Sandia Mountains overlooking Albuquerque.

Something From Nothing

 

    Last night I posted I hoped the train would have traveled far enough that we’d wake up today in the desert but at sunrise we still have several hours to go before we won’t be in Kansas anymore.

    Granted, you could still say we were drifting across the High Plains although there’s little chance of seeing a serape-wearing stranger, played by Clint Eastwood, squinting out over the sun-parched landscape, clutching the soggy end of cigar in his teeth.

    From Illinois until we started climbing into the mountains on our way to Raton Pass, the plains stretched out forever, punctuated with geographical clones of whistle-stop towns and bright white homesteads surrounded by neat rows of swaying Cottonwood trees, as if that thin green line would be enough to offer anything more than the tiniest measure of protection from winter winds that get a head start in Manitoba, some 2,000 miles to the north.

    And while it may seem to the casual observer that there’s nothing out here, it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s nothing going on. A ride on the rails from Chicago to Albuquerque travels too through some of the most interesting parts of our country’s history and culture.

    It begins in Galesburg, IL, about 45 miles outbound from Union Station. It is the birthplace of George Washington Ferris who invented the amusement “wheel” we still enjoy today. Not to be outdone, his brother, Nathan Olmstead Ferris is credited with introducing popcorn to Prince Albert and Queen Victoria. Galesburg is also the place where the historic Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Douglas senatorial debates were held.

    Farther out, the Southwest Chief passes through Marceline, MO, the childhood home of Walt Disney who reportedly came up with the idea of Mickey Mouse while riding on this very route. The Chief makes a short stop in Kansas City, MO, who claims among its favorite sons and daughters, Harry Truman, Charlie Parker and Jean Harlow.

    Long after dark, we run through Dodge City, KS, once known as the “Wickedest Little City in America,” until Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday, and Bat Masterson cleaned it up.

Plains communities are no different from small towns in Maine, that yearn for their 7.5 minutes of fame by being the capital of something, anything. Hutchinson, KS has one of the world’s biggest salt mines. Lamar, KS is known as the “Goose Hunting Capital,” of the world, and Garden City claims to have the world’s largest swimming pool.

    Perhaps most interesting is Holcomb, KS, where murders at the Clutter family home in 1959 attracted the macabre attention of the nation and launched the career of Truman Capote who wrote about the case in his book “In Cold Blood.”

    Not long after breakfast we begin our long, winding climb into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the vanguard of the Rockies. The distinctive shape of Fisher’s Peak, CO, a spur of the Raton Mesa, grabs our attention from 50 miles away. At 9,336 feet high it is said there is no higher point east of it in the United States.

Fisher Peak, Colorado.

    For part of the way the train follows the valley of the Purgatorie River which, looks like heaven today but was undoubtedly hell for those pushing west along the Santa Fe Trail here in the mid-1800s. It was explored in 1821 when it took the first scouts more than two and half months to get here from Missouri. We cover the same ground in just a few hours.

    They, of course, were not the first to transit these hills as native peoples lived here for thousands of years. Numerous patches of fossilized dinosaur footprints in the Purgatorie’s canyon suggest it was a popular spot 149 million years before the first people.

    Fisher peak disappears as the grade steepens, the train slows, and we near Raton Pass. At an elevation of 7,588 feet it is the physical high point of the trip. We enter the half-mile Raton tunnel in Colorado, and emerge at the other end in New Mexico. The rest of the trip is, literally, downhill from here.

    The terrain changes markedly, blonde colored earth and rock giving way to bright red. Dry riverbeds, crumbling cliffs, and stunted trees abound.

    Without so much as a whistle, the Southwest Chief coasts towards Albuquerque through Glorieta, where one of the western-most battles of the Civil War was fought in 1862. Known as the” Gettysburg of the West,” it involved Union troops destroying a Texan supply train that set up the liberation of Santa Fe and Albuquerque.

    And that’s fine as far as we’re concerned as we pull into the Spanish-Style station in Downtown, happy to be welcomed by the stars and stripes instead of the stars and bars.

    Despite the geographical affectation of its title, the movie “High Plains Drifter,” was not shot in Kansas, Colorado or New Mexico. It was actually filmed in California. But perhaps there was something universal about the West in the stranger’s steely gaze.

    Eastwood’s latest film Cry Macho was shot in New Mexico, in the town of Belen, just south of where we end our trip today. Of course, the story doesn’t actually take place in New Mexico either. But when you are trying to go from nothing to something, a little artistic license never hurts.

High Plains in Colorado