Sign up to receive email notices of recent acquisitions.

Kansas City: Ramsey, Millett & Hudson, printers, binders, engravers, lithographers, etc., [1879]. Broadsheet printed in blue, 24.75” x 9.5”. Map at verso, 6” x 22.25”. CONDITION: Good, .75” x 1.75” loss to top margin, a few minor punctures along old folds, one .2” tear along margin, remnants of tape at edge of left margin on verso.

An unrecorded Kansas Pacific Railway broadside issued in the first year of the railroad’s operation under that name and promoting tourism and mining opportunities in Colorado and lands for sale in Kansas.

Advertising a round trip fare of $38, this broadside advises passengers headed to Colorado to purchase tickets to Denver. For those headed to the mining district the Kansas Pacific is described as the“best way” to Leadville and Ten-Mile, saving some 100 miles of staging and being cheaper than any other line. Passengers were able to select from three different tourist tickets to make their “Grand Tours” which are detailed here. Immigrants were carried on Fast Express Passenger Trains.

A section beginning “Lands! Lands! Kansas to the Front!” identifies Kansas as “the leading wheat state in the Union in 1878” and “the fourth corn state.” Highlighted is the state’s “Golden Belt”—the “celebrated Grain Belt of country in Central Kansas”—and the state’s yield numbers for wheat and corn. Some 62,500 farms are offered for sale, ranging from $2 to $6 per acre (“It don’t take much money to buy a farm on the Kansas Pacific”). The section headed “Leadville & Ten-mile: A Rich Opening! In Colorado,” covers the silver mining district, which is dubbed “the poor man’s mining district…where muscle, energy and daily bread is the only capital required as all ore finds ready purchasers as fast as produced.” Colorado, “the great sanitarium and pleasure resort of America; elevated above the influence of miasma,” is described as attracting the scientist, artist, capitalist, “invalid,” and the overworked. At this time, the Kansas Pacific’s Golden Belt Route was the fastest route to Denver and was equipped with Pullman Sleeping Palaces. The names and addresses of over a dozen agents for the Kansas Pacific are provided.

The map on the verso, entitled A Geographically Correct Map of Kansas and Colorado (St. Louis: Woodward Tiernan & Hale Engr’s), shows the location of the celebrated new mining centers at Leadville, Fairplay, Oro City, and other principal cities and towns in Kansas and Colorado, reached by the Kansas Pacific Railway. The map extends from St. Louis in the east to Leadville, Colorado in the west, and from Cheyenne, Colorado in the north to Cairo, Missouri in the south. Shown cutting across the map is the Kansas Pacific with its connecting lines. Addressed to “tourists and invalids,” the text on the verso covers a range of excursions from Denver that tourists could take to camp, fish, and hunt; tour mining camps; and visit Estes Park (“the rarest gem of the Rocky Mountains”), Boulder City (“splendidly located for invalids”), as well as Idaho Springs (“celebrated for its hot soda swimming baths”).

The Kansas Pacific Railway was initially established in 1855 as the Leavenworth, Pawnee, and Western Railroad. The railway’s goal was to create a second southern branch of the transcontinental railroad alongside the Union Pacific Railroad. The construction of the line was spurred partly by the desire of the U.S. government to extend transportation routes into Kansas. In 1863, the company began construction on its line west from Kansas City, and in 1869 became the Kansas Pacific Railway. By the 1870s, the line operated many of the long-distance routes in Kansas and soon extended the national railway network westward across that state and into Colorado. The railroad was absorbed by the Union Pacific in 1880.

No copies recorded in OCLC.

An interesting and unrecorded western railroad broadsheet.

REFERENCES: “Kansas Pacific Railway” at Legends of America online.

Item #7705

Sold