J.T. SIMMS
History of Arizona, 1896

Among those who have been closely identified with the growth and 
prosperity of Arizona Territory is J.T. Simms, a man well and 
favorably known throughout its length and breadth.  Seldom has a 
life been crowded with so much incident and adventure.  The record 
of it reads more like a romance than the story of the life of a 
man of the present generation.  

Mr. Simms is a native of that grand old mother of States and 
statesmen, Virginia, his birth occurring in Lewis County in 
1833.  His father was a farmer, he assisted on the farm after 
leaving school, until seventeen years old, when he secured a 
position in a country store, owned by George A. Jackson at the 
headwaters of the West Fork of the Monongahela River. In a few 
months he was given entire charge of the business, the proprietor 
doing the buying, but the latter becoming ill, was obliged to 
sell the business and our subject was out of employment.  He 
spent some time traveling in the East, and then decided to go 
to Chicago which at that time had a population of about 50,000.  
The houses at that time were built on the level of the prairie, 
but many of them were being raised, and Mr. Simms remembers that 
Lake Street was being graded and raised several feet.  This was 
in 1853.

From Chicago he traveled through the Northwest for several years 
selling agricultural implements. In 1856 or 1857 he engaged in 
merchandising on his own account, and continued this until 
January, 1859.  He then sold out and went with a party to Brazil, 
South America to build the Dom Pedro Railroad across the Serra Do 
Mar (Mountains of the Sea.)  He took passage on the good ship 
Banshall, which was engaged in the coffee and flour trade between 
Baltimore and Rio Janeiro, and although the vessel experienced 
two severe storms, and when near the equator was encamped for a 
week, he after a voyage of forty seven days, reached his 
destination.  The vessel entered the harbor of Rio Janeiro at 
about nine o'clock at night and Mr. Simms says he will always 
remember the grand view by gas light of the largest city south 
of the equator.  When the health officer came on board the next 
morning and told them that the death rate from yellow fever was 
two hundred a day, Mr. Simms and his companions gathered up 
their belongings and left for the mountains, where they would 
be safe as soon as possible.  The road had been built from Rio 
Janeiro to the foot of the mountain and the section they were 
to build, although only ten miles, was very heavy work, as 
there were thirteen tunnels, from six hundred feet to one and 
a half miles each.  After four months experience as bookkeeper, 
timekeeper, storekeeper and assistant superintendent for the 
Company, Mr. Simms with another Virginian (a railroad man) 
secured a contract to build one mile of the railroad on which 
were two tunnels and very heavy outside work.  The road passed 
through a dense forest populated with tigers, monkeys, boa 
constructors and other animals.  After finishing the work with 
profit to themselves, Mr. Simms and his companions secured a 
contract on the extension of the road through the great coffee 
plantations and after finishing that, in 1862, secured a large 
contract on the Santos and San Paulo Railroad, three hundred 
miles south of Rio Janeiro.

Mr. Simms was in charge of from one hundred to three hundred men, 
consisting of Portuguese, Spaniards, Brazilians, Africans and 
other nationalities, from July 1859 to September 1864, and after 
settling up the business, left Rio Janeiro December 10, 1864.

He took passage on the royal mail steamship "Parana" for 
Southhampton.  The experiences and incidents connected with his 
six years residence in South American if written up, would make 
most interesting reading for railroad men at least.  Mr. Simms 
ridicules the hot weather of Phoenix and says that the night 
before he left Rio Janeiro, December 9, 1864, at ten o'clock 
the thermometer stood at 110 degrees. 

After a passage of twenty days, during which time they stopped 
at Bahia, Pernambuco, and the Canary Islands, for coal, the 
vessel reached Southampton, England and the same day Mr. Simms 
went to London.  The voyage was without incident except that 
they got in the path of a terrible hurricane, which capsized 
twenty ships and barges in the Tagus River at Lisbon.  During 
this storm the waves reached forty feet in height, as estimated 
by the officers of the "Parana."  Out of eighty passengers, Mr. 
Simms was the only one able to eat an English Christmas dinner, 
the others being very seasick.

After viewing the wonderful sights of London, Mr. Simms made a 
tour of the Continent, and then returned to his native land, 
reaching America before the end of the year, 1865.  Having 
acquired a knowledge of railroad building and liking it better 
than any other business he was soon at work in the Western 
States. In 1878 he directed his course Southwest and his first 
contract was in the Grand Canyon of the Arkansas River, west of 
Canyon City, Colorado.  The road was being built by the Santa 
Fe Railwad on account of a prior right of way.  The U.S. Court, 
in a decision handed down in July 1879, awarded the road from 
Canyon City to Leadville, then nearly completed to the Denver 
and Rio Grande Company, they paying the cost of the building.  
Mr. Simms secured a contract with the Santa Fe Company and 
continued with that company, doing a great deal of the heavy 
work to El Paso until the work was completed.  From there he 
went to the Atlantic and Pacific in 1881 and built eleven 
miles of railroad, including one tunnel from near Williams 
to Fairview.  The scarcity of water was a great hindrance there 
and for five months it cost $125 a day to haul water for the 
force engaged in building this road.

From there Mr. Simms went to Lordsburg and Clifton Railroad where 
he built four tunnels and had other work on the road.  His last 
contract was the Arizona Canal.  In 1887 he retired from the 
business for good.  When on his way to the Atlantic and Pacific 
Railroad in 1887 Mr. Simms passed through Phoenix and was so 
impressed with the Salt River Valley that he determined to make 
his home there.  He has never regretted settling in this lovely 
spot and he believes there is a great future for this territory.