Denver Pacific Railway and Telegraph Company

The Denver Pacific Railway was a historic railroad that operated in the western United States during the late 19th century.

Formed in 1867 in the Colorado Territory, the company operated lines in Colorado and present-day southeastern Wyoming in the 1870s until merging with the Kansas Pacific and Union Pacific railroads in 1880. The railroad was formed primarily to create a link between Denver and the transcontinental railroad at Cheyenne, an achievement that was widely credited at the time with making Denver the dominant metropolis of the region.

History

The construction of the rail line linking Cheyenne and Denver was widely credited at the time for reviving the city of Denver, which had been founded less than a decade before during the Colorado Gold Rush. The decision to build the transcontinental railroad to the north had left the fledgling city stranded from the major transportation routes. Many at the time expected that Cheyenne would blossom into the major population center of the region. As a result, Thomas Durant, vice president of the Union Pacific, pronounced Denver "too dead to bury." Colorado Territorial Governor John Evans declared that "Colorado without railroads is comparatively worthless."

Race To Cheyenne

As a result, Evans, together with other local business leaders, including David Moffat, William Byers (founder of the Rocky Mountain News), Joseph E. Bates, Bela Hughes, Walter Cheesman and Luther Kountze partnered with East Coast...
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