The El Paso & Southwestern Railroad, USA
Tucson, AZ - Benson, AZ - Douglas, AZ - Hermanas, NM - El Paso, TX - Tucumcari, NM
and branches
compiled by
Richard MaundThis page was updated on 9 March 2002.
1] Bisbee, AZ - Fairbank, AZ: The EPSW began as the Arizona & Southeastern Railroad, built 1888-89 by the Phelps Dodge Corporation and their subsidiary Copper Queen Consolidated Mining Company as an industrial line to carry copper anodes from the Copper Queen mine and smelter at Bisbee, AZ to a refinery in El Paso, TX. The AZSE ran from Bisbee for some 60km northwards to a junction at Fairbank with the New Mexico & Arizona Railroad (then owned by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, but by 1900 part of the Southern Pacific, and not to be confused with the narrow-gauge Arizona & New Mexico mentioned below).
2] Fairbank, AZ - Benson, AZ : In 1894 the AZSE was extended some 30km further northwards, parallel to the New Mexico & Arizona, to a new connection with the Southern Pacific at Benson.
3] Bisbee, AZ - Douglas, AZ: Electricity-industry demand for copper boomed in the early 1900s. Phelps Dodge replaced their Bisbee smelter with a bigger one on the plains close to the Mexican border, and in 1901 extended the AZSE from Bisbee 40km east to serve this new smelter at the newly-formed town of Douglas, AZ, named after Dr James Douglas, a prominent figure at the Copper Queen mine.
4] Douglas, AZ - Rodeo, NM - Animas - Hatchita - Hermanas, NM: On 25 June 1901 Phelps Dodge formed the El Paso & Southwestern Railroad and transferred to this company the assets of the AZSE. Plans were to extend the EPSW across the southern edge of New Mexico to El Paso, TX. Track was laid from Douglas east into New Mexico, passing the small settlements of Rodeo and Animas, around the north end of the Little Hatchet Mountains, just north of the mining community of Hatchita (now Old Hatchita), and east into the wide valley which is the present site of Hatchita, a location chosen because of its ample water-supply. Continuing east, the track reached a location where the town of Hermanas was built.
5] Hermanas, NM - Deming, NM: In June 1901, a separate construction crew began work from Deming west over the 50km level route to Hermanas. The two crews connected the lines in February 1902 giving EPSW a branch connection to both the ATSF and the SP in Deming - giving shorter hauls to eastern destinations (such as El Paso) than via the previous connections at Fairbank and Benson..
6] Hermanas, NM - Columbus, NM - El Paso, TX: Construction continued east from Hermanas, through the Mimbres River valley to the small border community of Columbus, thereafter following the Mexican border to the Rio Grande River valley and into El Paso in November 1902. EPSW now had 466km of main line and 64km of branches, and a second route existed from Benson, AZ to El Paso, TX, duplicating the 1881-built SP main line. The EPSW crossed the US continental divide at 1431m, 47m higher than the SP, and was 46km longer, but its gradients were easier.
7] El Paso, TX - Alamogordo, NM - Carrizozo - Vaughn - Tucumcari, NM: Phelps Dodge smelting output continued to grow to meet demand, and with it the need for coal and coke to run the smelters. On 1 July 1905 EPSW bought the assets of the El Paso & Northeastern Railroad including a main line from El Paso north-east to Tucumcari, NM; branches Alamogordo - Cloudcroft - Russia, NM and Carrizozo - Capitan, NM; and the long line north-west from Tucumcari to Dawson, NM. This gave Phelps Dodge links between the coalfields around Dawson and their smelters in El Paso and in southern Arizona.
8] EPSW acquired additional branches in the early 1900s. The Fairbank - Tombstone, AZ branch was built in 1903 and Burro Mountain Jn - Tyrone, NM in 1921 (reached by running powers between Deming and Burro Mountain Jn). A merger with the Arizona & New Mexico Railroad (originally 914mm-gauge, linking Lordsburg, NM and the copper-mining centre of Clifton) was finalised 1 January 1922, bringing EPSW the Clifton - Lordsburg - Hatchita, NM line.
9] With little population the Douglas - El Paso section saw little local traffic, though the towns of Rodeo, Animas and Hatchita grew to become farming and ranching communities as well as stations and water-stops for the railroad. Columbus was a sleepy border community with a port of entry into Mexico, and a US Army camp, when Mexican rebel Pancho Villa raided the village in March 1916. Activity then increased in the area as General Pershing brought in more troops in an effort to capture the rebel who had dared attack America.
10] Tucson, AZ - Vail - Mescal - Benson, AZ: Coming west from Phoenix, AZ, San Francisco-based SP had reached Tucson 20 March 1880, continuing east via Benson, Lordsburg and Deming and opening to El Paso 26 May 1881. Thirty years later, the EPSW Tucson extension opened 20 November 1912, diverging from the SP some 2km north-west of both railroads’ Tucson stations, at a point later known as South Line Jn, and paralleling the existing SP track from Tucson to Mescal, before heading south to Fairbank.
