Travel Reference
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ada, an American named Albert K. Owen began looking for a
way to link the American Midwest with a Pacific seaport by run-
ning a rail line through Mexico. An engineer by training, Owen
tried to sell his idea to a number of governors of U.S. states and
to Congress without success.
Nevertheless, the idea had some serious economic potential,
at least on paper, and other eager would-be railroaders followed
Owen. In 1897, Foster Higgins, also an American, formed a
company called the Rio Grande, Sierra Madre y Pacifico, which
began building a rail line south from Cuidad Juárez for 160 miles
to Corralitos. In that same year, a Mexican entrepreneur named
Enrique Creel formed a rail company called the Chihuahua al
Pacifico and started laying 125 miles of track between Chihua-
hua and Miñaca.
The first really serious effort to build a railroad to the Pacific
through Mexico was driven by a visionary American business-
man named Arthur Stilwell, who saw it as a way to open up trade
between the eastern part of the United States and Asian markets.
His plan called for a rail line to originate in Kansas City, head
south through Texas and into Mexico, then swing southwest and
terminate at one of North America's great natural deepwater har-
bors, Topolobampo, on the Sea of Cortez. Stilwell saw limitless
potential in the future of trade between North America and the
Far East and calculated that a rail line through Mexico would
reduce the time it took to ship goods between Kansas City and
the Pacific by four days—a major economic incentive. (By the
way, Port Arthur, Texas, was named after Stilwell.)
Work on the rail line sputtered on and off over the next few
decades, with several companies being formed to build various
segments of the route. The Mexican Revolution was a major
interruption, with Pancho Villa and his troops staging periodic
attacks on railroad facilities and construction crews. Neverthe-
less, several different railway companies continued working dur-
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