The Beginning

Albert Kimsey Owen

The Pacific Colony that settled on Topolobampo Bay in Sinaloa, Mexico was established by Colonel Albert Kimsey Owen (1847-1916). He was born in Chester, Pennsylvania to Harriet Maffit Owen, who died at his birth, and Dr. Joshua Owen, who came from strict Quaker roots. As a young adult he served in the Union Army and was a civil engineer, often surveying lands for future projects. During his trip to survey Topolobampo Bay, Owen decided it would be the perfect site in which to begin building a transcontinental railroad that would connect passage to Mexico the United States, and would hopefully become a international trading center. To reach this endeavor in building the railroad he created multiple corporations to fund and manage the project: starting with the Texas, Topolobampo, and Pacific Railroad and Telegraph Company; which became the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railroad; then the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railway; and finally becoming the Kansas City, Oklahoma, and Pacific Railway Company.

At the destination of this transcontinental railroad would be Topolobampo Bay, which would become the site for Owen’s utopian ideals of co-operation that he describes in Integral Co-Operation, Integral Co-Operation at Work, I Dream of an Ideal City, and various pamphlets on the topic. The colony, referred to as both the Pacific Colony and simply Topolobampo, would be a part of Owen’s Credit Foncier Company of Sinaloa which ensures that those who wished to join the colony would become shareholders within the railroad companies. It was Owen’s plan that a successful company needed to be run as a business (Integral Co-Operation 31), and the business of the Credit Foncier of Sinaloa would center around the railroad.

Integral Co-Operation

“True living is not thinking how to act, but acting what we dare think” (quoted by Albert Owen in Integral Co-Operation). The colony that Owen established on the habor of Topolobampo Bay not only became a physical settlement for people who wished to move towards a form of socialism and away from the capitalism of the United States, Pacific Colony also became the practical application of a utopian vision. This vision can be seen in Owen’s works such as Integral Co-Operation in which Owen describes how people should live cooperatively with one another rather than competitively (6), that the foundation of any community should be the home (28), and how there should be interdependence among people rather than independence (11). Owen also details how the establishment of the Credit Foncier of Sinaloa within Topolobampo Bay would meet the ideal requirements of a successful community because the members of the community would have to work together - having both a share in the railroad company and having to work for the company -, and that each person in the colony would have a home. He declares, that because of the practical application of co-operation ideals, Pacific Colony is “designed to meet the present and future requirements of a great commercial, manufacturing and agricultural commonwealth” (26).

Integral Co-Operation is Owen’s attempt and hope to form a perfect society, despite the fact perfection itself can never be reached. Yet, in Plato’s Republic, Plato asks Socrates whether it is pointless to imagine a perfect society, all the while knowing that it can never be put into the real world, and as a response Socrates explains that it is the critical thought of reaching towards something better, that has purpose. Topolobampo, by this understanding, was not just a mere thought of ideals aiming towards perfection, but rather a physical attempt to reach those ideals, however improbable they may have been.

Topolobampo Bay

Oscar Wilde once wrote “A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing” (The Soul of Man Under Socialism), and when Albert K. Owen first saw the harbor of Topolobampo bay, he saw it as the shore in which utopian ideals could land and take shape. The first time he happened upon the harbor, he was surveying the area as possible site for a railroad, and stated it was the “most picturesque and most desirable harbor on the Pacific and Gulf coast of northeastern Mexico” (Cat’s Paw 13). The beauty that captivated Owen led him to believe that Topolobampo Bay would be the perfect place in which to establish the destination for the transcontinental railroad that he dreamed to build, and to set up the colony that would become the practical application of his Integral Co-Operation. Then, on Nov. 17, 1886, the first members of the Pacific Colony settled on Topolobampo Bay and began to project of establishing their practical utopia.

However, utopias themselves can either cause hope or alarm (Sargent Introduction), depending on the perspective of those that look upon it. As soon as the colony came into being it became the essence of both hope and hopelessness, for as Sargent states, utopias are always met with strife in their attempt to move their dream to reality because their dreams are incompatible with the imposition of their dream (introduction).