The Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railway was meant to run from Kansas City to the Pacific at Topolobampo, and it never got there. The Santa Fe bought what was left of it in 1928, and in 1930 it closed the last gap in Texas: running rights over another company's track from Alpine to Paisano Pass, then seventy two miles of new line of its own down to Presidio, and a bridge over the Rio Grande to meet the Mexican railway at Ojinaga. For the first time the Big Bend had a rail connection into the interior of Mexico, and Presidio had a reason to be something more than a river crossing.
The line survived by changing hands. Texas bought it in 2001 and leased the operation out, and the South Orient now runs about three hundred and ninety miles from the border through San Angelo. The bridge did not survive as well. The span south of the levee burned on 29 February 2008 and the span north of it burned on 1 March 2009, cutting the connection the whole line had been built for.
Rebuilding began in 2018 and the crossing was reconstructed in steel by May 2021. An international freight crossing also needs a customs inspection station, and the thirty three million dollar facility at Presidio, let for construction in 2024, has taken longer than the bridge did. As of late 2026 no train has crossed since the fire: the railroad ends at a finished bridge waiting on a building.
Getting there
29.5431, -104.3778
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
Whistlestop tells you this story automatically when you drive past. No searching, no tapping, nothing to ask.
