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| Two
Artesian Belt Railroad trains meet at the Jourdanton depot
in 1910. (Norman F. Porter collection) |
Charles Simmons
built the Artesian Belt Railroad to bring settlers to south Texas,
an area he promoted as "the garden spot of the world", where the
"seasons never end", with "warm winters and cool summers", and
rainfall "plentiful for ordinary crops properly cultivated". Perhaps
it was inevitable that Simmons would trade his quiet ranch life
for land promotion; it was not Simmons' nature to relax -- his
neighbor once described him as "a hyperactive 'goer and doer'
who could not be content with a normal pace, even under doctor's
orders." And when he needed improved access to his towns, he built
a railroad -- a logical means to an end -- a way of migrating
home buyers to land seller. Had he lived longer, his towns and
his railroad might have prospered through the force and energy
of his personality. Instead, they all ended up on a road to nowhere.
Born Calvin Franklin Simmons in Iuka, Mississippi, his father,
Dr. M. A. Simmons, was the inventor of Simmons Vegetable Liver
Medicine, a patent medicine that sold for 35 cents per bottle.
Charles took over the family business in St. Louis in 1879, but
a heavy workload of defending his products against patent infringement
caused a physical breakdown, forcing his premature retirement.
For reasons lost to history, Simmons chose to relocate to the
south Texas prairie, accompanied by his wife, three daughters,
son and daughter-in-law, and two grandsons.Ranching was a drastic
change in lifestyle, but Simmons soon turned it into a working
operation. It might have stayed that way had tragedy not struck
the Simmons family. On 25 June 1903, Simmons' only living son
died from a rattlesnake bite. The impact on Simmons was profound
and he gradually lost interest in ranching. Rather than sell the
ranch outright, Simmons conceived an elaborate plan for subdividing
his ranch for sale to new settlers.The plan was described in a
1906 advertising book Home, Sweet Home - A Home in Sunny South
Texas for a Song. The book often mentioned the words home
and railroad, and listed 100 reasons "why Texas is the
grandest place of them all", including the assertion that "people
are so law abiding that it takes only two days every six months
to hear the criminal cases." A map in the book showed three rail
lines projected to pass through the area: the Southern Pacific
(from Beeville to Eagle Pass), the River Valley, Gulf & Mexican
Railroad (from Eagle Pass to Aransas Pass), and the San Antonio
and Rio Grande Railroad (from the Rio Grande Valley to San Antonio).
The book also described how land parcels carved from Simmons'
ranch would be sold. The ranch would be subdivided into 4,205
town lots and 4,205 farm tracts varying from 5 to 640 acres; each
buyer would get both a farm tract and a town lot. For $120, a
buyer would select a town lot and a lottery would determine which
farm lot they received. A large town was planned and a $50,000
bonus in gold was offered for the first railroad to reach it.The
land sale was planned for September, 1907, but to comply with
state law, it was changed to a pure auction. On the morning of
10 September, many buyers traveled via Beeville on the San Antonio
& Aransas Pass Railroad, with 800 people eventually arriving at
Simmons' home to inspect the property. When the auction was held,
3,698 deeds were recorded in the new town of Simmons City.
Simmons moved
to San Antonio in 1908 and purchased the 95,000-acre Oppenheimer
Ranch in Atascosa County, to be subdivided for sale in the same
manner. Two towns were planned, New Artesia and New Pleasanton,
but they were later renamed Christine and Imogene, respectively,
after Simmons' daughters. To reach these new towns, Simmons needed
improved transportation to help attract home buyers. His Artesian
Belt Railroad, named for the many artesian wells dotting the region,
would begin at a connection with the Galveston, Harrisburg and
San Antonio Railroad at Macdona near San Antonio and extend south
to Christine. The state gave final approval to the Artesian Belt
Railroad charter in November, 1908.Track work proceeded south
from San Antonio, reaching the vicinity of Somerset in May, 1909.
