By SAM ACHESON

FORNEY, across the Kaufman County line from Dallas, as well as $26,000,000 Lake Forney now nearing completion by the City of Dallas on the East Fork of the Trinity, perpetuates the name of a once Pennsylvania newspaper editor and politician.

He was a prime factor almost a century ago in altering the destiny of Dallas and other North Texas communities by the construction of pioneer railroads to serve them.

This now largely forgotten figure was Col. John W. Forney, who was saluted on his first and only visit to Dallas on June 19, 1872, as "the famed editor of the Philadelphia Press." But he was doubly welcomed as "an original corporator and a director" of the then new Texas & Pacific Railway.

It was the rail line already completed westward from Shreveport through Marshall to Longview which some 14 months later would - if all went well - become Dallas' second railroad connection. With its crossing of the assured north-south line of the Houston & Texas Central, it would spark the takeoff of Dallas from frontier village to modern metropolis.

Col. Forney arrived in Dallas as one of a party of eight railroad officials at the end of a 3-day journey on the El Paso stage line from Longview. They had spent the first night at Tyler, the second at Kaufman.

Heading the party was Col. Thomas A. Scott, also of Philadelphia, who was then president of the Texas & Pacific as well as the great Pennsylvania Railroad system. Much interest also centered on another member of the party, Gen. G.M. Dodge of Iowa, the renowned chief engineer of the Union Pacific, first transcontinental rail line to be opened, who now held the same position with the Texas & Pacific.

It was his job to locate the route through Texas to its projected terminus at San Diego, Calif.

June 19, 1872, was described by Dallas' pioneer newspaper, the Weekly Herald, as "a marked day on the calendar." It was so considered by Dallas business and civic leaders, for they knew it was the moment when the deal to get this all-important second rail line for their city would be clinched, or lost.

As Col. Forney was to report in his own Philadelphia Press some weeks later, the party rode into Dallas to be met by "our friends in waiting" and to be "regaled in the evening by a serenade and a pleasant interchange of compliments." The scene was the Crutchfield House, the 2-story, frame building on the west side of the courthouse square, then the leading hotel of Dallas.

The city's "power structure" in 1872 was on hand in full force to greet the party. Chief spokesman was Col. John C. McCoy, then as later the Nester of the Dallas bar. Flanking him were such leaders as District Judge Nat M. Buford, Gen. John J. Good and the up-and-coming young banker, Capt. W.H. Gaston. Mayor Henry S. Ervay was present to do the honors as ceremonial head of the city.

Former Gov. James W. Throckmorton, the biggest political figure of North Texas and an original backer of a Southern transcontinental railroad across his part of the state, came from his home in McKinney to welcome the visitors. He would accompany them on to Fort Worth, the end of the present reconnaissance trip over the proposed route through Texas.

When the music and compliments subsided, rail officials and Dallas leaders went into a huddle on the serious business of the visit.

"Col. Scott made his arrangements with the people of Dallas," Forney reported in his Philadelphia Press some weeks later. "His proposition was accepted by the authorities."

The agreement reached at the Crutchfield House included the voting of $100,000 in the City of Dallas bonds as a subsidy, plus the donation of land for a depot and right of way through the city to its western limits on the Trinity River. Capt. Gaston announced his gift of land for the depot and the right of way through his 400 acres from the eastern edge of Dallas.

The head of the railroad was also told that for the one mile from the depot to the river, the city would grant right of way on one of its main streets, Burleson Avenue (named for Gen. Edward Burleson of Texas Revolutionary fame). The city would also throw in a change of the name of Burleson to Pacific Avenue as lagniappe.

That the committee headed by Col. McCoy was fully able to speak for Dallas "authorities" is seen in the fact that Forney could announce in Philadelphia in August that "their action has since been ratified without a dissenting vote by the people" of Dallas.

Other tactics had been used by Dallas leaders the year before to make certain that the T&P line would run through their town. Until then it had looked as if the trans-Texas route would lie some 35 to 50 miles south of Dallas on the Longview-Tyler-Athens-Hillsboro axis, with the crucial crossing of the H&TC at Corsicana.

This power play, carried out in the Legislature at Austin, was in connection with an act of March 1, 1871, granting $6,000,000 in state lands, or in state bonds, to the two Texas-chartered subsidiaries of the Texas & Pacific. One was the line from Marshal and Longview, the other from Texarkana to Sherman, which were to meet at Fort Worth and continue westward as a single line.

It was then that Dallas' Rep. John W. Lane had inserted his famous rider in the bill, by which the main line of the T&P was required to cross the H&TC within "one mile of Browder Springs" - the otherwise unidentified source of Dallas' water supply in present City Park.

When this joker was revealed, the railroad company made no objection, for its backers had no idea of forgoing the $6,000,000 subsidy from the state to overcome it. But the rail company still had some bargaining leverage left: Gen. Dodge could have located the line just west of the river and stayed within the 1-mile limit of Browder Springs. Thus in June, 1872, the Dallas committee and Col. Scott got together on the purely Dallas "arrangements."

Col. Forney and others in the rail party returned east by train from Dallas by way of Houston, Galveston and New Orleans. They boarded the H&TC train at the uncompleted bridge of the Trinity seven miles south of Dallas, then the terminus of rail traffic.

By July 16, 1872, the H&TC was able to run its first train into Dallas, the great event being celebrated that day by an enormous outpouring of people from all parts o Dallas and adjoining counties gathered at a barbecue held in a grove near the old fairgrounds (near present Baylor Hospital).

Within a few months construction was started on the T&P between Longview and Dallas. The work was done, though, from Dallas eastward, so that the 31 miles from Dallas to the new Town of Terrell was placed in operation first. The new town was named for R. S. Terrell, an old citizen of Kaufman County.

It was not until midsummer of 1873 that work on the gap between Terrell and Longview was accepted from the contractors, and the first through train from Shreveport, Marshall and Longview reached Dallas on Aug. 15.

Mesquite (or Mezquite, as it was erroneously billed at times) was the only other town in Dallas County to be served by a station on the T&P in the first year after its arrival. Col. Forney, who died in 1881, may never have heard of the town to rise in Kaufman County that would be named in honor of him.

Note: There are reports that John Forney did ride through Forney (then Brooklyn), but there is no way to verify it.