DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad and the Amarillo story. Now settle in, because this is a tale about a town that nearly got left on the wrong side of the tracks — and I mean that just about literally. It starts, as so many Panhandle stories do, with iron rails cutting across flat open country.
Construction of a railroad across the Panhandle led to the founding of Amarillo itself — county seat of Potter County, born on August the 30th, 1887. And from that first moment, Amarillo had something going for it that most towns only dream about: a monopoly. For the better part of ten years, the whole South Plains funneled its trade right through this one spot.
And cattle — lord, the cattle. From 1892 to 1897, Amarillo was the largest rural cattle shipping point in the entire nation. Not in Texas.
In the nation. Let that land a moment. Now, a town like that starts to feel pretty settled.
Pretty permanent. And that, friend, is usually right about the time the ground shifts under your boots. In 1898, word started getting around about a new railway — the Pecos Valley and North Eastern, Santa Fe sponsored, meant to run all the way to Roswell, New Mexico, two hundred and twenty miles to the southwest.
Fine enough on its own. But here was the problem: that line looked like it might make its junction with the Santa Fe not at Amarillo, but at a place called Washburn — just fifteen miles to the southeast. Fifteen miles.
That's all. And yet, that short little distance threatened to cut Amarillo off from ready access to the South Plains trade it had built its whole existence on. The city's very existence, the marker says.
Not an overstatement. When a railroad bypasses you out on the High Plains, you don't slowly decline — you just sort of stop. So the citizens of Amarillo made their case.
They went to the Santa Fe and they asked, plainly, to be made the terminus of that new line. And the Santa Fe listened. The Pecos Valley and North Eastern became the terminus at Amarillo, not Washburn.
Then, in 1899, the Santa Fe went ahead and acquired the Pecos Valley and North Eastern outright — and moved its own headquarters from Panhandle, thirty miles to the northeast, right into Amarillo. The momentum didn't stop there. In 1908, the Santa Fe extended its main line to Amarillo from Panhandle, and built a connecting link from Texico, New Mexico, all the way to Belen, New Mexico — threading Amarillo right into the transcontinental line.
Branch lines followed. Trade followed. Everything followed.
The town that almost got clipped by fifteen miles of geography became the commercial center of the High Plains. Sometimes survival is the setup for something much bigger — and Amarillo is proof.
What the marker says
Construction of a railroad across the Panhandle led to the founding of Amarillo as County Seat of Potter County, Aug. 30, 1887. For the ensuing ten years, Amarillo had a monopoly on trade from the South plains, and was the nation's largest rural cattle shipping point, 1892-97. But in 1898 its trade was threatened and the city's very existence jeopardized when it appeared that the (Santa Fe sponsored) Pecos Valley & North Eastern Railway, to be built to Roswell, N.M. (220 mi. SW), might make junction with the Santa Fe at Washburn (15 mi. SE), cutting off ready access to the South plains. The Santa Fe, however, responded to requests from the citizens to make Amarillo the terminus of the new line. The Santa Fe acquired the Pecos Valley & North Eastern in 1899 and moved headquarters from Panhandle (30 mi. NE) to Amarillo. In 1908 the Santa Fe extended its main line here from Panhandle and built a link from Texico, N.M., to Belen, N.M., making Amarillo a major point on the transcontinental line. These measures, together with construction of branch lines, contributed vitally to making Amarillo the commercial center of the High Plains. (1973)