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Legislature grants Katy a Texas charter
On this day in 1870, the Texas legislature approved the Kansas charter
of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, commonly known as the M-K-T or
the Katy. The company had no charter to build in Texas, but was given
the same rights as if it were incorporated in Texas. The Katy, the first
railroad to enter Texas from the north, originated in 1865, when its
earliest predecessor, the Union Pacific Railway Company, Southern
Branch, was chartered by the State of Kansas. In 1870 the railway's name
was changed to the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Railway Company, a change
which defined both the company's strategic intent and its service area.
The newly named railroad was intended to funnel business from Missouri,
Kansas, and the north and east to and through Texas. The Katy, touted in
advertisements as the Gateway to Texas, breached the Texas frontier near
the site of present Denison, where the first regular train arrived on
Christmas Day, 1872. In 1880 the Katy was acquired by Jay Gould, who
leased the railroad to his Missouri Pacific Railway Company, and by 1882
the Katy had 638 miles of track in Texas. In 1915 all of the Katy
properties in and out of Texas went into receivership, and in 1923 the
company was reorganized as the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad Company of
Texas. In 1989 Union Pacific and its subsidiary, the Missouri Pacific
Railroad Company, bought the Katy, and the Missouri-Kansas-Texas was no
more.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- MISSOURI-KANSAS-TEXAS RAILROAD
- RAILROADS
- URBANIZATION
- GOULD, JAY
- DENISON, TX
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- Law arrives west of the Pecos (1882)
- Texans oust Mexicans in battle of Nacogdoches (1832)
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