The Big Blast

At the end of the Civil War there was a growing outcry for new land for white settlers.  The War had created a situation in the South that resembled the depression of the 1930’s.  There was rampant unemployment, freedmen that were searching for their own farms, factories were destroyed in the South and the people wanted to move west to Kansas, Indian Territory and Texas.

With this influx into the southwest came the need for a more dependable method of transportation other than following cow trails.  The railroad seemed to be the perfect answer.  As the demand for Texas beef increased in the northeast, the only way of getting them from Texas to Kansas was the Chisholm, Texas and Western trails through Indian Territory.  This trip often toOK six months.

Several arguments were advanced for the building of railroads through the Indian Nations.  They included the need for a swift transfer of military troops and supplies, increased economic growth of the area, mail and supplies for the settlers, development of natural resources of the area, binding the Union together and a method of transporting cattle, hides and cotton from Texas to the East.

In 1884 the Santa Fe began preliminary studies for several routes through Indian Territory.  The one least liked by the engineers and the company was the most difficult and costly one.  It was the route that ran directly through the Arbuckles.  It was no time after construction began that the engineers discovered that their route had greatly underestimated the power and wrath of the Washita River.

The railroad was to be built from Arkansas City on the Kansas border to Gainesville on the Texas border and directly through the Arbuckles winding through a narrow valley in the area that became Big Canyon.

There was considerable doubt that a railroad could be built in such a narrow gorge with the flooding Washita to contend with from time to time.  The alternate routes around the east and west ends of the Arbuckles were considered.  This was seen by the railroad as a very unfeasible set of choices as it would put the new road either on the west boundary or east boundary of the Chickasaw Nation and virtually eliminates half the Nation’s commerce.  There was little choice but to go through the middle of the Arbuckles.

 The idea of a railroad was very foreign to the mixed-blood and full blood Indians as many of them had never heard of an “Iron Horse” or a locomotive.  The Santa Fe sent representatives up and down the proposed line to talk to the residents about the coming railroad and explained to them how it would make the quality of their lives much better.  They could get much needed food delivered to their town.  The plows, harnesses and farming equipment would be sold in local stores instead of a two-week trip to Texas to purchase them.  The cattle, hogs, corn, oats and cotton they raised would be sold in their local towns and put on the railroad to ship East.  They would not have to take their harvest to Texas to sell it anymore or drive heards to Kansas to sell them.

In 1885 and 1886, the Santa Fe began the work on the grade through the Arbuckles.  The grade was built with “slips” and a team of mules.  A slip can be seen at the museum in Davis.  It was built like a large scoop with handles like a plow.  The mules pulled the slip along the ground and the operator tilted the device front-down taking a thin slice of earth.  The slip was then drug to the desired place where it would be dumped.  The operator simply tilted the handles up and the soil slid out.  A slip operator earned $1.75 a day if he furnished his mules with the Santa Fe feeding the operator and the mules.

Bob Rowe came to this area in 1884 from Tennessee and hired out to the grade crew as a water boy when he was only twelve years old.  Rowe said he carried a pistol on the job and the dirt crew all called him “Six-Shooter-Bill”.  Rowe earned the sum of 75 cents a day plus his meal and bed.

 The construction in the “Cut” at Big Canyon began in 1884.  In 1885, the blasting through the mountain began and in 1887, the first train came through the Cut.  The blasting was some event according to those who lived in the area in 1885.

 While the grade through the Cut was being built about one hundred fifty men worked on that section.  Farmers and transients hired out and lived in section camps that were located about ten to fifteen miles apart.  There was a railroad commissary in each camp where railroad workers could get their “essentials”. 

 The Santa Fe had a hard time keeping the men on the job sometimes.  The game was abundant in the area.  Deer, hogs, bear and wild turkey roamed the woods.  The Washita was well stocked with fish.  On some occasions the grade crews would take off and fish or hunt for two or three days before returning to work.  There was always plenty of fresh wild game on the table at the section camps.

The largest blast occurred in 1885 when a rock ledge was blasted through the narrowest part of the Cut.  The blasting crew put 500 kegs of blasting powder in holes along the right-of-way.  Each keg was the size of a five-gallon bucket.  When the ‘shot’ was set off, it make such a shockwave that it brOKe windows for four miles around and knocked items off  shelves for ten miles around.  A rock the size of a house was said to be blown into the Washita. 

 A quarry was started here and the stone was used for the ballast for the roadbed.  The stone was hauled in two-wheeled carts pulled by a mule.  There was no driver for the cart.  The mule simply walked to the quarry unattended and stopped where it was to be loaded.  When the cart was loaded, the mule got a slap on the rump and it would go to the place where the stone was to be dumped.  Then it got a slap on the rump again and it walked back to the quarry to repeat its task.

