This completed Atchison’s systematic extensions before 1889. From a local road in Kansas it had become a through route, taking freight over its own rails from Chicago to Galveston and to the Pacific coast. But especially in the latter eighties competition had become keen; and to its strategic extensions Atchison was obliged to add competitive building on an enormous scale. Of the 7000 miles in 1888, over 2700 had been added since January, 1886, and had been built, not to tap new sources of traffic, but to defend what was thought to be Atchison’s rightful territory by means of a desperate war of rates. “About three or four years ago,” said a competent observer, “a mania seized three great corporations (Atchison, Missouri Pacific, and Rock Island) to gridiron Kansas with railroad iron, and each tried hard to see which could cover the most ground, without regard to the character of the ground, the result [being that] railroads were built where they would not be required for ten years to come.”[414] Such roads could not be expected to pay, and in fact did not. Even in the case of better planned extensions, the lines had to be built in an unopened territory, the traffic of which had yet to be developed. In Indian Territory, Oklahoma, and Arizona, the bulk of the country had less than two inhabitants to the square mile; in New Mexico and Lower California only one-half of the area was more thickly settled; and it was largely from this southwestern corner that local traffic for the Atchison had to be built up.