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The Secret: Follow the River

You're looking at a map ... it's an old map from the early 1900's.  It's the route of the Santa Fe Railway.

It stretches from Topeka, Kansas to the Pacific Coast ... Los Angeles and San Diego.  Then, something curious.

You know the terrain along the way, and what bothers you is why the Santa Fe engineers built through eastern Colorado and fought their way up through Raton Pass:  altitudes of 7,500 feet, switchbacks were required, technology and power that the older iron horses barely had.

Why didn't they cut across western Kansas and Oklahoma and northeastern New Mexico's flatter, more accommodating terrain?

Then you notice the little blue line that runs alongside the rail.  It's a river.  First, the Arkansas, the Canadian, then the Rio Grande.  The steam engines needed water.  The route was not based on building across the easiest terrain; it was built where there was water.

Last May I became a partner of Wizard of Ads, a marketing  consulting firm located southwest of Austin, Texas.  First, I spent three months writing my book, Iron Horses of the Santa Fe Southwest; then, three weeks after the recording sessions for the book, I was diagnosed with cancer, underwent a successful surgery and a 3-month recovery.

I'd just gotten to know 5 new friends, the iron horses featured in my book:  Cyrus Holliday, Fred Harvey, Mary Colter, Will Simpson and Philip Anschutz.  Each had experienced difficulties in their lives.  Yet their faith, their lives and loves impacted many lives, yesterday and today.  Mine is just one.

Over this past year, I've built along the river.  It's not the easiest terrain, but it's along my river.

Have you found your river?   

Painting shown above is "The River, Grand Canyon" by Louis Akin

From The International Railway Traveler

March 2005 Issue

Audio CD offers insight about railroading's greats, and will motivate you, too!

The audio book Iron Horses of the Santa Fe Southwest, The Power of Vision, by Sonja Howle, is part history, part motivational seminar.

I listened to the two-CD set in my car, while driving to visit a relative.  My route paralleled that of Amtrak's Surfliner, where Santa Fe trains used to ply the rails between San Diego and Los Angeles.  As the occasional train rumbled by, it was easy to envision much of what Howle relates about the titans of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway:  Cyrus K. Holliday, Fred Harvey, Mary Jane Elizabeth Colter and William Haskell Simpson. 

Each of these innovators played an enormous role that made passenger railroading, from operations to railway art, advertising and architecture, what it is today.

Hearing the quartet's stories of how they shaped railroading was inspirational to me on a personal level.  And to author Howle, examining the historical roots of these innovators will benefit not only individuals who want to create a new vision for themselves, but to the business community as well.  The dust jacket says it all:  "It will inspire and encourage you ... to be an Iron Horse in your life, your company and your industry."  And besides that, it's a fascinating history about early railroading.

Iron Horses of the Santa Fe Southwest runs just over 97 minutes and includes an 80-page transcript booklet.  The publisher direct price is $ 9.95; buy through Wizard Academy Press, www.wizardacademypress.com (800) 425-4769.  (Also available at www.amazon.com, for $11.01)

Thank you Gena Holle, of International Railway Traveler. 
Glad you enjoyed it.
Sonja

From a Reader of "Iron Horses of the Santa Fe Southwest"

"Conventional wisdom states that the highest goal of a business is to maximize shareholder return. The only constraint is to do nothing illegal. The only encouragement to look beyond the profit maximization principle is...well, there is none - especially in an era where short term performance matters more than long term strength.

In that regard, it is refreshing to learn that there is another way - that corporations can provide returns to a broader constituency than its narrow base of absentee owners. Moreover, as Sonja Howle points out in her fine short history of the early days of the Santa Fe Railway (along with a related excursion into the Harvey House story), it can be done in a manner that ultimately enhances shareholder wealth.

The key is to develop a vision that goes beyond the numbers to incorporate the unrecognized strengths of the communities and environments in which they operate. Ms. Howle shows us how the Santa Fe Railway and the Harvey Company, both separately and together, were able to rise above the accounting ledgers and an environment of short term thinking (the Santa Fe had its own internal battle with a faction that was more interested in exploitation than in building a business, while the Harvey House business model succeeded where similar businesses failed because it focused on delivering customer value rather than on turning a quick buck) to the benefit of their customers and communities as well as their shareholders.

