Arizona republican., 1911-06-04
PHoNEX. ARIZONA, JUNE 1, 1911
The Am bilious Frisco Line.

The announcement that the St Louis & san Francisco Railway com pany has completed a traffic ar rangement with the Stanta Fe where by a through train service over the Santa Fe-"Frisco" tracks between Los Angeles and St Louis will be begun the coming fall, is of more than pass
 ing interest to the people of Arizona, for this arrangement is regarded as merely preliminary to the construction of line of its own to the coast by the Frisco" Under the new owner ship and management the St. Louis & san Francisco has become one of the most ambitious railway com panies. President Yoakum some months ago frankly admitted the pur- pose of his company to extend its lines from Oklahoma to California, and the Consummation of the project is deemed a certainty of the near future. The proposed line will pierce central Arizona, and. of course, will pass through Phoenix. 4 through line from St Louis to the Pacific coast by the St. Louis & San Francisco will, after all, be only a belated completion of the original scheme of a generation ago, as the very name of the com- pany indicates. It was intended to be a direct line between the city of St. Louis and the city of San Fran cisco. The projected line was con structed from St. Louis to the Indian territory, and from Albuquerque to the Needles, in California. But the railway investors of that day did not appreciate the enormous value of a transcontinental line on the pro- posed route, and the project finally drifted into financial doldrums. and the Santa Fe interests acquired the constructed road from Albuquerque to the Needles. Thereafter, for two decades, the St Louis & San Fran cisco was a railway orphan. Control of the system was obtained by the Santa Fe, and for several years it was operated as a part of the Santa Fe system. Then it passed to the con- trol of the spectators who were play ing football with the Rock Island sys- tenn, and for some years it was an integral part of the Rock Island Some two years ago the Rock Island in- terests had to give it up. and since then the Frisco" has steadily ad- vanced as a great and independent system. Both the Rock Island and the Frisco" will. within a few years. be constructed across Arizona to the shores of the Pacific. With the death of Hartman, that wonderful indi- vidual who by the force of his per sonality had been able to suppress and hold in check the ambitions of all other groups of railway owners the owners of almost unlimited mil --D'-'' Ni-N-c pNSe1iA d new CT III All erican railway history, the fact of which has but slowly reached the public. Direct developments of this freedom from fear of Hartman are the proposed extensions of the Rock Island and the St Louis & San Fran cisco lines to the coast
 Incidentally, the traffic arrange ment between the Santa Fe and the Frisco" for the through train ser vice mentioned serves to remind the people of central Arizona of the in- jury done to this section when MT. Hartman succeeded in bulldozing the Santa Fe interests to relinquish to him the Phoenix & Eastern line-a line which, if, completed as projected by Mir. Frank NJ. Murphy, would now serve both the Santa Fe and the St. Louis & San Francisco in transconti- mental traffic, and in reality be the best transcontinental route of all be- cause of the absence of grades.