MISSOURI-KANSAS-TEXAS RAILROAD. The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad Company (M-K-T or Katy), the first railroad to enter Texas from the north, began its corporate existence in 1865, when its earliest predecessor, the Union Pacific Railway Company, Southern Branch, was chartered by the State of Kansas to build from Fort Riley, Kansas, to the state's southern boundary. Levi P. Morton, Levi Parsons, August Belmont, J. Pierpont Morgan, George Denison, and John D. Rockefeller became interested in the road after the federal government announced that right-of-way through Indian Territory and a liberal bonus of land would be given to the railroad that first reached the Territory's northern border. Texas was also interested in the project. In 1866 the first legislature after the Civil Warqv passed a resolution recommending that Congress adopt means to insure the building of the Union Pacific, Southern Branch, through the state, as at that time none of Texas's railroads connected to those in other states. In 1870 the railway's name was changed to the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Railway Company, a change which defined both the company's strategic intent and its service area. The newly named railroad was intended to funnel business from Missouri, Kansas, and the north and east to a new rail route across Indian Territory to and through Texas. |