The First Townsite Company created a new town of Somerset along
the right-of-way, three miles north of the old town, to which
most of the residents moved. Jourdanton was reached in September;
a land auction was conducted by the Jourdanton Land Company, but
this was not a Simmons venture. Rails finally reached the town
of Christine on 5 October 1909. Nine days later, Simmons began
a two-week land auction at the Brown Lake Ranch. Although bidders
had to buy an application just to place a bid, up to five thousand
people attended the auction on some days. For each farm purchased,
the owner also received a lot in Christine and a smaller lot in
Imogene.The Artesian Belt Railroad was now operating over a 42-mile
route from Macdona to Christine. Trackage rights to company headquarters
in San Antonio were obtained on the International & Great Northern
from the crossing at Kirk Junction. While Simmons developed plans
to extend the rails further south to Simmons City, he made a proposal
to build his own route into San Antonio and extend the line to
the Rio Grande Valley -- for a $60,000 bonus. The bonus was never
raised, and the plans to enter San Antonio and the Valley were
dropped.For the next year, the Artesian Belt consolidated its
operations and planned for the future as more stations developed
along the line. In 1910, the town of Poteet moved three miles
southeast to trackside land donated by local citizens. A connecting
line from Pleasanton to Poteet was proposed, but a lawsuit was
filed and the project eventually failed. A rail loading point
named Fruitland was created halfway between Somerset and Poteet.
Fruitland was later renamed Tarbutton; when State Highway 16 was
built across the tracks a mile away, the Tarbutton depot was loaded
on a flatcar and moved closer to the highway.
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|
A 1912 Railroad Pass |
Jourdanton's
importance also grew with the railroad. A proposal was made to
move the Atascosa County seat from Pleasanton to Jourdanton and
an election was held in 1910 to decide the issue. Jourdanton won,
but when residents of Pleasanton disputed the results, the court
records were secretly moved to Jourdanton. As a tribute to the
railroads, the courthouse in Jourdanton was built in a mission
revival architecture widely used for depots of this era.In March,
1910, Simmons divorced his wife Harriet and married her younger
sister, Mattie Cantrell, but the marriage was short-lived. Simmons
became ill and departed for his former home of Excelsior Springs,
Missouri where he died in November, 1910 of Bright's disease.
This was a crushing blow to the Artesian Belt Railroad and led
to a period of financial chaos as control of the railroad was
turned over to the executor of his estate, the West Texas Bank
& Trust Co. of San Antonio.Simmons' death also affected the plans
of Mr. S. A. Hopkins who was developing oil fields near Crowther,
south of Christine. Hopkins had told Simmons he would ship up
to 5,000 barrels of oil per day if Simmons extended the rails
to Crowther. When Simmons died, Hopkins tried to buy the line
to build the extension himself, but Simmons' will prevented selling
the railroad for less than $400,000 which Hopkins believed was
excessive. Instead, Hopkins formed a partnership with H. E. Hildebrand,
who chartered the San Antonio, Rockport, and Mexico Railroad on
2 S eptember 1911. They began negotiations to acquire the Artesian
Belt Railroad as part of this new railroad projected to run from
San Antonio to the Rio Grande Valley and Mexico. Plans called
for constructing a direct route from Tarbutton into San Antonio
and extending the rails south to Crowther, which would become
the junction for an eastern branch to Rockport (via Oakville,
Beeville and Refugio) and a southern extension to the Rio Grande
Valley. Financing would be provided by a British syndicate and
from bonuses to be collected from towns along the routes.
