Heritage

The Kansas Pacific Railroad was berthed in 1855 by an act of Congress, and while it did not gain the name "Kansas Pacific" until 1869, it was the remnants of the Leavenworth, Pawnee & Western railroad, and was created in order to provide another transcontinental route further south of the already-existing Union Pacific route. While it was only intended to extend to Fort Riley from Kansas City, lobbying from citizens west all the way to Denver helped push it further west to Junction City (KS), where a roundhouse was built; later, it pushed to Salina, when a new act of Congress authorized a secondary division to form, allowing the line to push all the way to Kit Carson, and then Denver, Colorado.

Later, upon the creation of the secondary division, which met up with Denver Pacific's mainline to the coast, the two were consolidated by investor Jay Gould into Union Pacific, and the company adopted the name as Union Pacific. Unlike Union Pacific's transcontinental route, the Kansas Pacific Overland Route was the only true transcontinental line, as the Union Pacific required passengers to disembark at Council Bluffs, IA, and take a boat across the Missouri River, to Omaha, NE, and resume on another train to the coast.

Like the Union Pacific, huge land grants were given to the Kansas Pacific by Congress, which extended nearly 80 miles on either side of the mainline.

To read the real history (not just an abbreviated one), go to Wikipedia's version Here.

In this photo, a pair of UP C44ACs head westbound down the KP mainline near Yocemento, KS. Note that most of the sections of the KP line west of Salina are the original route laid in the 1860s.