Land Speculation and Homesteading: Railroad-Style CD
Privatist land speculation typified a city’s earliest years, and in western states private land speculation followed from how Congress transferred federal land to private ownership: land grants to private individuals and companies. Three forms of land grant were characteristic of western land settlement: (1) homesteading to private individuals (288 million acres); (2) grants to military veterans (61 million acres); and (3) grants to railroad companies (94 million acres).
Despite federal intentions, there was a great deal of speculative acquisition of land. Some homesteaders clearly behaved more like small scale speculators than (yeomen) family farmers … there were also many land companies which controlled sizeable areas … There was also more renting of property than was intended (because) farm creditors foreclosed on unpaid debts. (Ward, 1998, pp. 12–13)
Too many initial homesteaders “flipped” their homestead for a quick profit; thus land sales companies acquired the homesteads. Between railroads and land speculator companies, individuals became marketing targets rather than homebuyers. In many ways, homesteaders were the proverbial razor-blade, not the razor—i.e. homebuyers were where the profits were, and the payback for infrastructure and startup costs.
The 1862 Homestead Act and transcontinental railroad legislation supposedly built upon lessons learned from the 1850s’ settlement of the Illinois Central Railroad (ICRR) experience. The land grant process added hugely to the promotional and advertising whirlwind that followed. Railroad companies followed ICRR’s model with intensive and extensive advertising to promote settlement and traffic. Most prominent among these was the first transcontinental railroad, the Union Pacific (UP), with its vast 12-million acre land grant: “By the 1870s it was spending an average of $80,000 per annum on advertising.” In 1874 alone that railroad took space in 2311 newspapers and magazines. In 1882 the Northern Pacific Railroad distributed over 600,000 copies of its publications in English, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Dutch (Ward, 1998, pp. 13–15). Railroads not only provided access; they also delivered future citizens, taxpayers and customers. The exploitive “bribery” long associated with railroad routes to prospective urban centers was simply a cost that had to be paid. Needless to say, the federal monitoring of this process was non-existent—the subsequent Crédit Mobilier scandal of 1872 that toppled the Grant administration is testimony to that. This homesteading was a flawed process at best.
Still, that was the post-Civil War environment within which western city-building happened. Railroads developed their own cities—acting as the city-builder: “Cheyenne in Wyoming was a notably successful town promotion by the Union Pacific Railroad. Other railroad towns included Reno, Nevada on the Central Pacific, and Butte, Montana on the Northern Pacific” (Ward, 1998, p. 21). Rivalry among competing railroad companies focused on their people-attraction programs. Southern California was a principal beneficiary of inter-railroad rivalries, as was Kansas (a key hub area). Targeted media placement, low-cost excursion trains, rate subsidization and image/ branding-like strategies were developed for these targeted geographies and groups.
Homesteading and the railroad attraction programs were arguably the most aggressive (and effective) people-attraction initiatives in our history. The Homestead Act ultimately sent 1.6 million households into the West, primarily to Nebraska, South and North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Kansas and Oklahoma. They were a critical factor in the Los Angeles speculative land rush that literally put the city on the map. Despite the warm and uplifting tales of Willa Cather, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broadway play Oklahoma!, the homesteading experience was much like watching sausage being made. The same could be said for western states’ city-building.
To provide some flavor to these dry numbers and comments, brief summaries for Denver, Wichita and Oklahoma State suggest city-building was not a one-size-fits-all process.
Denver
Denver, named after the Kansas territorial governor James W. Denver, was platted (with cottonwood logs) in 1858 by William Larimer. Larimer established a model for city-building which was consciously/unconsciously emulated by subsequent town speculators/city-builders (including Henry Flagler’s Miami). Larimer first built a hotel, founded a newspaper, started up supporting business establishments and created a rough road and grid system. In May 1859 he convinced the few residents of his metropolis to donate 53 lots of land to the Leavenworth and Pike’s Peak Express (a wagon Pony Express-like outfit).
