KANSAS CITY, EL PASO AND MEXICAN RAILWAY. The Kansas City, El Paso and Mexican Railway Company of Texas was chartered on June 27, 1888, by a group of El Paso businessmen including Henry L. Newman, Bennett H. Davis, and Charles R. Morehead. The company planned to build from Tenth Street in south El Paso to the Texas and New Mexico boundary where it was to connect with an affiliated company to complete a 160-mile-line to the coal fields near White Oaks, New Mexico. The capital was $400,000, and the business office was in El Paso. Members of the first board of directors included Benjamin F. Hammett, Vernin Desloge, and John N. Bofinger, all of St. Louis, Missouri; and Newman, Davis, Morehead, and Joseph Magoffin, all of El Paso. Construction began on September 3, 1888. To mark the completion of the initial 8.19 miles, which placed the tracks of the company at the foot of the Franklin Mountains just below South Franklin Peak, company officials arranged for two promotional excursions for El Paso residents. Following the second excursion, however, a number of suits for unpaid bills were filed in the Thirty-fourth District Court against the company, and the railroad was placed in receivership. On April 28, 1892, Jay Gould bought the dormant line at foreclosure for $50,000. Following his death later that year, the executors of Gould's estate conveyed the property to Charles E. Satterlee, who was most likely acting on behalf of the Texas and Pacific Railway Company. Satterlee subsequently sold the former Kansas City, El Paso and Mexican Railway Company of Texas to the El Paso Northern Railway Company.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Edward A. Leonard, Rails at the Pass of the North, (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1981).
