The Kansas Pacific Railway (KP) was a historic railroad company that operated in the western United States in the late 19th century. It was a federally chartered railroad, backed with government land grants. At a time when the first transcontinental railroad was being constructed by the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific, it tried and failed to join the transcontinental ranks.
It was originally the “Union Pacific, Eastern Division”, although it was completely independent. The Pennsylvania Railroad, working with Missouri financiers, designed it as a feeder line to the transcontinental system. The owners lobbied heavily in Washington for money to build a railroad from Kansas City to Colorado, and then to California. It failed to get funding to go west of Colorado.
It operated many of the first long-distance lines in the state of Kansas in the 1870s, extending the national railway network westward across that state and into Colorado. Its main line furnished a principal transportation route that opened up settlement of the central Great Plains, and its link from Kansas City to Denver provided the last link in the coast-to-coast railway network in 1870. The railroad was consolidated with the Union Pacific in 1880, and its mainline continues to be an integral part of the Union Pacific network today.
Here below is a set of amazing photos of ‘Across the Continent on the Kansas Pacific Railroad’ in 1867.
| Massachusetts Avenue, Lawrence, Kansas, 38 miles West of Missouri River, circa 1867 |
| 2d Division of Engineer Corps, in the Sierra Madre, New Mexico, (Water Shed of Continent), 1,000 miles west of Missouri River, November 1867 |
| At Fort Mojave, on the Colorado River, 1,450 miles west of Missouri River, circa 1867 |
| Banks of the Kaw, near Fort Riley, 135 miles west of Missouri River, 1867 |
| Camp of surveying party at Russell's Tank, Arizona, on eastern slope of Laja Range, 1,271 miles from Missouri River, 1867 |
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