Blocked road-rail intersections were far worse, back in the day

If you think Oklahoma City drivers’ angst about blocked road-rail intersections is something new, think again.

Your great grandparents likely were as upset about the issue 110 years ago as you are today.

Simply put, blocked road-rail intersections (in some cases for days at a time) once had downtown’s drivers tied up in bumper-to-bumper knots.

Railroads, however, were playing a critical role in making the community a vibrant, growing center of commerce that ultimately would lead to its establishment as the state’s Capitol.

They were the preferred — indeed, in many cases the only way — to move lumber, food, crops and people to and from Oklahoma communities a century ago.

“As railroads were building out their routes, communities would fight to get the right to have them come through town because that was their lifelines of commerce,” said Bob Blackburn, executive director of the Oklahoma Historical Society.

“Before 1890, our trade territory was limited to the Santa Fe Railroad. Everything that went east and west had to go by stagecoach, or by wagon. Transportation was a huge expense, and railroads added more value to local merchants’ goods and services.”

Dean Schirf, a longtime executive with the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber, offered similar observations, noting Oklahoma City’s growth was carried by the “steel wheel,” particularly early on.

“Between 1910 and 1920, Oklahoma City just exploded in population growth,” Schirf said. “And at that time, the amount of freight was unbelievable.”

By 1925, Oklahoma City was served by six trains daily along routes that came through the community, plus the Oklahoma Railway Co.’s hourly interurban service from Oklahoma City to Guthrie, Norman and El Reno.

And the headaches blocked intersections were causing were growing, right along with everything else.

Main lines

The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, today known as the BNSF Railway, operated along the same route back then as it does today, crossing Oklahoma City with track laid out on a north-south axis it followed before the Land Run opened the city to settlement.

Its passenger station was located near Reno, and there were road-track intersections at every east-west street crossing between the river and NW 10.

The Rock Island, meanwhile, operated along the original route of the Choctaw, Oklahoma and Gulf railroad, which was built through Oklahoma City in 1890 and carried rail traffic between Memphis, Tennessee, and Tucumcari, New Mexico, along tracks running east and west that passed through the growing central business district’s heart between NW 1 (Park Avenue) and NW 2 (Robert S. Kerr Avenue).

The Rock Island’s passenger station was just north of the Skirvin Hotel, between Broadway and the Santa Fe tracks, while its freight yard was on the other side of the Santa Fe tracks, on Bricktown’s north side.

The Rock Island tracks intersected with north-south downtown thoroughfares between Broadway and Western Avenue and intersected the Santa Fe line just east of the hotel.

The main line for the Frisco came into Oklahoma City from Sapulpa in one direction and Lawton in the other. Completed in 1897, its main line stayed south of the river. But a spur crossed the river along right of way where Classen Boulevard south of Reno is now located, joining the Rock Island tracks near Western.

Its trains loaded and offloaded passengers at a station that was about where City Hall is located today.

In the 1920s, addressing the road-rail intersection problem quickly became a top priority of Stanley Draper, working for the chamber of commerce early on as its assistant manager, Schirf recalls.

The chamber attempted to work with all the railroads to create amicable solutions to eliminate the downtown traffic tie-ups, involving local, state and even federal authorities in that process at times.

Solutions varied, depending on the railroad and route involved.

“It took him a number of years to address the problem,” Schirf said. “But it finally was accomplished, and that cleared the way for the Civic Center to come in” later in the 1930s.

The Oklahoma County Courthouse, City Hall and the Civic Center (originally the Municipal Auditorium) are “a credit to the work that Draper and the chamber put into solving the issue,” he said.

East-West

The community was divided when it came to doing anything about Rock Island’s tracks. In 1920, T.C. Thatcher of the Oklahoma City Mill and Elevator Co. told the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce’s board of directors most industrial operations in town preferred to keep the current rail configuration exactly the way it was.

In 1922, T.H. Beacom, the Rock Island’s general manager, wrote the city and chamber of commerce a letter that proposed elevating its tracks through the heart of downtown and to rebuild its passenger station at its existing location.

In the alternative, he proposed building a new station along the tracks at Harvey Avenue to share with the Frisco, or to join the Santa Fe and Frisco in building a true Union Station if it could be located where its tracks intersected with Santa Fe’s, east of the Skirvin.

Over time, frustrations built to extreme levels.

Blackburn said the Rock Island had eight tracks laid along its east-west route through downtown and that it wasn’t uncommon for the railroad to leave a road-rail crossing blocked for as long as a day at a time.

“Our culture was not moving as quickly then as it does today, but it still was a significant aggravation,” Blackburn said.

By 1927, Draper and a citizens committee had pulled together an initiative that proposed a $4 million bond issue to buy the Rock Island out.

Voters approved that plan in a November election.

The last train left the Rock Island station next to the Skirvin Hotel on Nov. 30, 1930, an event witnessed by an estimated 5,000 spectators who eagerly joined city officials in pulling tracks out of the yard after its departure.

By then, a new east-west route past downtown had been built for the railroads between it and the river, and city voters had approved dollars to construct viaducts to get traffic on critical north-south streets under the new track bed to prevent continued interruptions.

The Union Station, a new passenger and freight station for the Frisco and Rock Island built on the north side of the two lines’ re-established tracks between Harvey and Hudson Avenues, opened in 1931 and continued to operate as a station until 1967.

After that, it later served as offices for administrators of the regional transit authority. It remains standing today in Scissortail Park.

