to the doomed Texas Railroad, Navigation, and Banking Company, the republic government granted charters for three additional railroad endeavors. In a reflection of the republic’s generally depressed economy, investors were difficult to attract, and these earliest attempts mostly never progressed beyond the conceptual phase.
Railroad Charter Failures
Chartered in 1838, the Brazos and Galveston Rail-Road Company sought to leverage a Brazos River railroad to promote developments at Austinia and San Luis, but its efforts were fruitless. August C. Allen’s Houston and Brazos Rail Road Company received its charter in 1839 and aimed to connect Houston to the “City of Brazos” near present-day Hempstead. To promote the venture, organizers held a grandiose “railroad meeting” in Houston on July 25, 1840, featuring speeches by Sam Houston and James Reily , a congressman and diplomat with ties to powerful Texan leaders. Despite all this fanfare – and the signing of two contracts for construction – the railroad was never built.
(left) [Sam Houston, half-length portrait, three-quarters to the left, in civilian dress, clean shaven], [between 1848 and 1850], Photograph. Courtesy of the Library of Congress; (right) Portrait of James Reilly, 1912, Photograph. Courtesy of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission.
In early 1840, stockholders of the Harrisburg Town Company formed the Harrisburg Rail Road and Trading Company to link the town to the Brazos thirty miles away. The group purchased materials and began construction, but they failed to raise enough money and were forced to abandon the project.
From Prospects to Policy: Public Lands to Fund Railroad Construction
The Iron Horse Arrives: Sydney Sherman and the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado Railroad
Map of the Southern Pacific and connecting lines, 1897, Map #95763 , Cobb Digital Map Collection, Archives and Records Program, Texas General Land Office, Austin, TX. Courtesy of John & Diana Cobb.
Transcontinental Expansion: The Railroads’ Impact on Texas and the U.S.
In the decades following the Civil War, the Southern Pacific became a dominant force in Texas and the greater American Southwest. This was a direct result of its collaboration with the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Railway Company , which provided the critical link connecting Texas to the transcontinental railroad and traces its roots to the BBB&C. As Texas moved away from a slavery-based agricultural economy and grew into its role as a gateway to the western United States, the tracks themselves were of critical importance to the state’s growth, transportation, infrastructure, and industry. The Southern Pacific also leveraged the power it derived from the railroads to exert influence on and to develop several of Texas’ most important economic outputs.
- Map of the Southern Pacific and connecting lines showing Sunset Route beginning in San Francisco along with black and white drawings of local flora, 1897
- Map of the Southern Pacific and connecting lines showing Sunset Route continued through California and Arizona along with a black and white drawing of Yosemite Valley, 1897
- Map of the Southern Pacific and connecting lines showing Sunset Route continued through New Mexico and El Paso along with black and white drawings of Old Mission near Tucson, a man on horseback on the Texas Plains, and a park in San Antonio, 1897
- Map of the Southern Pacific and connecting lines showing Sunset Route continued from El Paso to San Antonio along with black and white drawings of a Mexican Jacal (a thatched roof and walls made of upright poles covered and chinked with mud or clay), the Alamo, and sugar planting, 1897
- Map of the Southern Pacific and connecting lines showing Sunset Route continued from San Antonio to New Orleans along with black and white drawings of a the rail line leading into Louisiana and a steamboat, 1897
- Map of the Southern Pacific and connecting lines showing Sunset Route continued from New Orleans splitting of to several other lines crossing to the eastern shores of the United States, 1897
Map of the Southern Pacific Company and connections, H.S. Crocker & Co., 1890, Map #95759 , Cobb Digital Map Collection, Archives and Records Program, Texas General Land Office, Austin, TX. Courtesy of John & Diana Cobb.
Railroad leaders worked with Texas farmers to collect and distribute critical agricultural data and create farming and irrigation improvements that greatly increased crop variety and yield. In the 1880s and 1890s, the company heavily promoted the cultivation of rice along the Gulf Coast, backing experiments for growing the grain and creating markets for selling it. As it expanded its operations in Texas, the Southern Pacific constructed an extensive network of water stations between El Paso and San Antonio.
Correct Map of Texas and Louisiana, Houston: Southern Pacific Lines, 1917, Map #2142 , General Map Collection, Archives and Records Program, Texas General Land Office, Austin, TX.
"Abnormal Involucres of Boll-Weevil Cotton," O.F. Cook's Boll-Weevil Cotton in Texas, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1923.
By the early nineteenth century, the company established agricultural and industrial development departments at Houston and New Orleans focused on efficient and profitable farming. The company also contributed financial, political, and leadership support to the Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Texas A&M University) . In the wake of spreading boll weevil infestation that damaged Texas’ cotton industry, the Houston department advocated for a more diverse, balanced system of farming including rice, sugar, and tobacco. Later, the department introduced profit-saving innovations to speed the rail shipment of livestock while reducing in-transit weight loss and feeding.
