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BANCROFT 
 LIBRARY 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE 
 
 OF 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
l< ''^^ —A^ CH^t 
 
 HISTORY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD 
 
 ISSUED BY THE UNION PACIFIC RAIL- 
 ROAD ON THE OCCASION OF THE 
 CELEBRATION AT OGDEN. UTAH. MAY 
 !Oth. 1919, IN COMMEMORATION OF 
 THE 50th anniversary OF THE 
 DRIVING OF THE GOLDEN SPIKE 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD 
 
 HE purpose of this paper is to review briefly the 
 history of the Union Pacific Railroad. The nar- 
 rative has been confined to the simplest recital of 
 events, and dates surrounding them, with passing 
 mention of a few prominent characters. 
 
 Limitation of space has made it necessary to exclude from 
 these pages deserved mention of many thrilling events of 
 early frontier experiences, giving only such retrospection as 
 will quickly recall the circumstances prompting the promotion 
 of the Pacific railways; dealing as impressionably as we are 
 able with the construction, completion and opening of the 
 line for business. 
 
 It is, therefore, not a treatise but a paper, not a polar, 
 solar glare, but a flash-light, not a bridge, but the first stepping- 
 stone ; more concise than complete, more prosaic than scintil- 
 lating, more of the why than the what; — it is not the sum but 
 the substance of what should first be known. 
 
 In its preparation, we have been taken directly and 
 appreciably to the source of historic truths by reference to 
 the research of others who have written carefully and interest- 
 ingly on this subject, and have been helped by privileged 
 access to the private papers and bound volumes that have 
 been preserved and published, for which grateful acknowledg- 
 ment is hereby made. 
 
 For description of ''The Great Railroad Wedding — 
 Driving the Golden Spike/' see Appendix ''D/' page 39. 
 
6 9 q^s" 
 
 BANCROn 
 LIBRARY 
 
 HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 
 
 THE ''Louisiana Purchase'* of 1803 seems to have been the first 
 awakening of the people of that day to the importance of the great 
 Trans-Mississippi country. An investment of fifteen milUon dollars 
 (the price paid the French Government), had brought them to a feeling 
 of direct personal interest in this va^t, unexplored territory. 
 
 Under the encouragement of President Jefferson, and the authority 
 of Congress, the Lewis & Clark Expedition was authorized and 
 made ready in the spring of 1804. The alluring reports made on their 
 return, two years later, prompted public men, press-writers and adven- 
 turers to further exploitation of this "frontier." 
 
 Very soon the cupidity of men in commercial life — always res- 
 ponsive — was touched; John Jacob Astor associated with Wilson Price 
 Hunt and Donald McKenzie in a fur-trading expedition, called the 
 "Pacific Fur Company." This Astor party left Montreal on July 15, 
 1810, proceeding up the Ottawa River, via Lake Huron, to Mackinaw, 
 where Ramsey Crooks, the future president of the American Fur Trad- 
 ing Company, joined them. Their route took them to Green Bay, 
 down the Fox River and across to the Wisconsin, down t, via Prairie 
 du Chien and the Mississippi River, to St. Louis, where they were 
 joined by Robert McClellan, a business partner of Crooks*, and by John 
 Day. Their party of about sixty people, then complete, moved up the 
 Missouri River to "The Land of the Dakotas" ; thence westward over- 
 land to a tidewater terminal called Astoria, founded by Duncan 
 McDougal, on April 12, 181 1. 
 
 McDougal had sailed from New York with Captain Jonathan Thorne, 
 commander of the "unfortunate Tonquin," on September 8, 1810. 
 After a voyage of more than twelve thousand miles around Cape Horn, 
 they arrived at the mouth of the Columbia River nine months ahead 
 of the McKenzie branch of the overland party, which did not reach 
 Astoria until January 18, 1812; Hunt and his division, on February 
 15, 1812; the belated party of John Day and Ramsey Crooks brought 
 up the rear on May 11, 1812, after a bitter experience, privation, suffer- 
 ing and banditti abuse. f-f frC2^ 
 
 While a band of French Canadians had, during the closing years of 
 the eighteenth century, preceded westward as far as the foot hills of 
 the Rockies, the assertion is still safe, we think, that these returning 
 "Astors" made the first careful observations of the Platte Valley Route 
 