Attracting people required accessibility, so linking the platted town-site with the incoming railroad was essential. So in 1861 Latimer convinced Colorado’s first territorial governor, William Gilpin (himself a land speculator), to live in Denver. Until his death in 1894 Gilpin speculated, lured in railroads, wrote promotional books and advertised Denver as the “crossroads of the world” (Mohl, 1985, p. 70). Larimer, in the spirit of Louis XIV, crowed “I am Denver City,” dedicating the rest of his life to Denver’s expansion. From a population of one in 1858, Denver surpassed 35,000 in 1880 and exceeded 105,000 in 1890. It had grown into the largest city between Kansas City and San Francisco.
Denver’s twentieth-century path mirrored the eastern Big City, quickly developing a machine-like and boss-dominated policy system. Robert W. Speer was elected to two terms as mayor (1904–12 and 1916 to his death in 1918). His was a blue-collar constituency rather than ethnic. Speer controlled the fire and police services, and through lax policing allowed “vice” in Denver’s saloons and cultivated their clientele during elections. He developed close relationships with Denver’s business community and “Denver Club”—the polar opposite of Boston’s James Michael Curley. Speer fully embraced the City Beautiful Movement, building a civic center complex, the Denver Zoo and Denver Museum of Nature and Science. He allegedly planted over 110,000 trees in an urban forestry initiative, and paved the streets as well during the City Efficient period.
Wichita
Stephen Ward’s candidate for “the town that boosterism built” was Wichita Kansas. Wichita grew from 50 inhabitants in 1870 to 40,000 by 1888 (Atlanta was 37,000).
Wichita’s Board of Trade produced promotional materials calling it “the new Chicago,” “the peerless princess of the plains,” “the Jerusalem of the West” and, possibly accurately, “the best advertised city in the world”:
Wichita: Metropolis of the South West. The Largest City in Kansas. A city of fine educational institutions, Magnificent Business Blocks, Elegant Residences, and Extensive Manufactures, with more railroads, more Wholesale Trade, more manufacturing, more enterprise than any other city in the South West. (Ward, 1998, p. 22)
The timing of railroad expansion explains a great deal of Kansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico settlement and sub-regional variation. Kansas City (Missouri) was the jumpingoff point into the West, and Kansas became the beaten path through which wagon trains and rail lines followed. The Kansas Territory was opened for settlement in 1854 and initially river transport was how one traveled. Settlements along the Kansas and Missouri rivers, such as the military base at Leavenworth, attracted more residents by 1860 than Kansas City. Things changed, however.
Chartered in 1859, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad (AT&SF), chasing wheat and cattle trade, gradually made its way across southern Kansas. AT&SF did not cross over into Colorado (at Pueblo) until 1873, reaching Albuquerque in 1880. Construction was easy on the flat plains, but sparse population meant few passengers. So, AT&SF established real estate offices early, and aggressively promoted land granted to it by Congress in 1863. Railroad promotion was more dominant than municipal boosterism, and railroads advertised discounted rates as a normal business activity.
Wichita’s population was 689 at its 1870 incorporation (the only woman to sign the Wichita city charter was Mary McCarty—possibly the mother of Billy the Kid).5 In 1872 the AT&SF reached Wichita, allegedly “busting the town wide-open.” Real estate land booms, speculation and annexation followed, and by 1890—after Wichita’s greatest population explosion (percentage-wise)—residents numbered nearly 24,000. Second to Wichita was Dodge City (site of the railroad’s repair shop and cattle stockyard). And the pattern was repeated as the railroad extended west—cities were built accordingly.
AT&SF opened up southern Kansas, and Union Pacific did the same for northern Kansas. Cities initially prospered but, as regional competition played out, many eventually lost their location advantage and subsequently declined (Shortridge, 2004). Over the next 150 years the original urban hierarchy shifted dramatically. Little noticed in the sea of Big City research, long-term shifts in Central Plains urban hierarchy could serve as an excellent case study for second- and third-tier western urban ED.
Oklahoma
Oklahoma was not open for settlement until 1889:6 on April 22 thousands of young whites gathered at a fence installed by US soldiers at the borders of “Unassigned Lands.”
