Railroad Comes to Phelps County

The coming of the railroad to Phelps County had an impact which, in 1990, is difficult to imagine. The rail line began as the Southwest Branch of the Pacific Railroad, became prominent as part of the St. Louis-San Francisco (Frisco) Railway, and is now part of the Burlington Northern system. The road was an important force in the creation of the county itself, and the towns of Rosati, St. James, Rolla, Arlington and Jerome are direct legacies of railroad construction and increased land values along the right-of-way. Dillon, which no longer exists, and Newburg, founded in 1883, owed their disparate fortunes to developments along the railroad. Rural inhabitants of Phelps County were deeply effected. Those near the settlements along the Little Piney and Dry Fork creeks could look forward to ready markets for cash crops instead of almost wholly subsistence farming, and the owners of improved farms saw their land increase in value.
Entrepreneurs and businessmen stood to benefit greatly. At the Maramec Iron Works, east of St. James, William James, an enthusiastic promoter and investor in the line, saw in the railroad a solution to the crippling expense of freighting the finished products of his furnace and forges. The railroad also affected the road network of the area.
The earliest wagon roads had radiated like spokes from a hub at the Iron Works, passing through Lake Spring, Hartville, and the Gasconade River country to markets and shipping points and markets at Potosi, St. Louis, Springfield, and Hermann. Once railroad construction began on a direct line linking St. Louis and Springfield, the most important roads became those connecting with the rail line.
This distinct shift in the economic trade axis can be seen in the operations of the lead mining firm of Blow & Kennett, which operated far to the southwest of Phelps County in Granby, Missouri. Lead mined at Granby had been laboriously and expensively hauled to shipping points on the Missouri and Osage rivers. The Blow & Kennett freight book (available on microfilm at the Western Historical Manuscript Collection--Rolla) shows that the firm's output was redirected toward the Southwest Branch as soon as it came within reach. By October 1860, Blow & Kennett's products were consigned to the railroad agent at Dillon; by December of the same year they were shipped to the railhead at Rolla.
The rail line attracted businessmen whose livelihoods depended on direct connections with the railroad. Edmund Ward Bishop, founder of Rolla, and Andrew Malcomb, one of the builders of the Phelps County courthouse, first came as railroad construction contractors. Homer Fellows and Robert McElhaney, general merchants and wholesalers, and Union army veterans, began business after the Civil War at St. James and Rolla before moving to Springfield. Franklin Hoke Barnitz, originally from Pennsylvania, capitalized on his experience as a Union army teamster to operate a freight business first from Rolla and then Little Piney. He hauled from the railhead to points in southern Missouri, northwest Arkansas, Indian Territory and Texas. Many other entrepreneurs came to Phelps County in order to follow the "main chance" and in so doing contributed to the area's economic growth.

Written and compiled by John F . Bradbury , Jr.