(left) "Loading Rough Rice in Cars-Sunset Route," in Texas and Louisiana Rice, Houston: Passenger Dept., Sunset Route, 1910, Map #96725 , Cobb Digital Map Collection, Archives and Records Program, Texas General Land Office, Austin, TX. Courtesy of John & Diana Cobb; (right) David M. Duller, Southern Pacific Rice Belt, Houston: Passenger Dept. [Southern Pacific Railway], 8/18/1905, Map #96793 , General Map Collection, Archives and Records Program, Texas General Land Office, Austin, TX.
Conclusion
"Houston Seal," in Douglas L. Weiskopf's Rails Around Houston, Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2009.
From its humble beginning with the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado Railroad, Texas’ rail network continued to grow. In the late nineteenth century, expanding railroads combined with the invention of barbed wire and restrictions on moving cattle to bring about the end of the state’s cattle drive era. By 1911, Texas had more railroad mileage than any other U.S. state, a distinction it still holds today. This vast network became a crucial part of the state’s booming oil and gas industry throughout the twentieth century. In the ensuing years, expansion continued into more isolated areas, including the Rio Grande Valley, South Plains, Panhandle, and West Texas. Over half a century after the establishment of land grant programs that facilitated the growth of Texas’ early rail systems, the railroads finally extended into these historically sparsely populated regions where most of the over 24 million acres granted for their development were surveyed.
Houston, Texas, 1935, Map #79321 , Texas State Library and Archives Collection, Archives and Records Program, Texas General Land Office, Austin, TX.
Houston annexed Harrisburg, the birthplace of Texas’ railroads, in 1926. It rode the railroads’ momentum to becoming the state’s largest city in 1930 with a population of 292,000, a position it has never relinquished. Two years later, the total mileage of Texas' rail system reached its peak at 17,078 miles. The second half of the twentieth century marked a dramatic change in American transportation, however. The U.S. became increasingly more reliant on automobiles and the highway system, which capped the railroads’ growth. Today, Texas’ railroads continue to function as a viable transportation system for several industry and agricultural sectors within the state and nationwide, and their early influence helped facilitate Texas’ continued economic growth.
Supplemental Cartographic Resources
The following maps provide a chronological overview of railroad development in Texas. Click the link to the left of each map to view it in full high-resolution detail.
Explore Further
Angevine, Robert G. “ Individuals, Organizations, and Engineering: U.S. Army Officers and the American Railroads, 1827-1838. ” Technology and Culture 42, no. 2 (2001): 292-320.
Briscoe, P. “ The First Railroad in Texas. ” The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association Volume 7, No. 4 (1904): 279-285.
Dilts, James D. The Great Road: The Building of the Baltimore and Ohio, the Nation’s First Railroad, 1828-1853. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993.
Gammel, H.P.N. The Laws of Texas 1822-1897 Volume III . Austin, TX: The Gammel Book Company, 1898.
Hemphill, Hugh. The Railroads of San Antonio and South Central Texas. San Antonio: Maverick Publishing Company, 2006.
Hogan, William Ransom. The Texas Republic and Economic History. Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1946 (reprint, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1980).
McAshan, Marie Phelps. A Houston Legacy: On the Corner of Main and Texas. Houston: Hutchins House, 1985.
Miller, Thomas Lloyd. The Public Lands of Texas, 1519-1970. Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1971.
Modelski, Andrew M. Railroad Maps of North America – The First Hundred Years. New York: Bonanza Books, 1987.
Muir, Andrew Forest. “ The Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado Railway Company, 1850-1861, and its Antecedents .” Master’s thesis, Rice University, 1942.
Orsi, Richard J. Sunset Limited – The Southern Pacific railroad and the Development of the American West 1850-1930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.
Porter, Eugene O. “ Railroad Enterprises in the Republic of Texas .” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 59, no. 3 (1956): 363-371.
Potts, Charles S. “Railroad Transportation in Texas.” Bulletin of the University of Texas No. 119, Humanistic Series, No. 7, March 1, 1909: 9-214.
Sayers, Joseph Draper. Railroad Consolidation in Texas, 1891-1903. St. Louis: Woodward & Tiernan Printing Company, 1903.
Torget, Andrew. Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015.
Traxler, Ralph N. “ The Texas and Pacific Railroad Land Grants: A Comparison of Land Grant Policies of the United States and Texas .” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 61, no. 3 (1958): 359-370.
United States Census Bureau. Report on Transportation Business in the United States at the Eleventh Census 1890 : 4-6.
Weiskopf, Douglas L. Rails Around Houston. Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2009.
Wharton, Clarence R. History of Fort Bend County . Houston: Anson Jones Press, 1950.
Wilson, G. Lloyd and Ellwood H. Spencer. “ Growth of the Railroad Network in the United States .” Land Economics 26, no. 4 (1950): 337-345.
