Railroaders' Nostalgia > Revisiting Boise City

Here’s a Tom Carlson shot taken in territory I worked into a couple of times in the summer of 1978. This is the one & only Boise City, OK. This particular area of our great country was once half-jokingly labeled as “…not the end of the world, but you can see it from here.” I can’t argue. A recent thread ( https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,4715333 ) by friend & fellow TO member ‘SD45X’ reminded me of an image I had scanned for another friend & fellow TO member ‘SKOChief’, which in turn reminded me of a thread I posted quite q while back (see the link below). By the way, it’s pronounced ‘Boyz’ City.

It was a long time ago in the first summer of my employment in Santa Fe train service. I had been completely furloughed out of Emporia, but the wheat rush was still going great guns out in the western part of the state and they needed switchmen. So I gratefully took assignment to the Dodge City switchman’s extra board, 225 miles away from home. I rented a boarding house room and called Dodge my new ‘home’ for a couple of months. Three separate times I was called off that extra board in “emergency” to work local trains out of Dodge City. Twice down to Boise City on 1581-82 and once out to Springfield, CO on 1591-92. On the first trip I wasn’t ready for the usual mind-numbing, looong layover of up to 24+ hours. But on the second trip to Boise City I was much better prepared to kill some of the brutal monotony I suffered through on that 1st trip. I was stocked with extra Kodachrome 64. After an initial nap I got cleaned up, got a bite and walked down to the RR tracks to spend time shooting whatever I could find. Take a look: ( https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?18,3262635,3262635#msg-3262635 ). I did quite a bit of hiking around to get my shots. And it was a good thing I did, because I’ve never been back to that vantage point for the end of the world since.

Fast forward to a brief visit during the Christmas holiday a year ago. My TO friend SKO Chief brought me a very interesting assortment of slides he’s been purchasing from different online sources. I scanned the lot for him, and told him that many of his slides would be great for posting here on TO. He agreed, and I’ve already posted quite a few. But when I scanned this AT&SF slide from Boise City I knew I had to give it a special RRer’s Nostalgia write up whenever I posted it…

1. AT&SF 2305 leads the Dodge City-bound local ENE out of town. Photo taken October 12, 1993 from the US hwy 412 overpass on the SE corner of Boise City, OK. You can just make out the pale yellow Boise City depot just to the right of that far elevator. I don’t know what Santa Fe was calling this train in ’93. But in this pic I have to say “…taint much changed” in the 15 years since I rode into town on local train 1581. And gratefully left again on 1582…
(Original Kodachrome slide by Tom Carlson, from the Daniel Archer collection)

Thanks for listening!
Lance Garrels
santafe199



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/24/19 08:51 by santafe199.

---

Always amazed how people live in these small towns in the Great Plains. I did some research on Boise City and the population of the town declined by 15% between 2000 and 2010.

Lance - thanks for posting this shot, and the stories that go with it.  Boise City is the county seat of Cimarron County, today the least populated county in Oklahoma.  It was in the center of the Dust Bowl, and was highlighted in a fine book, The Worst Hard Time, about the Dust Bowl and the people that lived through it.  The author, Timothy Egan, described the area as "claustrophobic in its immensity". 

For those interested in geographic trivia, Cimarron County, OK is the only county in the United States that borders four other states:  Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico and Texas.  It also has Oklahoma's highest point of elevation, on the Black Mesa, at 4,973 feet.   The population today is less than half of what it was in 1930, before the devastation of years of dust storms.  

Still looks the same sans the track the train is on and the depot is moved.....
Thanks for the look see:)

Posted from iPhone

Why did they take out the track on that leg of the wye?  I would think it would be a good idea to have a turning facility there.  So there is no longer a Dodge City - Boise City train?  Is there a Dodge City - Amarillo train that uses that other leg of the wye?   

CVR uses the south leg. Pull out and shove back to that farthest elevator on the right. BNSF pulled all facing point switches when they made the South loop.

Posted from iPhone

Well the thing that changed from 1978 to 1993 picture of the Boise City local is there is no way car on the end of the train.