Brief by Central Staff
Transportation – June 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine
The May edition of Atlantic Monthly contained a lot of good writing, along with a laudatory piece about Colorado’s own robber baron, Phil Anschutz. Anschutz started in oil, and later moved on to telecommunications – he’s a major stockholder in Qwest.
He’s also the reason that trains don’t come through here any more. The billionaire bought control of the Denver & Rio Grande Western about 20 years ago, then merged it with the Southern Pacific Railroad. In 1996, he sold the Southern Pacific to the Union Pacific. He came out about a billion dollars ahead, and the UP halted service on our line in 1997.
According to the Atlantic, “Among his [Anschutz’s] acquisitions was a small Colorado railroad company, which he later used in a leveraged buyout of the much larger Southern Pacific Railroad.”
In national terms, the D&RGW might have been a relatively small railroad based in Colorado. But it wasn’t “a small Colorado railroad” — it was the largest railroad in Colorado, with more track miles than any other line.
The article did contain an item which inspires some speculation. The author was unable to interview Anschutz, but did talk to his spokesman, Jim Monaghan, “an avuncular man in his fifties” with a “potbelly, checkered shirt, and graying whiskers.”
Keep that in mind as we turn back to 1996, when governors were lining up for or against the UP-SP merger. Texas Gov. George W. Bush came out against it. Even though the merger would cost Colorado, our Gov. Roy Romer came out for it.
And who was the Romer adviser who convinced him to support the merger?
None other than Jim Monaghan.
Monaghan persuaded Romer to support the merger that would make Anschutz a billion dollars, then went to work for Anschutz? Nice work if you can get it, we guess.