Ms. Howle has made a valuable contribution to our understanding of business and its role in the community. It should be of interest to students of economic history, to business people who want to leave a legacy that transcends the pocket book (without harming it either), as well as to that quaint little species known as the railroad buff."

- Mark W. Johnson, Texas, 2/20/05

 

Iron Horse from Williams and the Grand Canyon

Monday, January 3, 2005
Williams, Arizona and the Grand Canyon

You’ve waited two days longer than planned; you’ve had 4 hours of sleep and you’re punchy. The moment has arrived. You’ve been reading about her and studying the people who first knew her.

William Allen White, when sent by the Santa Fe Railway to the Grand Canyon with artist Fernand Lungren in 1903, had this to say about his visit,

“The writers, and painters, and preachers, and leaders of thought in the land will visit the place in larger numbers than will persons from the materialistic walks of life. For these thoughtful people are the travelers and seekers after spiritual impressions, and also they are the givers of impressions to the multitude – they are veritable clearinghouses of the country’s ideas and ideals. Through the world’s thinkers the Canyon must speak to the world.”

Thirty years earlier (1873), Thomas Moran joined John Wesley Powell to paint America’s first glimpse of her. Then, nineteen years later (1892), commissioned by the Santa Fe Railway, he produced a painting that would be shared with the world … his work would be used on calendars, advertisements, brochures and menus.

Today she hid herself behind a cloud of white within an hour of our arrival. A blizzard with white cotton-ball snowflakes was her veil.

But as I stood at the south rim, staring north into the white nothing – overwhelming emotion. They were all here. Their voices were as soft as the snow on my shoulders. Mary Colter’s Hopi House … as strong and as imposing as the entrance of the dark-wood El Tovar … competing structures that say “I’m here.”

In 1901 the trip to the Grand Canyon from Williams was made easier … the Santa Fe opened a railway direct to the South Rim. And, up the hill from this beautiful Grand Canyon station is El Tovar, facing her is the Hopi House and they both sit on the side of the South Rim. This station has been completely restored and is used every day by the Grand Canyon Railway.

In Williams, the former Fred Harvey Hotel is mostly vacant … except for a few ghosts. Most of the hotel is used by the Grand Canyon Railway as a depot and gift shop. Behind her is the new Grand Canyon Railway Hotel, which serves as the waiting room for the folks who arrive and leave on Amtrak in Williams. The hotel is full of original art and a generous group.

From 1900 to 1933, Will Simpson and his wife hosted teams of artists and writers to the Grand Canyon during his tenure as the General Advertising Agent for the Santa Fe Railway, Mary Colter spent many years at the Grand Canyon constructing the Hopi House, the Watchtower, Hermit’s Rest, Lookout Studio, Bright Angel Lodge … some of the country’s most distinctive national landmarks. Sadly, the father of the railway, Cyrus Holliday, died in 1900 and Fred Harvey died in 1901. They may not have seen the majesty created by their architects, the artists and writers … but they had seen the majesty of the Canyon. They were the leaders of thought and they knew they would in some way be responsible for allowing the Canyon to speak to many generations.

 

 

Iron Horse from Winslow, Arizona

Standing on the Corner in Winslow, Arizona
Saturday, January 1 and Sunday, January 2, 2005

This is travel.  We're in Winslow and for some reason, the rental car did not show up.

We explored a few other options, but staying in Winslow for the weekend was the one we settled on.

So, we’ll be in Winslow until Sunday night – that’s when we were scheduled to take the Southwest Chief further west … originally to L.A. Now, we’ll go only as far as Williams Junction, an hour and a half west, and extend our trip one day to see the Grand Canyon on Monday, January 3, 2005.

You know, we’re in good company – Jackson Browne was stranded in Winslow with car problems on his way to Sedona.

In fact, when Glenn Frey of the Eagles heard Jackson play the song “Take it Easy,” (Glenn lived above Jackson in an apartment on Laguna in Echo Park, California), Jackson had all of the lyrics in place … but he was having trouble with one line.

“I’m standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona, such a fine site to see … “

Glenn added the line Jackson had been waiting for, “ There’s a girl my Lord, in a flatbed Ford slowin’ down to take a look at me.”

