Midland & Northwestern Railroad
Midland, Midland County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Standard gauge 66-mile line built by David Fasken, Sr., to carry cattle, ranch supplies, passengers. Operated 1916 to 1920 -- critical era of World War I and world starvation aftermath. Linked towns of Fasken, Florey, and Seminole with Texas & Pacific Railway at Midland. At first, operated with locomotive borrowed from T. & P. Train had to stop for pasture gates to be opened. Crew shot coyotes and rattlesnakes. In a breakdown, the passengers were fed, sheltered at Fasken. Work crew slept on the prairie. Floored out in 1920, M. & N. R. was abandoned. Roadbed still is visible.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built by rancher David Fasken to move cattle, supplies, and passengers, this 66-mile standard-gauge line ran from Midland out to the ranch towns of Fasken, Florey, and Seminole from 1916 to 1920. It was a rough-and-ready operation: trains stopped so crews could open pasture gates and shoot coyotes and rattlesnakes, and stranded passengers were sheltered at the ranch during breakdowns. Abandoned in 1920 after just four years, the railroad left a roadbed still visible across the West Texas prairie.
Why it matters
The short-lived Midland & Northwestern captures how private ranch railroads briefly stitched the remote West Texas plains into the national rail network during the World War I era.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The Midland & Northwestern belongs to a very particular moment on the West Texas plains — the years when the open range was giving way to the modern world, and a railroad, even a rough one, was the difference between isolation and connection. This is high, flat, dry country, where distance is the great enemy and the nearest market can be a punishing haul away. In 1916, a rail line running north out of Midland was a lifeline.
The timing matters. The line operated from 1916 to 1920 — squarely across the First World War and the hungry, disordered years that followed it. War drove up demand for beef and supplies, and a railroad that could move cattle to the national network was suddenly worth building even into thinly settled ranch country. The marker frames this as a critical era of war and world hunger, and that is exactly the pressure that made such a venture make sense.
And yet the setting never let anyone forget how raw it still was. This was frontier as a lived reality, not a memory — a place where a train might have to stop so someone could climb down and open a pasture gate before it could go on.
People & events
The railroad was the work of one man's ambition: David Fasken, Sr., a rancher who built the sixty-six-mile standard-gauge line to carry his cattle, his ranch supplies, and passengers. It linked the towns of Fasken, Florey, and Seminole to the Texas & Pacific Railway at Midland, tying a remote stretch of ranch country into the wider rail world.
The details the marker preserves are what make this line unforgettable. At first it ran on a locomotive borrowed from the T. & P. The train stopped for pasture gates to be opened. The crew shot coyotes and rattlesnakes from the line. When a breakdown stranded everyone, the passengers were fed and sheltered at Fasken while the work crew simply slept out on the open prairie. This was railroading stripped to its bones, improvised against the land.
It did not last. The marker says the line "floored out" in 1920 and was abandoned after just four years of service. Whatever combination of hard ground, thin traffic, and shifting fortunes undid it, the Midland & Northwestern burned bright and brief, and then the prairie began, slowly, to take it back.
Its place in the American story
The story of the American railroad is usually told through the giants — the transcontinental lines, the great trunk railroads that bound the coasts together. But the country was actually stitched together by hundreds of small feeder lines like this one, short-lived spurs that reached into places the big roads would never bother with. The Midland & Northwestern is a near-perfect specimen of that overlooked type.
It also captures a distinctly American pattern: private capital building public-seeming infrastructure to serve a single enterprise, then walking away when the numbers stopped working. A rancher built a railroad the way another man might build a road to his barn — only this barn was sixty-six miles off, and the road had a locomotive on it.
That it lasted only four years is not a footnote; it is the point. Across the West, the map is dotted with the ghosts of ventures that connected the frontier to the nation for a brief window and then vanished, leaving grades and roadbeds where trains once ran. These short lines were the capillaries of a growing country, and their rise and fall traces the settling of the land itself.
If you visit
This is West Texas in its most elemental form: enormous sky, flat horizon, and a wind that never quite quits. The marker notes that the roadbed is still visible, and that is the thing to look for — a low, straight ridge running across otherwise open ground, the kind of feature your eye slides past until you know what it is. Once you see the old grade, the whole vanished enterprise snaps into focus.
Stand there a moment and picture it: a borrowed engine, a train halting so a hand could swing open a pasture gate, the crew watching the brush for rattlesnakes. It is hard to imagine a mode of travel more different from the interstate that probably brought you here. That contrast is the reward of the visit.
This fits a road trip as a short, contemplative stop rather than a destination — a chance to trade the speed of the highway for a few minutes of imagining a slower, harder, stranger way of crossing the same country. Bring water, mind the heat and the sun, and give yourself over to the bigness of the place. The land here does most of the talking.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · David Fasken, Sr.
Themes & tags
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