Railroad Trains Spurred Arnold’s Growth Like Nothing Else
I hear the train a comin’, it’s rolling round the bend
And I ain’t seen the sunshine since I don’t know when …
– Johnny Cash
The heyday of railroads were great times for Arnold.
Imagine strolling from the Cedar Crest Country Club by the Meramec River to nearby Tenbrook Station in 1904 to board a comfortable railroad car for a short trip to St. Louis to see the St. Louis World’s Fair. Or compare a bumpy ride in a horse-drawn wagon loaded with your apple crop to shipping your fruit on a fast-moving train to profitable markets in Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.
Indeed. Until the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railroad opened in 1868, the Arnold area was comprised of fields, forests, farms, small houses, a ferry across the Meramec River, two churches, several blacksmiths, and a few businesses. By the early 1900s, thanks to railroads, old bridle trails were becoming roadways for cars and trucks while new grocery stores, saloons, machine shops, morticians, and the Cedar Crest Country Club were doing business.
Steam locomotive leaving Festus, Missouri, bound for Arnold and St. Louis, circa 1900. Photo from Arnold Historical Society.
The Frisco
The St. Louis-San Francisco Railway, popularly known as the Frisco, was incorporated in Missouri on September 7, 1876. It was formed by merging the Missouri Division and Central Division of the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad, according to Frisco Railroad archives. The Frisco built Tenbrook Station and its sidetracks here in 1902 and named it after local landowner John Tenbrook donated 4 acres for the project. The Frisco employed local workmen to maintain the tracks and, also, to support pump cars that stopped nightly to fill the water tower beside the track. The Frisco owned and rented track rights for running their trains to many communities in Missouri and southern states. (The practice of renting track rights was common then and still is today.)
Railroad men at Mrs. Schnurbusch’s Boarding House near Tenbrook Station are shown at the dinner table, where they got home-cooked meals for 25 cents in the early 1900s. Photo copyright the Arnold Historical Society.
“A place called ‘Mrs. Schnurbusch’s Boarding House’ was built near Tenbrook Station,” recalls historian Bernie Wilde. “The men would stay at Mrs. Schnurbusch’s where they got home-cooked meals for 25 cents. Before long, a telegraph line was installed at the depot, the Stadlmann Hotel was built, and a branch of the post office opened at the hotel,” she says. “Tenbrook Station was a depot and water station for many different railroads that ran through here. Its lounge became a small bar that was quite popular. On hot afternoons, kids would climb up the water tower to dive into the water to cool off or bathe until getting chased off by depot employees,” Wilde adds.
Local resident Dale Kramlich recalled, “The Cedar Crest Country Club on lower Tenbrook was owned by the Anheuser Busch family. It was used as a retreat for brewery employees. My great aunt and uncle, Charles and Mirie Kramlich, were the caretakers of the property in the mid-1930s.”
Bernie Wilde says, “The country club was near Tenbrook Station at Fannie Road. It was originally a home constructed in 1891 that was enlarged; it operated as the Cedar Crest Country Club until World War Two. The grounds hosted many picnics, ball games, and other recreations. It was near the Meramec River where people would go to relax.”
“There was an icehouse on the grounds with 3-foot walls for insulation,” Wilde says. “Ice cut from the Meramec River in winter was stored there for the summer supply. Antique firetrucks were also stored here. And you could walk to Tenbrook Station.”
Like many railroads in those early days, the Frisco went bankrupt and reorganized several times, including bankruptcy in 1893 and reorganization in 1896 and 1916. The tracks leading from St. Louis to Memphis and other destinations enabled trains to fill water for steam locomotives at Tenbrook Station, load or unload passengers, and load or unload freight.
Raccoon Logo
The Frisco’s famous logo is based on a stretched-out Missouri Ozarks raccoon hide. This is confirmed in Frisco Railroad archives at the Springfield-Greene County Library District and in other railroad histories. For decades, the insignia appeared in Frisco ads, brochures, annual reports, signs, and letterhead, yet the origin was never revealed until this report was given at a Frisco centennial dinner in 1960 by a long-time employee:
“A company vice president named G.H. Nettleton, on an inspection tour of Frisco lines, stopped for water in Neosho, Missouri. There he saw an outstretched raccoon hide tacked to the depot’s wall for tanning. He angrily demanded to see the station master. The station master nervously told Mr. Nettleton that the Frisco did not pay enough for him to support his family, so he had to hunt raccoons and sell the hides to help feed his wife and children. Mr. Nettleton burst into laughter and asked the station master what a hide cost. “Two dollars” came the answer. Still laughing, Mr. Nettleton produced two dollars and took that raccoon hide to Frisco’s home office in St. Louis. Soon, a design firm used the hide as inspiration for a new Frisco emblem.”
Zinzin, a brand design firm in Berkeley, California, shows the raccoon emblem on its website.
Trivia: The city of Frisco, Texas, was named for the Frisco Railroad and uses the logo as its own. It is also used by Frisco High School’s mascot, “The Fighting Raccoon.”
The Frisco Railroad emblem originated as an idea by a Frisco vice president who saw a raccoon skin nailed to the wall of the station in Neosho, Missouri. Image copyright Zinzin.
Fifteen different Frisco trains roared past Arnold to dozens of communities in Arkansas, Tennessee, Florida, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas before mergers with other railroads began in the late 19th century. Oddly, the railroad line never made it to San Francisco. For some years, the Frisco was owned by tycoon Jay Gould, who owned interests in a dozen other U.S. railroads. Gould drowned on December 2, 1892, as a first-class passenger on the sinking Titanic.