Glenn and the Eagles recorded the song – it was one of their hits, and Glenn said “I don’t know if we could have had a better opening song on our first album. Just those opening chords felt like an announcement, ‘And now … the Eagles.’ “

So, you never know what will come from standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona.

Sites and sounds from our Winslow Weekend

The view of downtown from the Mary Colter balcony at La Posada.

The New Year’s Eve celebration at La Posada.

The  sprauling exterior of the La Posada in Winslow.

 

The "Route 66 Roadworks" store that was open on Saturday, January 1^st, where I bought my own special copy of “The Very Best of the Eagles.”

The "Standin' on the Corner" Park. 

Iron Horse from La Fonda in Santa Fe

Friday, December 31, 2004

“When New Mexico became a state in 1912, Will Simpson, the General Advertising Agent of the Santa Fe Railway, received a letter from a determined official from Santa Fe, New Mexico 'Every effort will be directed toward making Santa Fe the Tourist Center of the Southwest, and the insistence on the native or ‘Santa Fe’ note in all future architecture here seems to me the surest way to attract the tourist wearied from the brick, wood and concrete construction of the east. We hope to make of Santa Fe a glorified Adobe Town.’

Since the railroad had arrived thirty years earlier, the population of Santa Fe had decreased; the railroad typically had the opposite effect. Santa Fe was not on the main line of the railway; and, it’s dirty adobe structures and narrow dirt streets reminded tourists and Anglos of a ‘Mexican’ influence – which at the time did not have a positive connotation. Public opinion stirred, encouraging movement of the capital from Santa Fe to another more American New Mexico city.

New Mexican tourism officials had seen the impact of the railroad’s emphasis of the Mission Revival style of architecture in California; they saw the tourist wave to California to explore California’s Missions and join in the Fiestas.

Will’s Santa Fe Southwest and the Harvey system did create continuity in the passenger’s experience. The architecture and the destinations of the Santa Fe were naturally and climactically completed in California – ‘the railway operated tourist hotels and sold real estate in southern California, it had good reason to keep paid passengers under the spell of Spanish romance.’ 

California experience had proven that ‘the colonist and the investor follow the tourist.’

The town of Santa Fe had nothing to lose.

They hired a Harvard trained, 29 year-old archaeologist, Sylvanus Morley, to lead them to a new adobe style of architecture that would be as impressive as what the Santa Fe Railway had done in Lamy, Albuquerque and Las Vegas and would glorify the state’s rich past.

The new ‘Santa Fe Style’ was a bold blending of the state’s Spanish and European influences and the pueblo style, inspired by the church of Mission San Estevan at Acoma Pueblo – the only mission church to survive the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.  Morley felt it best represented ‘the collaboration as a fusion of Spanish and Pueblo forms, a grafting of a European civilization on a Native American stalk.’

One of the most unique cities in America, looked to the Santa Fe Railway in 1904 to inspire a new, and valued, architectural style.   

And, they wanted Will Simpson to be one of the first to know.

Simpson and the Harvey Company did support the vision of their friends in Santa Fe -- with the 1926 purchase of La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe by a subsidiary of the Santa Fe Railway and with the introduction of the Harvey Company’s Indian Detours the same year.

First, the focus for the Santa Fe had been the Grand Canyon, then the Spanish Missions and Fiestas of California. When the tour operator of the Grand Canyon tours saw the potential of a detour, halfway between the 4 and a half-day journey from Chicago to Los Angeles, New Mexico was delighted. The Grand Canyon had visitors numbering 50,000 in 1924, and growing. The Santa Fe Railway would provide the dollars and exposure New Mexico could only dream of … and a network of 10-12,000 ticket agents for the Santa Fe would become ambassadors for the state, as they had been for the Grand Canyon and for California."

The Indian Detours presence is still felt in the lobby of the La Fonda in Santa Fe. Here is the desk used for less than a decade, where guests checked-in for their tours.

- from my book Iron Horses of the Santa Fe Southwest, The Power of Vision

Iron Horse from Santa Fe

Friday, December 31, 2004

“If you were to stand on the tracks at Lamy, New Mexico and look southwest at the natural path through the valley to Albuquerque, and look northwest toward Santa Fe at the escalating elevations of the mountains, you would see the choice the Santa Fe had to make – when time and resources where not on their side. Would the railroad follow the natural path through the valley to Albuquerque, or would it take a long expensive-to-build and treacherous route through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains northwest to Santa Fe, the railway’s destination namesake?

