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Curator's Corner Kansas-Pacific Railroad Lantern
Dogs bark and a screen door slams as 95-year-old Charles Schuler answers my phone call to his Fort Worth, Texas ranch. "This is Schuler," he says. "If you’re sellin’ something, you can just hang up right now." I identify myself, and assure Mr. Schuler that I don’t want to sell him anything. My call has to do with a special object that his friend had written to me about: a lantern used by Schuler’s grandfather, conductor on the first railroad to enter Denver in 1870. "Wonderful!" says Mr. Schuler, "I’ve been waitin’ to tell you that story, and to make sure that the lantern ends up in Colorado where it belongs." I cannot resist Mr. Schuler’s enthusiasm, and encourage him to tell me the whole story. According to Mr. Schuler, his grandfather, Thomas Burch, received the lantern as a gift upon his retirement from the Union Pacific Railroad. The lantern was manufactured in 1865, and its globe is etched with the name "Tom. Burch" in commemoration of his years as conductor on the Kansas-Pacific Railway, later subsumed by the Union Pacific.
The Union Pacific had bypassed Denver in its march toward the
West Coast. Instead, it chose a route through Wyoming. Realizing the
importance of railroads to Colorado, Denver boosters John Evans and
David Moffatt joined forces in 1868 to form the Denver-Pacific
Railroad. The Denver-based line turned to the Kansas-Pacific for a
means to build from Cheyenne to Denver as well as from Denver east
to meet the westward building rail from Kansas City |
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The articles in this section were published in the Colorado Historical Society's
monthly newsletter, Colorado History Now. |
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