 L.A. Davidson told the story when he arrived at the camp out of money and starving.  He could get no work and only railroad workers could eat at the Big Canyon section camp.  A young railroad worker put Davidson in line in front of him and told him to say nothing.  Davidson went through the meal line and ate with the workers. After several days the Santa Fe found out what he was doing and hired him so he would not starve to death.  He was put to work building bridge piers.

 There were few towns in the area at this time with only Sorghum Flat in the middle of the Arbuckles; Washita was on the north side and Dresden (Gene Autry) on the south side.  There was no Sulphur, Davis, Dougherty, Wynnewood or Ardmore till well after construction of the railroad began.

 There were many families living in the region that were primarily engaged in farming and ranching.  These few businessmen were engaged in cotton ginning, sorghum milling and a few were merchants with a meager supply of staples for the locals.  Even these supplies were brought in from Denison and Gainesville, Texas in wagons on trips that toOK two weeks to make the round trip.  Little wonder that a family went to the store only twice a year.

Only Sam Davis in Sorghum Flat and Matt Wolfe in Washita had tiny stores with the bare essentials.  Sorghum Flat was located near the ranch headquarters of the Healey Brothers Ranch between Davis and Dougherty.  Washita was located four miles north and one mile west of present Davis.  After a year in Sorghum Flat (1885), Davis moved to the only other town in the area, Washita and went into competition with Wolfe.  It was the consensus of the area residents that a railroad would be a godsend.  Nelson Chigley, a full blood Chickasaw and rancher, had a large ranch in the area where Davis later came into existence.  Chigley asked the Santa Fe to survey out a town in the middle of his ranch and so began the town of Davis. 

 When the Santa Fe came through, the siding at Washita was a quagmire when it rained and Davis saw the handwriting on the wall.  When Chigley had a town surveyed and a siding put in on his ranch, Davis moved his store to the siding and put his store in operation in a tent across from the depot.  The Santa Fe hired him to be the first depot agent.

 The town of Big Canyon had no reason to exist except to furnish stone for the ballast for the Santa Fe Railroad.  When the railroad came through in 1886, road-building materials was badly needed to put the railroad up to grade going through the rugged Arbuckle Mountains.  any of the houses in the 'Canyon' were the little red houses of the Santa Fe employees.  As late as the 1920's, there are references to the collection of several 'villages' around Big Canyon.  Could these have been Crusher or Arbuckle? 

By the early 1900's, the quarry was owned by the Dolese Brothers ( John, Henry & Peter).  There were many Mexican and Austrian families that worked and lived in the area.  The roads around the mountains were so narrow that  one team could not pass another. 

The main town contained the typical amenities of any mining town owned by the company.  It had a post office, commissary, a coOKhouse and the superintendent’s house as well as the clerk's house.  There was also a dormitory for the single men.  The 'town' contained eight houses  of questionable substance.  There was a community well for all the families to fetch water.  Most of the buildings were still painted with the Santa Fe red paint.

Dolese toOK good care of their employees while living or dead.  If an employee or family member died, Dolese paid all the burial expenses and buried them in the 'company' cemetery.  I have seen the funeral home records and have seen the many times that Dolese was the payer of all the burial expenses.  The Dolese Company also had a company farm on which the local boys could work and make money during the summer.   Spring water was piped to a spigot at the back door of each house.

By the early 1900’s the Santa Fe began bringing weekend excursion trains to the Cut at Big Canyon.  On an average weekend during the summer there were 2,500 sightseers who paid a $1.00 for a round trip ticket from Galveston, Texas.  The train would stop at the siding at Big Canyon and the passengers would scatter through the snake-infested hills like a covey of quail.  One local was asked what she thought these tourist got from the trip.  She said she had no idea “ but some got drunk, some got poison ivy and they all got blistered”.  In the area “Burning Mountain” was a big tourist attraction at that time.

In 1901, 1906 and 1908 the Washita flooded covering the Santa Fe track halting traffic.  The 1908 flood was by far the worse.  This flood had trains backed up for miles waiting to cross the Arbuckles with no traffic between Pauls Valley and Ardmore.  The roadbed was washed out in the Cut and toOK two months to get trains back to normal.   In the Cut, the water was 15 feet over the rails.

The damages were considerable in 1908 dollars.  The flood killed 50 people, 10 million dollars were lost in property damage to personal property and homes, the crop damage was estimated to be 2 million and the railroad lost 3 million dollars.  The railroad not only lost the track and roadbed, it also had to put up stranded passengers for weeks in hotels and feed them.  The flood was so devastating to the local economy; the Santa Fe sold seed to the farmers at cost and did not collect the debt until the next harvest.

In 1910 the roadbed was raised to a level above the 1908 flood stage.  It was during this work that a train, No. 11, derailed on a temporary bridge and two passengers were killed.  It is said that the engineer of Number 11 either ignored or misinterpreted a signal causing the accident.

Contributed by Dennis Muncrief  -  August 2002.