The Rise of the Texas and Pacific Railroad The Train and Buffalo Gap: Buffalo Gap used its steady water supply and its position as the county seat as promotional tools for acquiring the T&P railroad. Buffalo Gap citizens highly anticipated the railroad’s arrival to the town. The T&P going through Buffalo Gap might have brought a population boom for the small frontier town in the Callahan Divide. From 1879-1885, S.C. Simmons, William Heller, and Fred Brookerson all made claims to the land in Buffalo Gap. Buffalo Gap’s hilly terrain and the land disputes made the town a secondary option since the T&P had flat land readily available north of town. The town did not gain a train through the T&P in 1881, which prohibited growth at the turn of the twentieth century, however, the Santa Fe Railroad did lay track in Buffalo Gap from 1910-1911. The Santa Fe used land in Buffalo Gap instead of Abilene to avoid further competition from the T&P railroad, although the train did not develop Buffalo Gap into a train town as it did other towns in the West. In the 1950s, Buffalo Gap sold their train depot, and today it is primarily used for freight traffic.
Texas and Pacific Railway in Abilene: Thomas A. Scott, head of the T&P railway, utilized similar strategies to Cyrus Holliday, relying on both Indian iconography and regional promotion. In 1881, the T&P connected the railway line from Fort Worth to El Paso and declared Abilene the “Future Great City of West Texas.” The promotional strategies did not help Abilene tourism in the same way as Santa Fe, but two east and westbound trains per day served to industrialize this new train town. While the Texas and Photo Courtesy of: Juanita Pacific failed to get to California under its Daniel Zachry, The settling of a frontier: a history of rural Taylor County, (Burnet Texas: Nortex Press, 1980), 4. own name, the railroad joined the Southern Pacific railway at Sierra Blanca, forever changing the history of both Abilene and Buffalo Gap.
Photo Courtesy of: The Grace Museum
Clyde, Texas Texas and Pacific Railroad Depot (1910) This original structure served as the passenger depot for the Texas and Pacific Railroad in Clyde, Texas. The T&P built this building in 1910; the structure replaced the original depot, made from a converted boxcar. The builders connected the freight section of this building to the current east side, which is now part of the Buffalo Gap Historic Village’s mercantile store/gift shop. Clyde’s Depot employed Eugenia Ellen Fly Kuykendall, one of the first female railroad agents and Telegraph operators in Texas. In the middle of the Twentieth Century, the Clyde School District moved the structure to its campus, where they used it as a meeting room. The building relocated to its current location at the Village in 1979.
Photo of the Clyde Depot, Courtesy of: The Grace Museum