04) Building the steel rail road

The rough, dusty trail and the failure of the traction engine did not remove the need or desire for more efficient transportation so the next obvious step for the Bisbee interests was to build a railroad. Two routes were surveyed under the watchful eye and direction of Ben Williams. The first route considered was over Mule Pass and then on to Fairbank, but because of the the steep grades and tight turns required for this route, the road would by necessity be a narrow gauge line. Narrow gauge means that the rails are less than the standard 4' 8½” apart, which is the gauge to which the NM&A was constructed. Because of this difference in gauge, rail cars could not simply be transferred from one railroad to the other, each and every load would need to be transferred from one rail car to another, slowing the shipments, increasing costs and an increased risk of damage to fragile loads.

Here is the Arizona Copper Company's locomotive #5, named "Forman".

This mining railroad is a prime example of the very smallest size of narrow gauge railroading!

This photograph was made in Metcalf, Arizona around 1915.

The other route, leaving Bisbee to the east and south out of the canyon, then southwest to get around the southern end of the Mule Mountains, and slowly drifting down to northwest until it reached the bank of the the San Pedro River at Lewis Springs, finally arriving at the interchange with the NM&A at Fairbank. While this route was a number of miles longer than the previous one, the road could be built to standard gauge as there would be no sharp bends and the grades would be no greater than 2 ½%. It had the added advantage that cars could be interchanged directly with the NM&A, eliminating the undesirable transfers of sometimes fragile cargo a narrow gauge road would required.

To help give the reader a better impression of the terrain in the area, this link is a PDF file of a 1902 topographic map of the Bisbee area from the USGS.

The Fairbank Commercial Building, July, 2012.

Fairbank is now a easily visited railroad ghost town protected by BLM.

Only some A&SE ballast remains as a reminder of the towns busy past.

The Arizona and Southeastern Rail Road Company was incorporated on May 24^th, 1888 with Lewis Williams as President and Ben Williams as Agent. The name evolved over the years, at times with "Southeastern" as a single word, and later it is often published as two separate words "South Eastern".

The image at the right is a blurb from the Arizona Weekly Citizen from June 23rd, 1888 that mentions the arrival in Tucson of the work train that will be used to construct the Arizona & Southeastern. It should be noted that the name of the train's destination is listed as "Fairbanks". There are images of the NM&A depot with that spelling. This location had several names before this date, first Junction City, then Kendall, then Fairbanks, and then finally when the US Post Office was opened there in May of 1883, Fairbank.

The town became know as Fairbanks after it had been named in honor of Chicago industrialist and investor Nathaniel Kellogg Fairbank.

This 28 car train belonged to the Ward & Courtney Company was apparently based in El Paso, Tex. They did rail and roadbed construction and refurbishment throughout the southwest. Some of the earliest references I find of the company are for irrigation projects. Indeed the company was widely involved in dam and irrigation projects as well as railroad and other infrastructure projects throughout the west in the late 19^th Century.

The Railroad, Telegraph and Steamship Builders' Directory, 1890 lists the Arizona Territorial offices for Ward & Courtney being located in Fairchild, Ariz.

Though I have not yet come across any references about which of these companies, or another, laid the actual tracks for the A&SE, but it is highly likely that Ward & Courtney did not simply grade the route. Their long history as railroad builders suggest that they did all of the railroad construction with the exception of the bridges. Ward & Courtney did the upgrades and expansions of the railroad and its successors, further lending credence to them building the entire road from the ground up.

The H. P. Selden company of Kansas City, Mo. built the original track and bridges for the ATSF and was a widely utilized railroad construction company throughout the west. This company was also widely active throughout the west building railroads and other infrastructure.

M. W. Wambaugh, the Chief Engineer of the railroad was apparently from El Paso, Texas as well. He was an extremely prolific civil engineer who oversaw projects in multiple industries across the nation. He continued as the railroad's Chief Engineer throughout its 13 year history.

Since the report says the work train will be on the property and the crew most likely ready to work on June 24th, which was a Sunday, it is likely the grading of the route begun the on Monday June 25th, and certainly within a few days of that date. It is amazing that there was so much railroad construction going on that a crew was ready to go to work in only about a month after the railroad was created! The Ward & Courtney crews worked southward from Fairbank, mostly along the east bank of the San Pedro. About the same time that rails started being laid south from Fairbank, additional grading teams started working southeastward, down out of the mouth of Bisbee Canyon and then winding south, west and finally back to the north along the survey route towards the other grading and track laying crewsworking up the grade.

On September 17^th, 1888 the track laying crew had already progressed to the town of Charleston. Charleston had sprung up some years earlier as the residential area for the workers of the various mills built at that location. These ore processing mills were collectively known as “Millville”. The town had slowly been dying as the mills became less active and closed. The arrival of the A&SE was a hopeful event for the people still living there. Unfortunately the railroad wasn't there to build the community, it was just passing through. Without the mills, the reason for the town vanished and today Charleston, just like Fairbank, is a ghost town that can be easily visited by car.

The graders and track layers continued south about 11 miles until they reached Lewis Springs. At this point a water tank was constructed to service the locomotives. This is also where the railroad builders and the river parted their ways. This was the location chosen to begin the real grade of the railroad, climbing the western and southern skirts of the Mule Mountains the remaining 1300 feet to Bisbee.

Track laying crews were all over the west during the 1880s and 1890s, laying light rails to rapidly exploit mineral wealth.

This is not an image of Arizona & South Eastern construction, but is a good illustration of what that may have looked like as

the Ward & Courtney construction crews climbed out of Lewis Springs toward Bisbee.

The track construction is very similar to that used by the A&SE as well.

By October the depot in Bisbee was under construction, directly on top of the Copper Jack mining claim.

1888 was a good year in Bisbee. Copper prices had rebounded and after four years, The Copper Queen Consolidated Mining Company started paying dividends, 50 cent per share on July 2^nd to the owners of it's 140,000 shares of stock. Walter Walsh opened the town's second eating establishment, the Can Can Restaurant, in competition with another restaurant owned and operated by Sol Pierce. A clothing and dry goods store was also in town, but all were dwarfed by the mine owned Copper Queen Store, with over $30,000 worth of sales PER MONTH!