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Railroads of Meridian
By J. Parker Lamb Indiana University Press
Copyright © 2012 J. Parker Lamb
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-253-00596-0
CHAPTER 1
ANTEBELLUM BEGINNINGS
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Development of permanent communities in most of the Gulf states began with the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, signed in 1830 at the end of the War of 1812. This agreement ceded to the U.S. government lands previously controlled by indigenous tribes of Choctaws, Chickasaws, and others. Credit for establishing Meridian's predecessor, a settlement known as Sowashee, belongs to Richard McLemore of Virginia, who purchased several thousand acres and began recruiting new settlers. The village was named for a nearby stream that flooded the area regularly. Thus, the Choctaws had given it the name "Angry Water."
Eventually, McLemore sold large plots around the village to two ambitious businessmen, Lewis Ragsdale and John Ball, who soon began to lead in the development of a larger town. By late 1833 much of McLemore's original tract had been incorporated into Lauderdale County, which by 1850 included five villages, with Marion as the county seat.
MERIDIAN'S FIRST RAILROAD
The initial line to reach east-central Mississippi began in the port of Mobile, Alabama. Always considered a poorer cousin to its western neighbor near the mouth of the Mississippi River, Mobile found its shipping tonnage in a declining position in the mid-1840s after its ranking among U.S. ports dropped from third (behind only New Orleans and New York City) to sixth position in a scant six years. Much of this was due to the rapid expansion of railroad building along the Eastern Seaboard during this period, as the complementary roles of railroads and waterborne transportation began to evolve. Such activity had been largely absent along the Gulf, as the major cotton states (Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi) contained a total of only 165 miles of trackage in 1848.
As usually happened during this period of U.S. development, there were a few farsighted individuals who attempted to stir local communities into action. In Mobile that person was North Carolina native Marshall J. D. Baldwyn. Born in 1810, he migrated to Mobile and served as a sheriff but eventually became a tireless advocate for a rail line tapping the important agricultural regions that surrounded the port city. It is said that his hatband contained ink sketches of route maps that he could easily produce when engaged in conversation to promote the city's need.
Unfortunately, Baldwyn's original vision was so breathtaking in scope that it often stifled serious discussion. Even the local newspaper characterized it initially as being preposterous. What astonished the local citizenry was that he had proposed a 460-mile railroad to the Ohio River near Cairo, Illinois, with a connecting link to Saint Louis. His Gulf–Illinois line would be 44 miles longer than the Erie Railroad, then under construction as the nation's longest rail route (New York City to Buffalo). Eventually, Baldwyn's persuasive speeches were able to convince many area residents to attend a town meeting on January 11, 1847, at which a committee of fifty-six influential citizens, including some from Mississippi, was appointed to begin planning for the Mobile & Ohio Railroad. More importantly, sufficient funding was raised to hire City Engineer Lewis Troost to perform a preliminary route survey.
After Troost's strongly favorable report was completed, M&O supporters approached the affected state legislatures for charters, all of which were granted in February 1848 in this order: Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The fledgling line appealed for supporters to provide initial financial support for construction with a subscription drive that began on May 2. It was closed twenty days later after a total of 699 individuals had purchased 6,217 shares at $100 each.
Formal organization of the Mobile & Ohio Railroad was held on June 7, 1848, with prominent Mobile merchant Sidney Smith being named president. A native of Massachusetts, Smith had become a civic leader in Mobile, and his personal endorsement signified strong local support of the new railroad venture. With early financial backing from the states of Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee as well as the U.S. government (see below) and numerous online communities, M&O construction began in 1852, following Troost's survey, which pointed the tracks northwestward from Mobile into Mississippi and then parallel to the Alabama-Mississippi state line for the entire distance to the Tennessee state line. This alignment line was dictated both by the larger number of established Mississippi settlements as well as by the course of the Tombigbee River, which passed through a sparsely populated region near the western boundary of Alabama (Lemly).
Two-year timelines for M&O construction progress, reported in the M&O'S 1861 annual report, are as follows: first biennial (33 miles), second (120), third (102), fourth (112), fifth (117). Thus only a decade was required to build the 486-mile line between Mobile and Columbus, Kentucky, an impressive pace, considering the severity of financial and political problems it encountered (see below). M&O construction crews reached the village of Marion (Lauderdale County) in October 1855, but prior activity of the surveyors in the vicinity of Sowashee, some five miles south of Marion, had alerted local leaders to begin a campaign urging M&O officials to construct a spur track from which to unload freight. This persuasion took considerable effort, since the area around Sowashee (also known as Ball's Log Store) was not an official town, but their efforts were eventually successful. Thus the future site of Meridian was now a mark on the railroad's map, but the M&O had not yet agreed that the village was large enough for a station (Harrison, History, vol. 1).
