The 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry performed well in the 1863 Tullahoma Campaign and led the march to relieve Burnside’s besieged soldiers at Knoxville, Tenn. Elsewhere, Confed­erate Brig. Gen. Robert Vance led a party foraging in force. Palmer and his men captured Vance, 300 cavalrymen and 20 wagons of wheat—a supply desperately needed by the starving Rebel forces. Following the 1864 Battle of Nash­ville, Palmer joined in the relentless pursuit of Gen­eral John Bell Hood and the Army of Tennessee.

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On January 14, 1865, at Red Hill, Ala., Palmer and his men attacked and defeated a larger force, capturing 200 Confederate soldiers and one fieldpiece without losing a man. Palmer was awarded the Medal of Honor for that action. A brevet brigadier general by April 1865, Palmer concluded his Union service in pursuit of Jefferson Davis as he fled Richmond.

The war was over, but Palmer was not without prospects. He was soon appointed managing director of the Kansas Pacific Railroad and oversaw its successful extension to Denver. While the backers of the much-heralded railroad connecting the East Coast to California were driving the famous gold spike in May 1869, Palmer was envisioning a north-south railroad joining Denver and Mexico City. His railroad would link the vast mineral wealth of the Rocky Moun­tains with the newly redrawn territories of New Mexico and Arizona. As part of his master plan, Palmer laid out the city of Colorado Springs, and in 1871 he built the new city’s first home. Within two years, the city had grown to 1,500 people, with a college (funded by Palmer), churches, schools, a newspaper, several banks and miles of irrigation ditches.

But the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, the lifeline of Palmer’s new empire of mining and forestry, was suddenly threatened by the legal minions of the Santa Fe Railroad. A bitter battle ended only when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Palmer in 1880. He turned to other endeavors.

In 1883 Palmer built a vast turreted Victorian luxury hotel that he called The Antlers (the lobby was decorated with his hunting trophies). When that structure burned down in 1898, he replaced it with an Italian Renaissance creation that would stand for 50 years, until its replacement by today’s modern Antlers Hilton.

With the fortune he had amassed, Palmer dedicated himself to charity, funding libraries, a tuberculosis sanatorium and a school for the deaf in Colorado Springs. In 1906 he shattered his spine in a riding accident and was confined to a wheelchair. He had never missed any of the reunions of the 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry, which were always held in Philadelphia. Unable to travel in 1907, he paid for all the expenses of the 208 surviving veterans to come to his vast Colorado home for a three-day reunion and celebration. A year later he was dead.

General William Palmer: soldier, spy, engineer, railroad pioneer, hunter, hotelier, philanthropist, leader of men and founder of cities. Like so many gallant soldiers of the Civil War era, he deserves to be remembered.

This article was written by Thomas P. Lowry and originally published in the September 2007 issue of Civil War Times Magazine. For more great articles, subscribe to Civil War Times magazine today!

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