[a]t noon a cannon boomed and the legal Boomers went rushing across the lines. On foot they came, or on race horses, or driving two wheeled racing sulkies, or farm wagons or high bicycles … [They pounded into the ground] flagged stakes, marking out homesteads or plots in the designated towns … . That morning the Unassigned Lands had an official population of zero; that night it was some 20,000. (Peirce, 1973, p. 250)
On that day Oklahoma City, Guthrie, Norman and Stillwater became cities. This was as unique a form of city-building as could be found in American history.
Newly formed Oklahoma cities seemed especially competitive and growth-oriented. In 1904 one small community (about 5000), determined to rise to civic greatness, organized a promotional campaign by chartering a train for ten days, loading it with 100 citizens, local agricultural products and local entertainment talent, and took off for St. Louis, Indianapolis, Chicago and Kansas City. One of those on board, economic developer Will Rogers, described the promotion:
Well, it was a joke—a hundred men getting off a train, marching with a band, boosting a place no one had ever heard of. But business men in the places we paraded commenced to realize there must be something in our town or we couldn’t do all this … It was one of the first cases of me and my little rope [rope twirling was his talent] making a public appearance … if you are anxious to know whatever became of this tank town, it’s Tulsa Oklahoma. (Mead, 2014, pp. 164–5)
Tulsa repeated these trips in 1908, 1926 and 1929. Tulsa did grow, but the oil fields surrounding it didn’t do much to stunt its growth. At its peak during the oil boom, Tulsa reached nearly 180,000 before settling down to 140,000 in 1930.
Until Alaska achieved statehood, Oklahoma was home to the largest Native American population. The plight of the Native Americans who either lived in Oklahoma of their own accord or were exiled there (it was the terminus of the Trail of Tears) sadly became an element of our ED history. Decades after the land rush Native Americans lost much of their land, theoretically protected by treaty. Jurisdictions acquired, then sold Native American land as an approved ED initiative. In 1904, for example, the Muskogee Commercial Club acquired Native American land and, with neighboring chambers and commercial clubs, promoted sale of the land. As late as 1912 the same club issued a promotional brochure with the subtitle “the land of the red man calls for the white man’s plow,” and it bragged in Nation’s Business magazine that the program had transferred over 20 million acres of tribal land in eastern Oklahoma (Mead, 2014, p. 164).
The Eastern Hegemony Stretches its Tentacles’
Central place proponents (1950s/1960s) argued and conclusively demonstrated that, given uniform terrain and even distributed natural resources, almost precisely spaced urban centers were dominated by a larger center city (mono-nucleated). Within the metropolitan market area “rings” of cities with specialized smaller markets developed at precise intervals based on market areas for firms. The urban pattern on which central place theorists based their assumptions was an already mature urban landscape that in some form had existed for 100 years or more. As a description of western city-building, however, it delivers little insight into the process of how that precise, rational system came about. Worse, it does not envision the events and change that drastically affected the emerging western urban landscape.
Transportation (and agricultural) innovation in the period was constant, and disruptive. Geographic advantages could prove temporary. Minerals were discovered; and then they played out. Droughts wiped out settlements; territorial legislatures could be bribed and interior cities could become state capitals or be awarded a prized institution such as a prison, county seat or a state college. The army or federal government was always willing to set up a fort or offices/court buildings and supply depots. Railroads built cities as part of their business plan; they also required repair facilities and storage areas en route, setting up secondary and rival cities in the hinterland (Shortridge, 2004, pp. 1–40). Access to rail explains much, but once achieved what explains subsequent growth?
More helpful was the little-known “mercantile model” (Vance Jr., 1970) which, when combined with Frederick Jackson’s Turner’s frontier model, offered insights into the earliest years of western cities. Turner’s “Frontier Thesis” posited a subsistence farming, homestead, economic base from which small merchant towns emerged. Accumulated capital led to further investments sufficient to support a small city: hinterland-based city-building. The crazy quilt, come and go, urban pattern that resulted did not in any way match the image, created 100 years later, by central place advocates. Barth, without intention, described in his Instant Cities how the discovery of gold lured prospectors to San Francisco by the thousands. Entrepreneurial merchants, risk-takers in the extreme (most probably failed), lived off the prospectors; and those that survived accumulated capital and acquired land—both essential for future investment in the city. The Homestead Act brought a different cast of characters into a non-existent community. Brigham Young, when he pitched camp one night in 1847, brought 148 new citizens to Salt Lake City. Five years later Salt Lake City held over 16,000 residents.
