Pasadena By Way of Santa Fe
Who doesn’t remember Johnny Mercer’s beloved song: The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe? You know, the one made famous by Judy Garland in the movie The Harvey Girls? Come on, you hipsters — isn’t it cool to dig that big band sound and old movies? Well, trust me, Mr. Mercers ode to the old railroad line was a hit in its day — it even won an Oscar for Best Original Song.
One of the largest railroad lines, the Santa Fe was the brainchild of the indomitable Cyrus K. Holliday. Commissioned in 1859 by Congress to connect Topeka, Kansas to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Though named for the New Mexican capital, the Santa Fe would never be able to directly serve the city, as the terrain was too difficult to blast through. Ah, the irony. Regardless, the Santa Fe’s tracks managed to reach Pueblo, Colorado in 1876. To compensate for the fact it took fifteen years to reach Colorado from Kansas, the railroad parceled the land granted to it and sold the parcels as homesteads. Not a bad idea: build towns that you will later serve. Note to self…
Without the wherewithal to fully capitalize on its innovative idea, the Santa Fe was a pioneer of interconnected freight services. The railroad owned a tugboat fleet and an airline (Santa Fe Skyway). This model allowed, in theory, Santa Fe to collect the revenues for all faces of freight delivery. When the railroad embraced passenger lines, they expanded their services with a bus line that delivered passengers to any number of locations.
Mind you, this isn’t the story of the Santa Fe, per se; its a story of how this massive railroad company infused a then-small town in California with a new vitality, one that is self-evident today. In the 1880s, no one seems to be sure exactly, the Santa Fe reached sleepy Pasadena. From that point on, the City of Roses became a resort destination for Midwesterner and Easterner visitors eager to escape the brutal winter.
Built within a stone’s throw of the Santa Fe station, the Hotel Green, in particular, would begin a boom in Pasadena motels and hotels that did not stop. As the tourists streamed in, Pasadena’s reputation as the Athens of the West was born. Now with a Beach Boys song and the spirit of Gene Autry and Roy Rogers infusing it, Pasadena remains something of a throwback to the glory years of California’s early statehood and the twilight of the once wild West.