The Frisco Railroad operated for 104 years – 1876 to 1980. It is not to be confused with the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, better known as the Katy, founded in 1865. Nor should it be confused with the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railroad, a target for the notorious Jesse James.
An early version of the Katy Railroad emblem. Photo copyright Katy Railroad Historical Society.
A Katy Railroad passenger train pulled by steam locomotive circa 1900 approaches a Missouri crossroads on its way to its next stop. Image copyright Katy Railroad Historical Society.
The Katy
The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railway, with headquarters in Dallas, was established in 1865 as the Union Pacific Railway, Southern Branch. It served an extensive rail network in Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas. In the 1890s the MKT was called “the K-T” because it was the Kansas-Texas division of the Missouri Pacific Railroad. “KT” was its timetable abbreviation and also its stock exchange symbol. So, it became “The Katy.”
“The Sedalia Katy Depot” journal, published by the Sedalia, Missouri, Visitor Center, reports that at the time of the Katy’s incorporation, “consolidations were also made with the Labette & Sedalia Railway Co. and the Neosho Valley & Holden Railway Co.; MK&T also acquired the Tebo & Neosho Railroad Co., the St. Louis & Santa Fe Railroad Co., and the Hannibal & Central Missouri Railroad Co. With the Union Pacific Southern Branch, these small railroads formed the Katy’s foundation.” Like other railroads, the Katy began running into trouble. “By the 1890s, train robberies were big business in the West. At one point, trains were being robbed on an average of every four days,” reports the October 6, 2018, issue of True West Magazine, based in Cave Creek, Arizona. Here is an edited excerpt from that issue:
“From its origins the Katy had been targeted by the criminal element. Its many runs through rural and sparsely populated areas made it an easy prey. The infamous Dalton Gang, comprised of the brothers Frank, Bob, Grat, and Emmett Dalton, worked as lawmen in Kansas and Oklahoma before turning to crime in the early 1890s. They focused on banks and trains in Kansas and Oklahoma. The Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad was a frequent target until the Daltons were gunned down in October 1892.”
James Gang
Jesse and Frank James of Kearney, Missouri, were the nation’s most dangerous train robbers. They were smart thugs and brutal killers. The James Gang robbed banks from Iowa to Alabama, Minnesota, Missouri, and Texas, and then began holding up trains in 1873. In 1881 Missouri Gov. Thomas T. Crittenden offered a $10,000 reward for their capture, dead or alive.
The gang targeted the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railroad because it was known to carry wealthy passengers. The crime would become known as the “Great Missouri Train Robbery.”
On January 31, 1874, brothers Jesse and Frank James, and brothers Cole Younger, Jim Younger, and John Younger, robbed the general store in rural Gads Hill, 80 miles south of the Arnold area. The St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railroad train was expected to arrive at 4:00 pm that day. As it neared, the gang lit a bonfire on the tracks and waved a red flag to make the engineer stop the train immediately. The gang was reportedly dressed as members of the Ku Klux Klan. Climbing aboard the train waving their guns, the gang began stealing passengers’ valuables, supposedly robbing only wealthy men, but not women. After cracking the safe and bagging the money, all five men escaped unhurt with a stolen total of $12,000, an amount worth at least $228,000 today. After Jesse was shot dead by a member of his own gang in April 1882, the outlaw crew broke up. The James Gang and other train robbers – such as the “Wild Bunch” and Butch Cassidy’s “Hole in the Wall Gang” – fueled growth for train detectives. The Independent State Road Guards and the Georgia Railroad Guards, like the famed Pinkerton Agency, worked for major railroads.
Jesse James, on left, and his brother Frank, in 1874 robbed a St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railroad train of $12,000 in Gads Hill, Missouri, an amount now worth at least $228,000. This anonymous photo is in the public domain.
The St. Louis Refrigerator Car Company, owned by Anheuser-Busch, was one of the first companies to design a railroad car to transport draught beer. This version is from the early 1900s. Image copyright St. Louis Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society.
Beer Train
Hot weather jinxed breweries in the late 1800s. The problem was transporting beer in summer. The St. Louis Refrigerator Car Company, owned by Anheuser-Busch, was one of the first companies to design a railroad car to transport draught beer, notes the St. Louis Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society.
“Although it incorporates a steel frame, it is wood-bodied and insulated with horsehair, shredded paper, and wood shavings. Pre-cooled beer was loaded into the car, whose insulation kept the A-B products cool in warm weather and from freezing in winter.
“Car Number 3600 is one of the oldest surviving examples of ‘billboard’ advertising on railroad freight cars. It was donated to The National Museum of Transportation in April 1958. Records indicate Number 3600 transported 6,277,500 gallons of beer between the St. Louis brewery and Texas distribution points before it was removed from service.”
The National Museum of Transportation is a private, 42-acre transportation museum and resource in St. Louis’ Kirkwood suburb that is open to the public with unique displays of historic locomotives and other vehicles.
The St. Louis Iron Mountain & Southern Railway today is a short line railway in Jackson, Missouri, that hosts themed trips such as the Halloween Express, Murder Mysteries Dinner, Christmastime, a Ghost Train, and a realistic reenactment of the James Gang robbery.
Article by Jeff Dunlap for the City of Arnold.
In addition to interviews, some information was excerpted from specialty journals and websites as noted,
and educational resources as noted, and from the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.