4 HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 
 
 during the spring of 1813, having traversed the Platte River district 
 from eastern Wyoming through to Plattsmouth, on the Missouri River. 
 After the Astors came Alexander Henry; then Major Long, with his 
 ''scientists," who left Kanesville (Council Bluffs), in June, 1820, and 
 pushed through to the mountains. Comes now Captain Bonneville, 
 rescued from the "wide-spread, insatiable maw of oblivion" by the facile 
 pen of one of our country's greatest historians, Washington Irving, who 
 was resourceful enough to build up a volume concerning this profitless 
 and unimportant expedition, dealing with it more generously and in- 
 geniously than will be ever attempted again, f for Bonneville's trip was 
 fifteen years too late to discover anything new or particularly interesting 
 about the Rocky Mountain region. Long since, the country had been 
 conquered and occupied by the Pacific Fur Company, the American Fur 
 Company and the Missouri, Rocky Mountain and Hudson Bay Fur 
 Companies, who had established themselves advantageously over its 
 richest fur furnishing fields; they penetrated to the Salt Lake Valley, and 
 in 1826, Jedediah S. Smith, prominent in the western affairs of the 
 Rocky Mountain Fur Company of St. Louis, had already connected the 
 ''Oregon Trail" with the Salt Lake Route via the Colorado River, across 
 the Mojave Desert to the lower coast, and later, with a more direct route 
 to San Francisco across the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Then came Amer- 
 ica's most observing pathfinder, John C. Fremont, in 1842. All of these 
 attracted the country's further attention to the Central Railway route, 
 the national highway which serves the present and commemorates the 
 past. 
 
 The hardships, dangers and distances of these expeditions reminded 
 the people of the East again of the remoteness of their new purchase, 
 the circuitousness of inland waterways, and turned their thoughts to 
 some sort of transcontinental transportation. 
 
 Travelers and traders of the earlier years of the old century had been 
 in search of an easier pass through the mountain region, somewhere 
 south of the Lewis & Clark trail of 1804-5. Andrew Henry and William 
 H. Ashley, founders of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, at St. Louis, 
 were the first to carry their fur trading operations to the Pacific Coast. 
 
 To William H. Ashley and his lieutenant, Entienne Provost, stands 
 unmistakably the credit of the discovery of a southern pass, later known 
 as the "South Pass," in the fall and winter of 1823-4, while exploring 
 along the Sweetwater Trail. It opened the Continental Divide, near the 
 source of the Sweetwater River in Fremont County, western Wyoming; 
 it marked the opening of, and made permanent, the mountain crossing 
 
 fWhy Washington Irving should have paused so long at this Bonneville shrine 
 is beyond the discernment of his present-day readers. 
 
HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 5 
 
 route of the famous/'Oregon Trail." It has been to the Rocky Mountain 
 country all that the Cumberland Gap ever meant to the people east of 
 the Alleghenies. 
 
 So much for the South Pass Route, which attracted the locating 
 parties of the Union Pacific Railroad Company in later years. 
 
 With the Oregon controversy over, and its boundary dispute with 
 Canada settled, the acquisition of California from Mexico, in I848» 
 the Mormon settlement of Utah, and the discovery of gold on the West- 
 ern Coast, the demand for quicker communication than then possible, 
 around the Horn, across the Isthmus, by overland freighting, staging 
 or pony- express, was intensified, and Congress was urged to greater 
 activity. 
 
 As far back in our history as 1819, Robert Mills, of Virginia, is 
 found pressing the necessity of a cross-country railway to the attention 
 of the people of that day, and later to Congress. He suggested the 
 use, if practicable, of land-steamers, or '*steam propelled carriages for 
 quickened service across the continent, to run from the head-waters of 
 inland navigation westward over a direct route to the Pacific." 
 
 This, please note, was eight years before the successful application 
 of steam power to carrying-use anywhere in this country. 
 
 Then followed what was known as the '^Western Movement," 
 toward the ''Back-lands," or the 'Tndian Country," narrowed down 
 now to an area of less than sixty-five thousand square miles, or to the 
 Indian Territory of today; all this, too, within a brief period of eighty 
 years, or less, under the civilizing influences of rapid transportation and 
 communication. 
 
