The Railroad Race for Tonopah

By Ted Faye

At the turn of the nineteenth century in the midst of America's most forbidding desert, two giants of the mining industry clashed in a battle of wills. For two years they sent thousands of men and animals scrambling over hundreds of miles of lonely, tough terrain, laying tracks for competing rail lines.

The race to build the railroads lasted more than two years, the race for profits another 12, and the race for survival another 30. It was a drama in which winning was not simply a matter of who got there first, but also of whose line was more profitable and whose lasted longer.

In 1905 Las Vegas was nothing more than a row of buildings and scattered dwellings. As a stop on the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad, it was developed by entrepreneur William Andrews Clark, the railroad's owner. Clark had made his fortune in the copper mines of Butte, Montana, and was known as the Copper King.

Across the Mojave Desert in the Death Valley region another "king" was preparing to open his new mine. Francis Marion Smith was the nation's Borax King. His Pacific Coast Borax Company had made Twenty Mule Team Borax a household name. It was used in industry for welding and iron manufacturing and in the home as a cleanser and disinfectant.

One day in 1905, the two "kings" met at the Pacific Union Club of San Francisco. They discussed the great fortunes being made in the Nevada boomtowns of Tonopah, Goldfield, Beatty, and Rhyolite. Smith told Clark he wanted to build a railroad to his new mine and would call it the Tonopah & Tidewater. Clark suggested that Smith connect the new line with his rail line in Las Vegas. This would benefit both men, Clark suggested, and Smith agreed.

Almost immediately after the meeting Smith sent a crew and graded 12 miles of railroad bed northwest from Las Vegas. But when they started to connect with Clark's line, a lawyer showed up. "You are trespassing on Mr. Clark's property," he said, and told them to leave. ...

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