A significant aspect of M&O'S early history was its participation in the first federal land grant, which ultimately became the government's primary incentive to spur completion of the nation's westward rail expansion. For the M&O it began in 1849, when the road's officers traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with their congressional representatives. A contemporaneous report to stockholders noted that the officers' purpose was "to obtain a grant for the right of way through public lands and a portion of the lands themselves." At the time, such a law was considered highly improbable, although some have suspected that the idea originated at the 1845 Convention of Southern and Western Merchants in Memphis, during which delegates passed a number of resolutions with this theme (Lemly).
The initial push for railroad land grants was first promoted by the Illinois congressional delegation after the state passed its Internal Improvements Act of 1837, which mandated a central railroad in Illinois that would serve as a north–south trunk to which all other lines would connect or cross. Due to various national financial problems, no progress was made on this construction until the state's new senator, Stephen A. Douglas, rallied support for a bill that granted public lands to the state for its new Illinois Central Railroad. It passed the U.S. Senate in 1848 but was defeated in the House of Representatives.
As often happens in such matters, serendipitous events would ensue to change history. In the fall of 1849 Senator Douglas visited his wife's family plantation in Mississippi. Stopping in Mobile, he was able to meet M&O directors and discuss an agreement to combine the Illinois and M&O land-grant bills and thus gain wider support in Congress. With help from Alabama senator William King, the strategy was successful, and, after receiving a favorable report from the House Committee on Public Lands, the new bill was strongly supported by fifteen representatives of the states through which M&O passed. It became law after receiving the signature of President Millard Fillmore (Vandercook).
THE VICKSBURG CONNECTION
Interestingly, the second line to reach Meridian was the first to start construction. The river port of Vicksburg, founded in 1825, quickly became the state's largest settlement due to its transportation facilities for agricultural products produced by the fertile regions within this part of the state. As they had in many other water ports, city leaders soon decided to build a rail line to the east to facilitate commercial development and chartered the Vicksburg & Clinton Railroad in December 1831, with the Commercial & Railroad Bank of Vicksburg handling construction. The village of Clinton, some 30 miles away, was already a stop on the Natchez Trace, an early commercial trail between Nashville, Tennessee, and the Mississippi River port.
However, before ground was broken in 1833 on the V&C, the Vicksburg group had already set their sights on the next settlement to the east, Jackson, located on the Pearl River. Beginning at the top of the high bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River, V&C construction progressed slowly through rugged terrain and by 1838 had reached only 12 miles to the Big Black River. Much faster progress occurred during the following two years as the line reached Clinton and then Jackson during 1840, at which point it became the Vicksburg & Jackson Railroad.
Meanwhile, in early 1836 a group of business leaders in Jackson and the nearby village of Brandon organized the Jackson & Brandon Railroad & Bridge Co. but were not able to start construction before the charter elapsed. However, after a new charter was granted, the line was able to reach its eastern terminus by February 1850. However, with railroad fever rising across the state, the original V&C supporters had already chartered an east–west line, the Southern Railroad (of Mississippi), in February 1846 to build from Jackson to the Alabama state line and there to connect with another Southern Railroad (of Alabama).
This plan met with strong resistance from some Jackson business interests who did not support an east–west route, and the charter lapsed before any construction. But eventually a new charter was granted in 1850 to build eastward to a junction with the Mobile & Ohio in Lauderdale County. The Southern Railroad later acquired the Jackson– Brandon line in July 1852 and began construction toward Morton (22 miles), which was reached in 1858. Newton Station (110 miles from Vicksburg) was reached in October 1860. Some eight months later, in mid-1861, the 140-mile trans-state road reached Ball's Log Store in Lauderdale County (Harrison, History, vol. 1).
On June 3, 1861, a large crowd of cheering citizens gathered to greet the first Southern train at the recently constructed depot in Meridian. They were in a festive mood and were ready to rejoice at this important sign of progress. However, a thousand miles east of the one-square-mile Mississippi village, the guns of war were being heard in the first skirmishes of the conflict between the Confederate States and the United States. Unfortunately, the war's destructive path would lead eventually through the village itself.
Meridian had been formally chartered only seventeen months before the Southern's arrival after a protracted disagreement between backers of Messrs. Ball and Ragsdale about the town's name. The station issue became a major point of contention between the two leaders. First, Ball built a "union station" after convincing M&O to supply the materials. After installing the interior furniture, he put up a sign reading "Meridian," believing that name to signify a junction. This was not the name favored by the earlier settlers led by Ragsdale, who wanted to continue using Sowashee. Often at night, this group would take down the Meridian sign and replace it with their choice, and then a few days later the sign would be changed again. Eventually, Ragsdale's group lost the battle after William Smedes, president of the Southern Railroad, placed his full support behind the name "Meridian" (Johnson).