They built the rails to Albuquerque. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe did not go through Santa Fe. Instead, Archbishop Lamy of Santa Fe and the businessmen and women of Santa Fe intervened to help defer the cost of a spur line from the main station in Lamy to Santa Fe that was completed in 1880.

‘Originally named Galisteo Junction, the village of Lamy was formed in 1880 by the junction of the Santa Fe branch line with the AT&SF main line.'  It was named Lamy after Jean-Baptiste Lamy, a Catholic priest who came to New Mexico from France in 1851. Eventually becoming Archbishop of the Territory (New Mexico did not gain statehood until 1912), he played a major role in the region's development, and arranged the donation of Church property for the junction and town that bears his name.

Archbishop Lamy also had another link to his namesake town. In the planning of his grand building endeavor--the Cathedral in Santa Fe's Plaza.

Lamy rejected the pink granite and green schist commonly found in the Sangre de Cristo mountains. He did, however, find a shade of stone perfectly suited to his design vision in the hill directly caddy-corner to the Lamy Depot, and it is from this hill that stone for the Cathedral was quarried.’ And, the Lamy to Santa Fe spur carried the stone to Santa Fe for the final four years of the construction of the cathedral.

By the way, Archbishop Lamy was the inspiration for the lead character in Willa Cather's novel Death Comes for the Archbishop.”

- from my book, Iron Horses of the Santa Fe Southwest, The Power of Vision

Iron Horse from Albuquerque

December 30, 2004

"… Culturally the very architecture of hotels contributes to the beauty of any city; their interiors are authentic reproductions of period or contemporary art, decor and furnishings.”                                                                  
                                                                                             - Conrad Hilton, October 1969

He stepped out of the bank, discouraged. He was standing in the middle of the street in Cisco, Texas; he’d made a 500-mile journey for nothing.

The oil boom had begun two years earlier in 1917 and the young man from San Antonio, New Mexico had hoped to leave as the new owner of the bank – the bank owner had reconsidered his offer to the young man from New Mexico and had decided it wasn’t enough. It was not a successful negotiation.

The town’s elegant railway station was nearby – Cisco was fortunate to be a transportation hub – the intersection of the Houston and Texas Central Railway and the Texas and Pacific. But, he’d missed the last train west so, the young man so far from home walked across the street to the hotel to get a room for the night.

What Conrad found was gold.

With the oil boom, and its transportation significance, the Mobley Hotel in Cisco was renting rooms in eight-hour shifts, three times a day. People were sleeping in the lobby.

He bought the hotel in Cisco and more throughout Texas.  The first hotel to carry his name was built in Dallas, Texas in 1925 – the Dallas Hilton. In 1939 he would fulfill a dream to build a hotel in New Mexico, in Albuquerque, less than 90 miles north of his hometown. At the time it was the tallest building in New Mexico and he loved bringing his new wife, Zsa Zsa Gabor, to the hotel to share the penthouse suite that expanded the entire width of the hotel.

The hotel became La Posada de Albuquerque in 1983, and in 1985, with the help from the City of Albuquerque, the building underwent a multi-million dollar restoration.

Conrad was only five years old when Albuquerque’s Alvarado Hotel celebrated its Grand Opening in 1902 – an innovation of the Fred Harvey and Santa Fe systems; Conrad’s Albuquerque property shares the elegance and architectural style of the Alvarado, and is located only about 1 block west. Sadly, the Alvarado was demolished in 1970.

And, on December 23, 1927, only eight years after Conrad walked out of the bank in Cisco, Texas, it was the site of the famous “Santa Claus Bank Robbery” which would lead to the death of six men and the largest manhunt in Texas history.

Amtrak pulled into Albuquerque at 4 pm on Thursday, December 30th and we were at La Posada de Albuquerque within minutes -- only one block from the train station in downtown.  It was everything Conrad had planned it to be.   

Iron Horse from Kansas City

December 29, 2004
Location: Kansas City, Missouri's Union Station 

Time changes you … your perceptions and what you value.