 One promoter's proposition after another followed and failed. While 
 citizens John Plumbe, of Dubuque, Iowa, Asa Whitney, a merchant of 
 New York, the Honorable Butler S. King, General Robinson, of Pennsyl- 
 vania, Hosmer, of Ohio, Pierce, of Indiana, Thomas H. Benton, and others 
 had pioneered in this project for a Pacific railway, the consistent and 
 persistent pursuit of such men as Senators Salmon P. Chase, and Wade, 
 of Ohio, Gwin, McDougal and Latham, of California, Harlan, of Iowa, 
 Lyman Trumbull and Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, and many others, 
 prominent in the councils of both the Senate and Lower House, work- 
 ing together, brought this splendid enterprise to a point of Government 
 initiative. 
 
 Congress had been frequently memorialized, but what Stephen A. 
 Douglas had previously done to encourage the building of the Illinois 
 Central Railway, seemingly, prepared the public mind for the provisional 
 measures to follow and served as a solvent of difficulties, many and 
 
6 HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 
 
 multiform, to be met with in promoting the necessary land and bond- 
 aiding measures of succeeding years. 
 
 Trans-Missouri tribes were being rapidly dispossessed, displaced, 
 and replaced on reservations; Indian wars among the tribes and with 
 the whites were nearing an end; the public domain was fast falling under 
 private control and cultivation; the arid, inhospitable, desert reclaimed 
 under an easy arrangement of purchase — the "West'' had become a 
 relative term, and the whole country was restive over its inaccessible- 
 ness. 
 
 The initial step in the direction of Pacific railway building was the 
 success of a bill submitted to Congress in 1853, by Senator Salmon P. 
 Chase, of Ohio, providing for a survey of four routes to the Pacific 
 Coast, then under serious consideration: 
 
 First: A line from the Upper Mississippi to Puget Sound — 
 Major Stevens in charge of the survey. 
 
 Second: A line along the 36th parallel, through Walker's Pass 
 of the Rocky Mountains, to strike the Coast at San Diego, Los 
 Angeles or San Pedro — under direction of Lieutenant Whipple. 
 
 Third: A line through the Rocky Mountains near the head- 
 waters of the Rio del Norte and Hueferno River, emerging at Great 
 Salt Lake Basin — Captain Gunnison in charge. 
 
 Fourth: A line along the 32d parallel, via El Paso and the 
 Colorado River, to strike the Pacific somewhere in lower California. 
 
 Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War, evidently on his own motion, 
 sent five other engineering corps into this field; their reconnaissance to 
 cover, first, the ''Northern Route" of the 47th to the 49th parallel, north 
 latitude; the second, an "Overland Route," between parallels 41 and 42 — 
 also known as the "Central" or "Mormon Route." The third was along the 
 39th parallel, called the "Buffalo Trail." The fourth was along the 
 route of the 35th parallel, and the fifth, along the 32d parallel, or the 
 "Southern Route." 
 
 Secretary Davis made a complete report to Congress of all this 
 exploitation under date of January 27, 1855. 
 
 This brings us to the bill Stephen A. Douglas proposed and pro- 
 moted in the 34th Congress in January, 1855; sustaining it he said, 
 among other good things, "If we intend to extend our commerce, if we 
 intend to make the great ports of the World tributary to our worth 
 ****** we must penetrate to the Pacific." 
 
HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 7 
 
 The Douglas Bill proposed three routes to the Coast, one via El 
 Paso and the Colorado River, to be called "The Southern Pacific;*' 
 another from the Iowa border to be called the ''Central Pacific;'* another 
 to the north to be called the "Northern Pacific." 
 
 It is well worthy of note that the terms he used, descriptive of these 
 three routes, endure and stand today as titles for the three trunk lines 
 finally built. 
 
 Subsequent surveys were to determine the most acceptable route 
 of the three suggested. 
 
 His measure found the approval of a joint committee of both houses, 
 succeeded in the Senate, but failed of passage in the House. 
 
 The distinguishing feature of the Douglas plan was that it not 
 only proposed, but liberally provided for what was to be undertaken. 
 
 The years between 1850 and 1860 "marked a period of storm and 
 stress in which sectionalism and localism were engaged in drawing and 
 quartering Pacific railway measures."! 
 
