3/31/04: In 1861 Albert Kinsey Owen, an American utopian dreamer, first conceived of the idea to construct a rail line between Topolobampo Bay in Sinaloa and Kansas City, Kansas. The route would shorten the existing rail route from San Francisco to Kansas City by more than 400 miles.
A contract with the Mexican government in 1863 was granted. When funds were not secured, the contract was given to Foster Higgins of the Rio Grande, Sierra Madre, and Pacific Railway Company. The Higgins company completed a line from Ciudad Juarez to Casas Grandes both in Chihuahua before giving up on the project.
Enrique Creel (the person whose name graces the Copper Canyon town of Creel) of the Kansas City, Mexico, and Orient Railway saw a potential for the rail line to prosper and finished a line to La Junta, Chihuahua from Casas Grandes between 1910-1914. The company also began the Ojinaga to Creel line passing through Chihuahua, but work was halted with start of the Mexican Revolution of 1914.
In 1928, the western route from Topolobampo to El Fuerte was finished, but there was still a gap of 161 miles between El Fuerte and Creel which was to be the most difficult terrain to construct the railway. After nationalizing the railroads in 1940, the government finally finished the line in 1961 almost exactly 100 years after Albert Kinsey Owen's grand idea.