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Show 1880 TO 1912 483 The first passenger train **? into New Mexico brought the members of the legislature of the state of Colorado to Otero, on the line of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad, in Colfax county, February 13, 1879. One year later the line had been constructed southward through the counties of Mora, San Miguel, and Santa Fé, over the Glorieta Pass, and southward to the valley of the Rio Grande. In five years more there’ had been constructed by three great railway corporations one thousand two hundred and fifty-five miles of railway in New Mexico. These were the New Mexico and Southern Pacific Railroad Company, the Rio Grande, Mexico and Pacific Railroad Company, and the New Mexican ** Railroad Comtook place on the 9th day tives not of February, only of the City of Santa 1880, participated in by the representa- Fé but of the Territory, this assembly recognizes an evidence of the good will and progressive tendency of the whole people with regard to the important improvements and changes which are now at hand.’’ 93 If it had not been for the panic of 1873, the building of the line of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad would have been accomplished five years sooner. Prior to 1873, Henry Strong, then president of the railroad company mentioned, together with Dutch associates interested in the Maxwell land grant, had made all arrangements for the construction of the line from its then terminus, near Granada, Colorado, to Cimarron, in Colfax county, New The panic of 1873, the failure of J. Cooke and Company, and other Mexico. disasters of that period compelled an abandonment of plans which would have made Cimarron the center of the industrial development which afterward ‘came to Pueblo and Trinidad, in the state of Colorado. 894 The original incorporators of the railroad companies controlled by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad Company were William B. Strong, Miguel A. Otero, Frederick W. Pitkin, Henry C. Nutt, Albert A. Robinson, Jefferson Raynolds, James L. Johnson, Henry M. Atkinson, William W. Griffin, José Placido Romero, William Breeden, Edward Hatch, and Henry L. Waldo. William B. Strong was born in Brownington, Vermont, and was educated in While a young man he rethe Pangborn school at Burlington in that state. His first railroad work was done on a line which is now moved to Wisconsin. & part Worker, of the Chicago and Northwestern system. He began then became an operator and station agent. He was as a station promoted by of the various stages until he became successively general superintendent Michigan Central Railroad, and general superintendent of the Chicago, BurlingOn December 17, 1877, he came to the reba ton and Quincey Railroad. On July 12, opeka and Santa Fé as vice-president and general manager. 1881, he was elected president of the company, which position he held until When Mr. Strong began his work with the ‘‘Santa Fé September 6, 1889. the line extended from Topeka across Kansas into Colorado. He immediately He brought about the lease of the pushed the work of extending the system. Denver and Rio Grande Protracted litigation lines and the purchase of the stock of that company. followed this purchase as well as an actual physical con- test of great vigor in which considerable bloodshed and destruction of property — the took place Denver and Rio Grande Company using physical force in its After elforts to recover the property it had leased to the Santa Fé Company. the Santa Fé had won all of the fights, both in the field and in the courts, an offer to refund to the Santa Fé all the cash it had ‘expended in the purchase |