Lott's Road: Getting Started
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Lott’s Road: Getting Started
New Year’s day, 1904, held the promise of the birth of several towns. The railroad was coming and it arrived in Kingsville the beginning of February, 1904. The whole construction journey started in Robstown(Robert Driscoll’s pasture) in July of 1903, and completed in Brownsville in July of 1904. There wasn’t much here back then: brush and cactus, deer and javelina, rattle snakes and assorted stinging creatures. Kingsville had been surveyed and a few residents were living in tents or on railroad flat cars. A gushing artisan well was close to the path of the railroad to provide water for the steam engines.
The railroad had been a long awaited event in this part of the country. The giant ranches of the region donated the right of way and town sites. This donated land was then sold by the railroad in order to fund the construction of the rail system. Brownsville had long awaited the arrival of a railroad with several decades of promises unfulfilled.
The key figures promoting this St. Louis, Brownsville & Mexico railroad were Uriah Lott, Robert Kleberg, Mifflin Kenedy and several other large ranchers. A contract was entered into by Johnson Brothers railroad contractors to build the line, and Benjamin Yoakum, Edwards Whitaker, Samuel Fordyce, Thomas West and Robert Brookings of the St. Louis Union Trust Company as manager of the enterprise.
Our St. Louis, Brownsville & Mexico railroad had to buck some competition for getting a railroad built to the Rio. The Southern Pacific wanted to gain control of the region. Uriah Lott launched a campaign in Brownsville in April of 1903 to get free right of way and terminal grounds. The project dragged on for months. The Southern Pacific actually started putting down tracks from Alice, TX. headed to Brownsville. They got as far as Falfurrias before running out of fight for this railroad race.
Lott succeeded in getting funding and right of way. In late July of 1903 Gray & Ward’s grading crew arrived in Robert Driscoll’s pasture. They had thirty mules, plows, scrapers, wagons and camp gear, were ready to start work on Lott’s road.
The stretch of railroad from Robstown to Brownsville was constructed by hand. Some 400 workers would labor in the hot, summer sun and through the cold winter laying track. There were no machines. First the path for the railroad was grubbed out of the brush. Men were paid $7.50 per acre to clear the mesquite brush. Teams of mules were used to smooth the grade for the track. Men unloaded each untreated pine railroad tie and positioned on the prepared road bed. Teams of men hoisted 650 pound rail sections and positioned them on the tie plates and ties. Railroad spikes were driven true to hold the rail in place with a spike maul and a man’s muscles. These hard working track layers could put down about a mile of track per day.
The distance between our modern towns along the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico track can be measured in miles that almost exactly match the number of days between the arrival of the track laying teams into each town: Kingsville, February 1; Ricardo, February 6; Riviera, February 14; Sarita, February 20, and on to Brownsville. This historical tidbit was nicely recorded by James Allhands in his book Gringo Builders printed back in 1931.
Pat Allison, volunteer
1904 Kingsville Train Depot Museum