Early in 1870, Judge Levi Parsons, head of the Union Pacific Southern Branch, announced plans to be the first railroad to reach the Indian Territory bordering Kansas in competition with the Missouri River, Fort Scott and Gulf Railroad, known as the Border Tier. Because only one railroad would be allowed to build through the territory, the Union Pacific Southern Branch was renamed the Missouri-Kansas-Texas, or MKT, also called the Katy, and Col. Bob Stevens was appointed general manager while John Scullin served as foreman of the railroad crews. Although the Border Tier held a sizeable lead, the Katy crews worked through rainy, flooded conditions under Stevens and Scullin and pulled ahead, crossing into the Indian Territory in June 1870 to narrowly win the race. Several years later, Bob Greenwell, a former Civil War guerrilla and adopted Quapaw, said the Katy had paid him to disrupt the Border Tier's efforts in 1870 by misleading a survey crew with an old border line, helping prompt the firing of some workers whom the Katy then hired, and assisting in a prematurely staged celebration that delayed the rival railroad further.