Panhandlers

A railroad brings prestige to a community. It may also bring prosperity by carrying to market what the community produces. So in 1912 the citizens of Forgan, at the entrance of the wheat-rich Oklahoma Panhandle, were glad when the Wichita Falls & Northwestern (now part of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas) chose their town for a terminus.-- And the folk of Beaver, the county seat seven miles to the south, were chagrined because railroadless Beaver was outdone. They pooled their wheat receipts, hired a teamster at $4 a day, graded the land by eye, started a railroad to Forgan. Before half of the seven miles was finished they found their capital gone.

Up in Hardtner, just across the Kansas line, lived two farmers, Jacob Achenbach and Ira B. Blackstock. When Hardtner had been left railroadless by the Missouri Pacific these two men had built a railroad to Kiowa. ten miles away. Their fame as railroad builders had spread. The farmers of Beaver called upon them for help. Soon the Beaver, Meade $ Englewood Railroad Co. had a train running. But profits were hard to get, and in 1918 Carl J. Turpin of Oklahoma City, an ex-railroader, was called in as general manager. He soon had things shipshape along the seven-mile right-of-way, cheerfully worked without salary. In 1924 the road was extended 20 mi. westward, its terminus called "Turpin." Two years later the B. M. & E. went farther west to Hooker where it crossed the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific tracks, then on to Hough. This gave it 65 mi. of track. Last year it pressed on another 40 mi. to reach the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe tracks at Keyes.

During this period of expansion Vice President Blackstock moved to Springfield, 111.; President Achenbach began to feel old. Railroads which had refused to enter the territory themselves began to want the B. M. & E. Last week its officials met in their small Oklahoma City office, completed a deal whereby M-K-T will get the road and equipment (three locomotives, 12 box cars, two section cars, two cabooses) for about $2,300,000. This, estimated 83-year-old President Achenbach, compares to a cost of $2,100,000, a profit of about $2,000 a mile.

--Forgan was founded by Frank Kell, then president of Wichita Falls & Northwestern. The road had banking connections with Chicago's famed Forgan family, in whose honor the town was named.

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