Volume 15 , Issue 41

"The Orient" Available

This also from the Waynoka Historical Society and Sandie Olson, "There was a plan in the late 1800s to build the KCM&O Railroad (Kansas City, Mexico & Orient) from the eastern seaboard to the Gulf of Mexico where goods from New England could be shipped to the Orient. The KCM&O, later owned by the Santa Fe Railroad, operated for 60 years."

It was known as "The Orient." The line was built through a number of Northwest Oklahoma towns - Cherokee, Yewed, Carmen, Aline, Cleo Springs, Orienta, Fairview, Longdale, Canton, Oakwood - and many more on its way to the Gulf of Mexico. The first train reached Fairview on August 20, 1903.

"The Orient" is a beautifully illustrated 344 page book, written by former Waynokan Robert E. "Bob" Pounds, now deceased, and John B. McCall. It is loaded with photos, maps and information about the Orient Railroad.

In the introduction, McCall gives extensive credit to the research of Bob Pounds:

"This volume, in major degree, is the result of one man's research over more than a decade about things related to the Orient. Robert E. Pounds' interesting the Orient first awakened when he was a Special Agent for the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway in Waynoka, Oklahoma. In the course of his daily business, Robert often found himself traveling up and down what was - by then - an isolated branch line of the Santa Fe. He was taken by the leisurely pace of railroading he found along that remote line, such as the fact that in an age of radio talk, the Orient's operators in those quaint little depots yet relied on the morse code and telegraph wire of decades past. He became interested in the personal histories of employees who had come with the Orient to the Santa Fe when the bigger railroad absorbed it on the eve of the Great Depression. His oft-repeated comment, that "if something could go wrong with the Orient, it happened", was an indication of just how fascinated he had become with that railroad.

"Robert Pounds was in a good place to learn more about the Orient; his work not only took him along its lines but his leisure time began to coincide with Santa Fe's closing of locations where many of the old Orient records had been stored and from which were then being discarded. Given his position with the railroad, it was a simple matter for him to save much of this material from destruction. Because of his training as an investigative professional in law enforcement, he was able to locate artifacts from the Orient's history that had made their way into private hands. Many of those Pounds was able to borrow or purchase for his own growing archives about the railroad."

After Pounds' unexpected illness and death, his family requested that his material be published. The book is the result of the efforts of individuals and organizations who made it happen, and was published by the Santa Fe Railway Historical and Modeling Society.

The book is available at the Waynoka Museum Gift Shop at the Harvey House. For further information, call 580-824-1886 or 824-5871. [Sandie Olson (sandie.olson@gmail.com)]   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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