When I visited Kansas City on weekends, while I was in college or in my first 10 years of my career in television, one of my favorite places was Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza. The architecture is magnificent, modeled by the visionary who had traveled throughout Europe and the Southwest (the influence of the Spanish Missions and the Santa Fe Railway and Fred Harvey Company’s team of architects and designers). In 1922, the Plaza became the nation’s first suburban center designed to accommodate auto travelers. Each year, on Thanksgiving night, thousands meet at the Plaza to see the Christmas lights come on … millions outlining almost every detail of the sophisticated structures … white stucco, red tile roofs, tile murals, bronzes and fountains.

Today, with just a few hours to enjoy the city before boarding the train tonight, we visit the Plaza for about an hour and headed for the Savoy Grill in downtown KC.

There is value not only in what makes a city spectacular, but also in her soul.

The Hotel Savoy is now open again, about a dozen suites are available and the Savoy Grill continues to maintain its century-old reputation for elegance and “Kansas City” style.

Jazz and blues were celebrated at the Savoy. Booth Number 4, known as the President’s Booth, hosted Harry Truman, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. The Savoy Grill is the oldest restaurant in Kansas City, and when it was built in 1903, Edward Holslag, then a student at The National Academy of Design, painted murals to grace her walls… these murals are now part of the Smithsonian’s “Bicentennial Inventory of American Paintings.”

The murals, wrap around the east, south, and western walls.  They represent the birth of a city on the river (Kansas City), of the existence of the warriors, the explorers, the settlers who traveled the Santa Fe Trail.

It was a time, over a century ago, of a new hope. New worlds were being formed in a soulful landscape anxious to have a brother to share it with.

Nothing spoke to this new culture in 1858 like the words of C.C. Spaulding, in the Annals of the City of Kansas:

“In this western world, commerce, steamboats and railroads build cities …. It is useless to think or talk about building a city in the west no matter how many steamboats we have or how extensive our commerce may be – unless we have railroads we shall never have a city.”

Mr. Spaulding then encouraged his fellow Kansas Citians to “manifest their determination to push forward with might, main and money, (and build) the gigantic railway system of Kansas City.”

Kansas City responded with an aggressive rail building effort and a new depot. Later, in 1914 the new Union Station was built. (“Union,” because it “united” competitive rail lines to serve the city, and the nation, in one place.) Over 200 trains huffed, puffed and rumbled from the station each day, in every direction, and from many different lines … The Rock Island, The Union Pacific, The AT&SF and more.

But one hundred and twenty-five years after Mr. Spaulding encouraged Kansas City to embrace his vision of a new city that would be a center for railroads, in 1983 Donald Hoffman, Architecture Critic for the Kansas City Star, wrote of his vision:

“Union Station stands as a memorial to failure.

Failure of this nation’s unsavory imperialistic ambition.

Failure of Kansas City’s dream of growing into the great metropolis of the prairie.

Failure of the nation’s railroads to survive as a vital system of public transportation and, in all these later years, failure in finding any new public use.”

After a two-state, four-county and corporate effort, Union Station re-opened in 1999. It’s Amtrak’s home in Kansas City, and with 180 freight trains passing through the station each day, Kansas City is the second busiest railroad center in the nation.

The Iron Horse Express - Now Boarding!

Christmas 2004 - The Iron Horse Express (Amtrak's Southwest Chief) leaves Kansas City's Union Station.  I'll be on board!  And, as the  author of Iron Horses of the Santa Fe Southwest, The Power of Vision, reporting in on my weblog, www.IronHorses.us ... featuring the historic scenes and sites from my book along the way.

My mother, Twila Smith, will join me on the adventure west to Los Angeles.  In 1903, my grandmother, Rose (Liberto) Pfeifer, boarded a train from New York.  She was barely three years old when she traveled west into the unknown, with her little cardboard suitcase, on the Orphan Train.  In Kansas a German couple chose her to be their daughter.  Her adoptive father and his brothers worked for the Santa Fe Railway in Topeka.

My book, Iron Horses of the Santa Fe Southwest, The Power of Vision, is a tribute to the Iron Horse Spirit of the leading men and women of the Santa Fe Railway, and to their innovations in advertising, art, architecture and adventure, still at work in the West today.

For more information, e-mail me.