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|
Artesian Belt Railway Map. |
Because of
the problem created by Simmons' will, a judge authorized the sale
for $300,000 at the request of Leon Waltham, president of the
Artesian Belt. This lower price, however, was still too high,
and the parties returned to court which re-authorized the sale
at the negotiated price of $200,000. But the British finance committee
refused to release their funding until three conditions were satisfied:
extending the line from Christine to Crowther; constructing a
new depot in San Antonio; and raising $250,000 in bonuses. Surprisingly,
Hopkins and Hildebrand were able to raise the full amount and
proceed with a contract in March, 1913 to build the extension
to Crowther. Hopkins took over project supervision for the extension
and promptly announced that surveys had been completed to within
three miles of Crowther. A month later, he announced that fifty
teams and dozens of men were working to build the grade for the
new extension as rails for the new tracks were being unloaded
at Christine. He also announced plans to order two McKeen railcars
to provide high speed passenger service between Crowther and San
Antonio. The possibility that this new railroad might actually
succeed in obtaining British funding alarmed competing railroad
interests in south Texas. Much lobbying was undertaken, particularly
in the British press, culminating in an abrupt decision by the
syndicate to withdraw their financial support, effectively crippling
the new railroad.In parallel with these efforts, oil was discovered
near Somerset in early 1913. The Dielman sand spur was constructed
around this time near Tarbutton to load sand into boxcars. Passengers
dreaded riding in cars behind the sand cars because they got "sandblasted".
With the booming oil and sand business, the railroad assigned
a switch engine to Somerset and constructed an engine house there.
Also in 1913, a lignite spur was constructed south of Poteet near
the Atascosa River.
In 1917, Hildebrand
and Hopkins formally defaulted on their construction contract
and control of the Artesian Belt returned to the receivership
of the West Texas Bank & Trust. But the bank had its own problems
and soon failed. Harry Landa of New Braunfels bought the bank
and then bought the railroad it controlled. In 1920, he renamed
the Artesian Belt as the San Antonio Southern Railway when a new
charter was approved by the Railroad Commission. The line from
Macdona to Kirk was immediately abandoned, reducing the railroad's
total mileage to 39 miles.The San Antonio Southern became known
as "Harry Landa's Lemon". Nevertheless, business improved on the
line under Landa's leadership with growth in oil, sand, cotton
and coal. Business became so good that the Missouri Pacific Railroad
proposed to build their own line from Kirk to Somerset. Instead,
Landa offered to sell his railroad to the MoPac, which consummated
the purchase on 1 January 1927 under the charter of the New Orleans,
Texas and Mexico Railroad. As the Depression began to impact business,
the segment from Jourdanton to Christine was abandoned in 1933,
but the remainder of the line survived. The MoPac consolidated
direct ownership of the railroad in 1956 and finally abandoned
the remaining portion from Kirk to Jourdanton in 1965, thus ending
service on the last vestige of the route of the Artesian Belt
Railroad.The Somerset depot was last reported to be a chicken
house on FM2790 northeast of Somerset. The fate of the Jourdanton
depot is unknown. Christine survives as a tiny village; many early
residents left after great disappointment and many lots were abandoned.
(Those who stayed became known as "Simmons Suckers", a term still
used good-naturedly by some descendants.) A local resident, Glenn
Patterson, purchased the depot to use as his home. His niece was
born in the depot and later became the owner of the building and
mayor of Christine.
It is now clear that the source of the mystery grade that appears
on WWII era aviation maps was the initial construction by Hopkins
and Hildebrand on the extension to Crowther under the charter
of the San Antonio, Rockport and Mexico Railroad. Some rail may
have been laid and work trains may have operated over this section,
but the extension was never formally opened nor operated. Topographic
maps confirm that the grade actually extended south of Crowther
on a bearing to reach Simmons City, but construction of the Choke
Canyon Reservoir in 1982 may have obliterated the final traces
of where the grade actually ended.
Crowther never recovered from the failure to get rail service;
by 1920, all of the businesses had closed and it soon reached
ghost town status. Imogene was never developed, although a railroad
depot was built. The only remaining building of Simmons' legacy
that is still used for its original purpose is the first structure
he built, the Simmons Community Church, which continues to host
services for area residents on Sundays.
