Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway

In the first three months after reaching

Kansas, The Santa Fe Railroad carried more than 43,000 bison hides, which is bananas.

The other part of the bison people were quick to cut off for sale was the tongue.

They didn't bother with the 300 to 400 pounds of meat on the entire animal.

You aren't just visiting the country, you get to spend the weekend in it.

The Slanton Harvey House is a 1912 former Santa Fe Railroad restaurant that's been restored as a historic inn, a bed and breakfast, and an event center, along with a railroad museum in Slanton, Texas, of course.

Where else? It is one of the only six surviving Fred Harvey eating house locations in Texas.

The five guest rooms are actually inside the historic building, and guests can sit in the common areas and watch trains working the active BNSF rail yard right outside.

Acting upon this information, with the Indian as a guide, Coronado started on April twenty-third, fifteen forty-one, with his whole army to march to Quivira.

From Sikuye, or Pecos, whose ruins can still be seen by the traveler from the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe trains, the guide seems to have led the white men down the Pecos River until they were out of the mountains and on to the vast plains, where they soon met the countless herds of bison, or humpbacked oxen.

For five weeks, the Europeans plodded onward across what is now known as the Staked Plains, following a generally easterly direction.

They had probably crossed the upper branches of the Colorado River of Texas and reached the headwaters of the Nueces when Coronado became convinced that his guide was endeavoring to lose him in this limitless expanse of rolling prairie.

okay so did they come with people or by themselves

he came with his brother and she came with her sister and a brother as well okay so and they met in San Bernardino and got married and um and he worked for the Santa Fe Railroad for a while, and then he was working on a road crew that was working on the Lake Arrowhead Road, and from what I understand from my grandmother, he saw the Skyland Inn, and he really liked it, and so they became proprietors of it, and they ran it until Charlotte's death in 1909.

Wow.

When she passed away, then he sold the inn, and he moved back into the city with my grandmother.

[laughs] Well, you're a long way from water here.

[laughs] Thanks to the Santa Fe Railroad, but that's only a temporary necessity.

I have a matter to settle.

Oh? Well, how can I help you?

Case for tonight, Deadhead Freight.

[instrumental music] It is shortly before midnight, August 27th, 1938, at the Santa Fe freight yards in Lubbock, Texas.

A deadhead freight hauling empties back to the West Coast from Galveston has just pulled into the yard.

A brakeman and a railroad detective are making a routine check of the cars for free-riding hobos.