As for the land the Rock Island left behind downtown, voters in 1935 eventually approved a $1.79 million bond issue to pay for the city and county’s shares of building the courthouse, city hall and municipal auditorium on the Rock Island right of way as part of a project valued at $3.3 million.

Blackburn said those city dollars provided materials used by the federal government’s Public Works Administration to build the facilities.

“Those were the only major construction projects downtown during the Great Depression,” he said. “I call it Oklahoma City’s first urban renewal project.”

North-South

As the city wrapped up its efforts with the Frisco and Rock Island railroads to take care of the issues involving their tracks, Santa Fe opted to undertake its own $5 million program to build a viaduct to elevate its tracks from south of the river to the central business district’s north end.

The railroad built an elevated bed for the line’s tracks from the SE 23 to NW 7, with underpasses at Reno, Grand (Sheridan), Main, NW 2, NW 3 (Dean A. McGee Avenue), NW 4, NW 5 and NW 6 at an estimated expense to the city of $347,720.

Its elevated tracks also crossed those east-west tracks used by the Frisco and Rock Island on the river’s north side, although the Rock Island sought and eventually was granted right of way to build a ramp to get trains from its freight station it had on the east side of the tracks on Bricktown’s north side to the elevated Santa Fe bed.

Santa Fe opted to go that route so it could build a new, art-deco station between Sheridan and Reno on the west side of the elevated tracks.

The contractor the railroad hired to build the elevated right of way was Leo Sanders, a local operator who already had made a name for himself by tackling large, tough jobs and getting them done with considerable speed.

While Sanders declined to reveal how much he had been paid, he did tell reporters that the contract was his largest, yet.

“I don’t know what elements entered into its award, but I do believe it was an extremely friendly gesture on the part of the Santa Fe to award it to an Oklahoma City contractor,” he continued, adding his thanks to the chamber for its efforts to secure the work for a local firm.

“Let me assure you,” Sanders said, “this is not going to be a cheap job.

“The specifications clearly determine the fact that the Santa Fe means business and is doing this work in a way that will give a maximum of service with a minimum of noise and inconvenience to the public while work is in progress.”

The railroad anticipated the projects to elevate the tracks and build the new station would take about three years.

Its station opened in September 1934 and remains standing today.

“The Santa Fe came within an eyelash of joining the Rock Island and Frisco at the Union Station,” Schirf said. “But at the last moment, it decided to elevate its tracks and build its own station.”

Ongoing aggravation

With the help of Draper and the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce, Oklahoma City residents eventually were able to free themselves from road-rail gridlock in the community’s downtown area.

And over time, railroad and city-backed projects have alleviated various other congested locations were roads and rails intersect in Oklahoma City, though many still exist.

The issue remains particularly contentious in other, more rural communities that were built along rail routes as the state initially was settled. In those cities and towns, motorists still must contend with lengthy road-rail intersection blockages, at times.

In February, House Speaker Charles McCall, R-Atoka, introduced a measure that aimed to allow local law officers to ticket railroads for lengthy road-rail blockages that weren’t justifiable under corporation commission rules.

An initial proposal considered by Oklahoma’s House of Representatives proposed fines of up to $10,000 per occurrence, but opposition from the Oklahoma Senate eventually watered down the ultimately approved law’s maximum fine to just $1,000.

Tickets issued to BNSF in Edmond and Davis after the law took effect prompted the railroad to take a case against both of the communities and elected members of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission to federal court in Oklahoma City.

In October, U.S. District Judge Charles B. Goodwin granted the railroad’s request to block enforcement of the state law until the federal case is concluded.

Deadlines through May have been set in the case for discovery and the handling motions that may arise as the case proceeds, court documents show.

A way forward?

Schirf, Blackburn and Bill Ross, a longtime Oklahoma City attorney who spent decades representing railroads, can’t remember a time in the state’s history when blocked road-rail intersections created as much of a ruckus as they do today.

Blackburn attributes part of that to today’s quickened pace of living and part of it to the fact that railroads, while still important, don’t quite play the same role in supporting communities as they once did.

“I think we have lost some of that sentiment in our community,” he said.

Ross, an attorney at Rainey, Flynn, Green and Anderson since 1960 until he retired in 2004 (he became senior partner in 1975, when the firm was renamed Rainey, Ross, Rice & Binns), said that while there were past beefs between communities and railroads over blocked crossings, they hadn’t risen to a point to where anyone had believed a state law was needed to address the issue — until now.

Rail was the preferred way to move people and goods back when he joined the law firm, he recalled.

“You can’t have a line of 80 trucks going down the highway. It just doesn’t work,” Ross observed.

Schirf said many people are of the opinion that railroads only answer to federal regulators, but he said he isn’t so sure.

“I love railroads,” he said. “But they can be very difficult. They are on their own property and can do their own thing until someone passes a statute to challenge it.”

Remembering the process that the chamber, City of Oklahoma City and Oklahoma followed to work with railroads to clear the route for the rebuilt Interstate 40, Schirf observed railroads will work with local governments, to a point.

Schirf said blocked road-rail intersections are critical issues in many of Oklahoma’s rural communities where the nearest alternative crossing is miles away.

“I don’t think the railroads do it on purpose, because their bottom line is to make revenue for owners and shareholders,” he said. “But I think as long as they have blockages for long periods of time, the issue needs to be addressed in some fashion.

“Even dialogue isn’t a bad thing. If they are sensitive to it, maybe that will shorten those delays, somewhat.”