Trade was always the dominant consideration for land speculators, agricultural settlers, merchants, army bases and railroads. That’s why port cities were the earliest, and why the latter-period cattle towns—the end to the trail before processing and shipping—had the edge. The story of the West meant cities taking off, encountering competition from rivals and falling behind or beating them. Urban geographic competition was real, constant, and rivalries were bitter and unrestrained. In this world of city-building logistical, non-economic and geographical factors proved much more helpful—and more interesting.
In the mercantile model trade developed around wholesale, not retail. Given access to faraway markets, growth could occur—without it stagnation. Initial capital was supplied by older, east of the Mississippi Big City merchants who sought new markets. They invested in frontier communities of which they (1) become aware and (2) were convinced the community held potential advantages that could result in more sales/ profits. Trade took many forms in these early years, but “points of attachment”— trading centers for eastern goods—on or near transportation routes became necessary once a certain scale was achieved. Towns that convinced eastern merchants they could serve as a point of attachment acquired a branch, distribution center, sales center and eventually perhaps a processing center of some kind. Will Rogers’s Tulsa promotion was not beyond economic and geographical rationality.
In this subtle manner, the North/Midwest hegemony established a more benignly perceived economic colonialist control over the young fledgling cities of the West. Successful cities became “gateways” into a larger hinterland for the company. Further refinements of the mercantile model suggest these young growing cities developed a distinctive regional culture and self-image that emerged from their successful domination over hinterland/regional rivals (Meinig, 1972). City conquest of hinterlands meant not only economic success for its business community; also, more importantly, growth provided the security that the city itself would not be conquered. Boosterism, a derivative of that process and an ED strategy, possessed some depth and a rationale beyond exuberant, unsophisticated, provincial businessmen seeking profits.
Aspiring new cities actively engaged in ED strategies, decisions and initiatives led by their business community that encouraged this process. In a crass sense, the mercantile model provides an understanding of why cities “purchase” access from railroads, and of the boosterism that so dominated the contemporary image of this period. It also, of course, provides a context for understanding the often outrageous forms of attraction and promotion that were also characteristic of the era. It underscores the “growth or die” complex that saturated the western Privatist concepts of urban growth and urban hierarchies. Growth achieved from this city-building was never completely haphazard.
Residents and civic leaders had a vision of the kind of city they wanted to build. This image was drawn from the great metropolises of the East … whose ways, development and culture young settlements hoped to emulate … their deepest urge was to be like the great cities across the nation … This emulation characterized nearly every aspect of development—from the width of the streets, to the fashions of the people who strolled along them. (Wade, 1959, p. 134)
Institutions were copied just like fashions: chambers of commerce were founded, school systems started, the grid system employed, libraries built and street lamps installed as quickly as possible. For us a critical area was municipal law: incorporation (municipal home rule and civic associations), law codes, hybrid EDOs—trips were made regularly back east to acquire copies of legislation, constitutions and judicial decisions. Water works’ independent boards and commissions were established and transportation innovations installed as cities grew to sufficient scale. Describing an earlier period, but carrying over to the West’s golden era of city-building, one can see that western cities evolved as midwestern cities had a half-century earlier. Substitute Chicago or Kansas City for Philadelphia and it works: “Though Western towns drew upon the experience of all the major Atlantic [and Midwestern] cities the special source of municipal wisdom was Philadelphia [and later Chicago].” Having said that: the urban origin of Western town dwellers [and their civic/business leadership] was significant for it meant that the new cities would be built on the image of the older ones … Hence it is not surprising that Western towns bore a physical likeness to Eastern ones … The urge to imitate sprang from deep needs, giving the urban pioneers a lifeline to the past and a vision of grand future. (Wade, 1959, pp. 318–21)
Ron W. Coan 