11] Phoenix, AZ - Tucson, AZ: EPSW had once planned to extend further west to Phoenix, AZ and some 2km of this line had actually been constructed west of Tucson before the November 1924 SP takeover aborted the project.
12] Purchase and rationalisation: Following World War I, copper prices dropped, causing many mines to cease or reduce activity. EPSW traffic fell drastically, putting a financial strain on Phelps Dodge. Focusing on their core business of copper production, Phelps Dodge decided to sell EPSW, by this time comprising over 1920 route-km. Southern Pacific offered to purchase EPSW for some USD64 million, payable in a combination of cash, stock and bonds, and took control on 1 November 1924.
13] After the takeover, links were built at Anapra, NM and El Paso, TX (South Line Jn) and at Vail, AZ and Mescal, AZ, enabling the parallel SP and EPSW tracks to be operated more efficiently over these sections. EPSW’s Mescal - Douglas - El Paso section became SP’s South Line, and the original SP main line (Benson, AZ - Lordsburg, NM - Deming, NM - El Paso, TX) became the North Line.
14] Tucson EPSW station closed 16 November 1924 and all passenger trains began to use Tucson SP station. At first if bound for the EPSW they took a short section of SP’s Tucson - Nogales, AZ line as far as Tucson Jn, but on 6 December 1925 the Tucson 36th St - South Yard Jn link opened east of the city, from 36th St (on the North Line) to South Yard Jn (on the South Line). Passenger trains for the South Line began to use this link, now part of the Union Pacific main line. From 6 December 1925 the Tucson Jn - South Yard Jn section of the EPSW was given over to storage of wagons until it was abandoned 25 January 1942. (Note that the SPV atlas transposes the names South Line Jn and South Yard Jn.)
15] Just east of Tucson, the section of the original (21 June 1880) SP North Line from 36th St to Vail crossovers was closed about 1952 and now lies under the huge Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, apart from a short section in the middle retained to make a branch to serve the base. All trains therefore use the former EPSW route from South Yard Jn to Vail.
16] Merger and abandonment: To simplify their corporate structure, several SP-owned railroads including EPSW were in 1955 merged into the parent Southern Pacific. Over the years traffic on the South Line decreased, and studies indicated that very little of it originated east of Douglas. Even with the additional distance, shipping copper anodes from Douglas north via Benson and the North Line to the refinery in El Paso could be economic if this allowed abandonment of the South Line all the way from Douglas to Anapra. Following Interstate Commerce Commission approval, this section (and the western section from Mescal, AZ to Fairbank, AZ) ceased operation 20 December 1961. Pending litigation, tracks and facilities remained in place until 1963, but later rails were lifted, sleepers removed, and many of the locations along the route became ghost-towns when railroad employees moved elsewhere.
17] Passenger services: In 1902 the SP and the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific began operating the Los Angeles, CA - Tucson, AZ - El Paso, TX - Chicago, IL Golden State Limited. From November 1913 this used EPSW tracks throughout from Tucson ‘South Line Jn’ all the way to El Paso and Tucumcari. After the 1924 takeover, most other SP passenger trains between Tucson and El Paso were diverted from the North Line to the South Line so that, as late as 1957, of the four passenger trains daily, one semi-fast ran on the North Line via Lordsburg and the other three, including the two streamliners Golden State and Sunset Limited, ran on the South Line via Douglas. Passenger service on the El Paso - Tucumcari section ceased 20 February 1968, when the Golden State was withdrawn. The remaining SP passenger train in the area, the Sunset Limited, saw its frequency reduced to thrice-weekly from 1 October 1970. This train was taken over by Amtrak on 1 May 1971, and in early 2002 was still running Los Angeles, CA - Tucson, AZ - El Paso, TX - New Orleans, LA - Orlando, FL - via the North Line, of course.
18] EPSW in 2001: Not only is the El Paso & Southwestern a ‘fallen flag’, but the Southern Pacific is itself no more, having been merged into the Union Pacific on 11 September 1996. The following EPSW sections are understood still to survive in use in 2001:
19] EPSW’s Tucson station: The single-storey building, completed in 1913 at a cost of USD45,000, is of brick, terracotta and cut stone, with a red-tile roof having in the centre a round skylight with a large stained-glass window. It saw only twelve years of railway use, closing to passengers 16 November 1924, just weeks after the SP takeover. In 1981 the building became a restaurant, which it remained in 1999, with some commercial office-space in the south end, when the photographs at http://mc.net/~louisvw/depot/epsw/epsw.htm were taken. The building’s appearance was similar in April 2001, when it was Garcia’s Mexican Restaurant, 491 West Congress Street, Tucson - still displaying its EPSW roundels. The SPV atlas shows the line through Tucson EPSW station as closed but, though it was visibly out of use and unusable, the track from South Line Jn to the station was still in place in April 2001. Furthermore, local street-plans showed this track as still extending from the EPSW station south to EPSW’s South Yard and on to Tucson Jn.