Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, The Amarillo Story

The Santa Fe ran its plains lines in Texas through a subsidiary based here. Chartered in 1886 as the Southern Kansas Railway Company of Texas, it moved its principal office from Fort Worth to Panhandle City in 1889 and to Amarillo on November 9, 1899, and took the name Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway in 1914. By the end of 1933 it operated 1,879 miles, from the Panhandle and South Plains to a line across the Trans-Pecos to Presidio. Its offices filled a fourteen-story building opened in 1930, and it was merged into the parent company in 1965.

What the plaque says

Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, The Amarillo Story Construction of a railroad across the Panhandle led to the founding of Amarillo as County Seat of Potter County, Aug. 30, 1887. For the ensuing ten years, Amarillo had a monopoly on trade from the South plains, and was the nation's largest rural cattle shipping point, 1892-97. But in 1898 its trade was threatened and the city's very existence jeopardized when it appeared that the (Santa Fe sponsored) Pecos Valley & North Eastern Railway, to be built to Roswell, N.M. (220 mi. SW), might make junction with the Santa Fe at Washburn (15 mi. SE), cutting off ready access to the South plains. The Santa Fe, however, responded to requests from the citizens to make Amarillo the terminus of the new line. The Santa Fe acquired the Pecos Valley & North Eastern in 1899 and moved headquarters from Panhandle (30 mi. NE) to Amarillo. In 1908 the Santa Fe extended its main line here from Panhandle and built a link from Texico, N.M., to Belen, N.M., making Amarillo a major point on the transcontinental line. These measures, together with construction of branch lines, contributed vitally to making Amarillo the commercial center of the High Plains. (1973)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Route 66 Sixth Street Historic District — 1.7 mi
  Thirteen blocks of Amarillo's streetcar suburb that Route 66 turned into a roadside strip, from the 1922 Nat to Texaco, Phillips and Dutch Mill stations, now shops and bars.
• Helium Centennial Time Columns Monument — 4.3 mi
  Four sealed time capsules raised in Amarillo in 1968 for helium's centennial, in the city that for years produced almost all the world's commercial helium from the Cliffside field.
• Cadillac Ranch — 8.5 mi
  Ten Cadillacs from 1949 to 1963 planted nose down in a pasture west of Amarillo by the Ant Farm collective in 1974, on private land where visitors are let in to paint them.
• Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum — 16 mi
  The Panhandle's great collection, some two million objects behind a 1933 Art Deco hall carved with cattle brands, closed to the public since March 2025 over fire-safety violations.

More markers nearby

• Site of Significant Archaeological Find, American Mammoths — steps away
• Polk Street Schools — 0.2 mi
• Potter County, Establishing of — 0.3 mi
• Potter County — 0.3 mi