Builders of the Santa Fe

The Lord evidently had intended him for an engineer and not a captain of industry.

Arriving near Fort Reno (near the present city of El Reno, Okla.), they met a couple of freighters loaded with supplies, and Kingman was sent back to Seneca in charge of these wagons.  From Seneca he journeyed to St. Louis, where he received orders to join a new party for field work on the west end of the division in New Mexico.  This outfit, under the command of Jacob Blickensderfer, went by rail to Kit Carson, Colo., and then by Barlow & Sanderson's stage via Trinidad and Las Vegas to Santa Fe, where they arrived on July 4, 1871.  Procuring tents and camp supplies from the government at Fort Union, they proceeded to Albuquerque, whence the surveys were started.  Kingman then was assigned to an eastbound party under a Mr. McCabe.  They ran their lines through Tejares Canyon, Canyon Blanco, Gallinas Spring and Fort Bascom to Adobe Wells, Indian Territory.  There they seem to have met the westbound party and this section of the work was for the time at least completed.  Returning to Las Vegas, the men were disbanded in October, 1871.

Within a few days Kingman had resigned from the Atlantic & Pacific to take a position as surveyor for the Maxwell Land Grant Company of New Mexico.  And from the autumn of 1871 to the summer of 1873 he was busy on surveys in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico.  In the winter of 1871 he became acquainted with W. R. Morley, who, like himself, was destined later to acquire fame as a Santa Fe engineer.

On July 1, 1873, Kingman took a contract from the government through the surveyor-general of New Mexico.  This work busied him most of the time for three years, during most of which interval his headquarters were at Cimarron, N. M.

In the autumn of 1875 Kingman moved to Santa Fe at the request of the surveyor-general.  There he soon concluded his government contracts, and in the winter of 1876 he invested $6,000 in a mercantile business with a partner named Trauer.  About a year later Kingman, having bought off his partner, closed out the business $1,100 "in the hole." The Lord evidently had intended him for an engineer and not a captain of industry.  This was in June, 1877.

It was through Morley that Kingman then engaged his services to A. A. Robinson, chief engineer of the Santa Fe.  And it was to the everlasting good luck of the Santa Fe that Kingman had gone broke in business and was looking for a job.

Reporting at Pueblo on July 3, 1877, Kingman was asigned to Morley's party.  Going to Canyon City over the D. & R. G. narrow-,gage road, they took stage to Leadville and struck out to the westward.* An engineering party under H. R. Holbrook already had run a line through the Arkansas Valley, and it was from this valley that Kingman and Morley started their line.  Surveying through Poncho Pass, the St. Louis Valley and Cochetopa Pass, they were in the Gunnison Valley by September.  Then they followed the Gunnison River to its confluence with the Fimiche, and by the eighteenth had reached Alpine Pass, where observations were taken at an altitude of 13,000 feet.  From Alpine they went to South Park, examined the Platt Canyon as a possible railroad route and journeyed through Ute Pass to Colorado Springs.

There Morley was summoned back to New Mexico, leaving Kingman in charge.  The latter then made a preliminary survey through Ute Pass down to Colorado Springs, and, when this was done, he also was ordered South, where he was to start surveys out of Trinidad.  The present route of the Santa Fe from Trinidad over the mountains to Raton follows the line established by Lewis Kingman in the fall of 1877.

*The present line of the D & G R west from Pueblo was laid out and partially built by the Santa Fe; and this property was turned over to the D. & R. G. following the "war" and subsequent Supreme Court decision in 1879.