CHOCTAW, OKLAHOMA AND TEXAS RAILROAD. The Choctaw, Oklahoma and Texas Railroad Company was chartered on June 21, 1901, by the Choctaw, Oklahoma, and Gulf Railroad Company. The Choctaw ran from Memphis, Tennessee, through Oklahoma City to western Oklahoma. The CO&T was organized to extend the CO&G from the Oklahoma-Texas border near Texola to Amarillo. The capital was $1,680,000, and the business office was in Amarillo. Members of the first board of directors included J. W. McLoud of Little Rock, Arkansas, G. L. Blackford of Denison, Texas, Francis I. Gowan and Charles E. Ingersoll of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Squire H. Madden, R. L. Stringfellow, and Wiley H. Fuqua, all from Amarillo. In 1902 the CO&T built ninety-eight miles to Yarnall, and, by utilizing trackage rights over other carriers, reached Amarillo. The CO&T completed its own line into Amarillo by late 1903. By this time the Choctaw and its Texas subsidiary had been acquired by the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railway Company. The CO&T was merged into a Rock Island subsidiary, the Chicago, Rock Island and Gulf Railway Company, on December 1, 1903. The CRI&G completed an extension from Amarillo west to the Texas-New Mexico line at Glenrio in 1910. Another Rock Island line extended from Glenrio to Tucumcari, New Mexico, where a connection with what later became the Southern Pacific created a through route between Memphis and the Pacific Coast.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: William Edward Hayes, Iron Road to Empire (New York: Simmons-Boardman, 1953). Della Tyler Key, In the Cattle Country: History of Potter County, 1887-1966 (Amarillo: Tyler-Berkley, 1961; 2d ed., Wichita Falls: Nortex, 1972). F. Stanley, Story of the Texas Panhandle Railroads (Borger, Texas: Hess, 1976).
