SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD

The Southern Pacific Railroad first laid track in Glamis en route east to Yuma.  Many towns emerged along the railroad to supply water for the locomotives and repair track, such as Ogilby and Glamis.  Many of the houses that were built in Glamis at the time were built by the Southern Pacific and painted yellow for the railroad section workers and their families.  No houses are left due to the modernization of the railroad.

1940 POSTMASTER MAIL DELIVERY

Carol Hales Allen arrived in the town of Glamis in 1940 where she taught the children of the railroad crews.  During this time, she was also the Glamis Postmaster. Another interesting note is that she was Postmaster during the days Pattons Army was training out in the surrounding deserts.

The following is from Carol Hales Allen:
“I would put all the mail in a mail bag and hook it up on a crane.  The train would come through and swing a mechanical arm out of the mail car door and catch it.  Then they’d pitch out the sack of mail for Glamis.  They did that twice a day for a while.”

Emory Todd arrived in Glamis in 1933, and bought 80 acres from Paul Lowe, owner of the Gold Diggers Club.  Mr. Todd added to the memories: “They’d always just throw the mail sack out and it would land some place.  The train never stopped or slowed down, it would just keep on going and that arm from the mail car would catch the sack that was hanging there and bring it in.  Sometimes something goes wrong, and I’ve been there when we’d be going up and down the tracks picking up letters.  Somehow the sack got torn open and the mail would be all over.”

Carol continued:  “That was quite an experience for me.  I’d never seen it done before I had it to do in Glamis.  When the Army was there for desert training, the soldiers would bring their mail into the Post Office and it would go right out on the next train.  Their own mail system took so long!”

Mr. Todd also added some interesting information regarding the railroad before it was modernized, and the workers who lived and worked full time for the railroad.  “At the time they had a section gang that went West from Ogilby and a crew that went East of Glamis halfway to Ogilby.  At Ogilby it was the same way.  There was a section gang that went each way and probably six or eight men on each crew.”

When the conversation changed, Emory Todd began to tell of stories that many people would find hard to believe.  When the mention of a stage coach came up, Mr. Todd chimed in, “Not a passenger stage coach but a mule team freight road.  They hauled freight back and forth by that road.  You can still see the old road about ten miles after you turn off the black-top coming here.  You can still see wagon tracks, heavy loads of freight left tracks plainly visible.  Glamis was homesteaded many years ago.  You see, they put the Southern Pacific through in 1877, and there are little markers in the cemetery in Glamis showing that somebody was buried there in 1878, so it took them a year to lay track that far.”

 

 

Ogilby was a well known town on most maps. 
It had housing for railroad personnel along with
the American Girl (gold) and Tumco (tungsten) mines nearby.
It also had two grocery stores and a Post Office. 
The Ogilby stop of the Southern Pacific was a large depot. 
In 1932, the depot burned to the ground. 
Water was so scarce that the locals could do nothing but watch it burn.