With the arrival of its second railroad, the fledgling village of Meridian could now begin to promote its importance as a gateway to and from the North and East, while its rapid growth over the next dozen years allowed it to replace Marion as the Lauderdale County seat. The running battle between Ball and Ragsdale continued to rage even as Meridian grew, with each man wanting to lay out the city's streets in a different pattern. Again, they resorted to the practice of periodically destroying each other's plans, only this time it was layout stakes for new streets.
Ball laid out "streets" parallel to the M&O main line and "avenues" perpendicular to the rails, while Ragsdale used more traditional east–west, north– south orientations. Since the railroad had been built through the city in a slight northeastward direction (about 30 degrees from due east), the two men's plans left a number of triangular blocks where their two surveys collided. Indeed, the city's downtown business district of today still features numerous three-way and five-way street intersections, serving as a permanent legacy of these stubborn pioneers.
TROUBLED TIMES TO THE EAST
A comparison of the construction times needed for Meridian's first two rail lines illustrates the high level of uncertainty in the South's early industrialization. Whereas Baldwyn had needed only about seven years to build his M&O some 130 miles to Meridian, the line from Vicksburg, passing through a number of important cities and towns, required some thirty years for completion over virtually the same distance, due largely to its multiple reorganizations.
Similarly, railroad construction east of Meridian was delayed by the financial instability and political upheaval that led to a national war. Across Alabama during the antebellum period, two Meridian-related corridors struggled to develop. One of these originated in Chattanooga, the other in Atlanta, home of the Georgia Railroad, which was chartered in 1833 and, after transformation into the Georgia Railroad and Banking Co. in 1836, became a major supporter of Georgia–Alabama rail lines. One of the first of these was the Atlanta & La Grange, chartered in 1847 and completed in 1854 to West Point, Georgia, situated across the Chattahoochee River from Lanett, Alabama. It became the Atlanta & West Point Railroad in 1857.
COMPASS FAILURE
J. PARKER LAMB
An eastbound traveler on today's I-20 approaching Meridian will see an exit sign labeled "Lost Gap" about 6 miles from the city. Most riders unfamiliar with the area will attribute the name to some local happening in earlier years, and they will be correct. In fact, the event was a surveying error in the construction of the Southern Railroad line around 1859. Two crews were working from either side of a high ridge. Using their trusty compasses and transits, the crews laid out route alignment stakes until they arrived at the prescribed meeting place. Then each group waited for the other crew to arrive. When there was no contact after three days, both groups sent out search parties and were finally able to join forces. Later investigations showed that underground iron deposits within the ridge had skewed their magnetic compasses: the eastbound crew had veered slightly south of the prescribed route, while the westbound group turned too far northward. Consequently, the final route included an unplanned section of north–south trackage that later became known as a "lost gap" in the original route survey.
The barrier ridge had also required crews to construct a tunnel of circular cross section and having a brick lining. It served satisfactorily until after World War II, when the increasing size of freight cars required that the tunnel be daylighted. It was one of only two rail tunnels in Mississippi, the other being a short bore near the start of the Vicksburg & Clinton. It pierced a hilltop above the Mississippi River near the center of the city (Johnson).
Meanwhile, the Montgomery Railroad had been chartered in January 1834 to build from the Alabama capital to West Point, but after constructing 32 miles, it ran out of money and was replaced by the Montgomery & West Point Railroad, which completed the 88-mile line in 1851. In the aftermath of the Civil War, it built a branch to Selma and became the Western Railroad of Alabama in 1870. Later came common ownership, with the two roads operating as the West Point Route between Selma and Atlanta.
As was mentioned, an early plan approved (between 1846 and 1850) by the Alabama and Mississippi legislatures called for the Southern Railroad of Alabama to build from Montgomery to Meridian and connect with the Southern of Mississippi. However, the eastern portion never materialized. Instead, Alabama granted a charter to the Mississippi & Alabama Rivers Railroad in 1850 for construction of a line from Selma to York. This work was completed in 1864 under the control of the Army of the Confederacy as an important supply route. When it was finished it became the Selma & Meridian Railroad and was later controlled by the East Tennessee, Virginia & Georgia.
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Excerpted from Railroads of Meridian by J. Parker Lamb. Copyright © 2012 J. Parker Lamb. Excerpted by permission of Indiana University Press.
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