As the ears pass, the evidence of Iola’s early love affair with trains has slowly melted away.
But ask the long-timers — the ones around when the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe still ferried passengers from Iola to Kansas City or Tulsa, or the Missouri Pacific line took folks to Wichita and beyond — and you’ll see just how vital railroads were in shaping Iola, Allen County and much of southeast Kansas.
Iolan Donna Houser spoke about how trains figured into Iola’s early growth, and how other factors eventually derailed the notion of long-distance travel via passenger or box car.
Houser spoke Thursday to a group of about a dozen local history buffs at the Iola Public Library.
MANY local historians are quick to point to the two rail lines most associate with Iola — the aforementioned Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe that still serves as the corridor for the Prairie Spirit Trail and Southwind Rail Trails — and the Missouri Pacific, which traveled east and west, including along the stretch through the heart of town that now serves as the newly developed MoPac walking trail.
Iola’s first rail line, however, was the short-lived Lawrence, Leavenworth and Galveston line (LL&G).
Rail lines were eager to cover new territory, but southeast Kansas was largely left out of those plans because of the multitude of creeks and the Neosho River, Houser explained.
“There were no bridges,” she noted.
Officials from LL&G however worked in league with the King Bridge Company and came to Allen County with a proposal. They’d build a line through town, going north and south, if the county could come up with $75,000 in bonds.
Iolans figured the idea was a slam dunk, and the vote to approve the bonds passed overwhelmingly. Other parts of the county, however, weren’t as enthusiastic.
And in a highly controversial election — many votes were disallowed from Humboldt, Salem, Osage and other townships because of reports of coercion — the bond vote was approved, 615 to 420 in May 1870.
The first rail line came to town at about the same time LL&G went belly-up, however.
“They didn’t know how to manage money,” Houser noted. But with the infrastructure in place, the train line was purchased by the Atchison and Topeka Railroad (the “Santa Fe” wasn’t added for a few years.)
A SECOND rail line, traveling through Iola from east to west, took shape after a bridge to cross the Neosho was completed.
The Western Railroad (later renamed the Missouri Pacific) became one of the most vital cogs in Iola’s industrial engine in the early 1900s.
The line came through just east of where U.S. 54 meets Kentucky Street today — “Remember, there were no highways at the time,” Houser said, “just dirt roads.”