 The accomplishment of a transcontinental railway, however, seemed 
 predestined to await the emergencies of civil war, which soon came. 
 
 The ordinance of secession, done at Charleston, South Carolina, 
 on December 20, 1860 and the retirement of its several sister states 
 that quickly followed, silenced further sectional opposition. 
 
 Congress, then freer to act, and supported by declarations of all 
 party platforms favoring transportation development in the West, was 
 brought to a serious consideration of the Enabling Act, remembered as 
 House Roll 364 — a blend of all the better features of bills proposed by 
 Senators Stephen A. Douglas and Washburn of Illinois, Congressman 
 Samuel R. Curtis of Iowa, Rollins of New Hampshire, and others. 
 "364" passed the United States Senate, as amended, on June 20, 1862, 
 Senate's amendments concurred in by the House on June 25th, and 
 became a law over the signature of President Lincoln on July 1 , 1 862. 
 (Congressional Globe says July 2, 1862.) 
 
 This act created the "Union Pacific Railroad Company," which cor- 
 poration was "authorized and empowered to lay out, locate, construct, 
 furnish, maintain, and enjoy a continuous railroad and telegraph, with 
 the appurtenances, from a point on the 100th meridian of longitude 
 west from Greenwich, between the south margin of the valley of the 
 Republican River and the north margin of the valley of the Platte 
 River, in the Territory of Nebraska, to the western boundary of Nevada 
 
 fDavis on "Union Pacific Railway." 
 
8 HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 
 
 Territory; * * *" and ''granted 400 feet of right of way through public 
 lands, also every alternate or odd numbered section of land to the amount 
 of five alternate sections per mile on each side of the line within the limit 
 of 10 miles, not sold or otherwise disposed of by the United States. 
 * * * * Mineral lands excepted. * * *" It was also by this Bill 
 bond-aided at the rate of $16,000 per mile, east of the mountains, pay- 
 able in gold. These bonds were a first mortgage lien on the property. 
 It was further provided "that for 300 miles of road most mountainous 
 and difficult of construction, to-wit; one hundred and fifty miles west- 
 wardly from the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains and one hundred 
 and fifty miles eastwardly from the western base of the Sierra Nevada 
 Mountains, said points to be fixed by the President of theUnited States, 
 the bonds to be issued to aid in the construction thereof shall be treble 
 the number per mile hereinbefore provided, and the same shall be issued 
 and the lands herein granted be set apart upon the construction of every 
 twenty miles thereof, upon the certificate of the commissioners as afore- 
 said, that twenty consecutive miles of the same are completed; and 
 between the sections last named of I 50 miles each the bonds to be issued 
 to aid in the construction thereof shall be double the number per mile 
 first mentioned, *****. Provided that no more than 50,000 of 
 said bonds shall be issued under this act to aid in constructing the main 
 line of said road and telegraph." 
 
 Section 12: "And be it further enacted, that whenever the route 
 of said railroad shall cross the boundary of any State or Territory, or 
 said meridian of longitude, the two companies (Central Pacific-Union 
 Pacific) meeting or uniting there, shall agree upon its location at that 
 point, with reference to the most direct and practicable through route, 
 and in the case of difference between them as to said location, the 
 President of the United States shall determine the said location." 
 
 "The track upon the entire line of railroad and branches shall be 
 of uniform width, TO BE DETERMINED BY THE PRESIDENT 
 OF THE UNITED STATES, SO THAT, WHEN COMPLETED, 
 CARS CAN BE RUN FROM THE MISSOURI RIVER TO THE 
 PACIFIC COAST; THE GRADES AND CURVES SHALL NOT 
 EXCEED THE MAXIMUM GRADE AND CURVES OF THE 
 BALTIMORE & OHIO RAILROAD; the whole line of said railroad 
 and branches and telegraph shall be operated and used for all purposes 
 of communication, travel, and transportation, so far as the public and 
 government are concerned, as one connected, continuous line; and the 
 companies herein named in Missouri, Kansas and California, filing their 
 assent to the provisions of this act, shall receive and transport all iron 
 rails, chairs, spikes, ties, timber and all materials required for con- 
 structing and furnishing said first-mentioned line between the aforesaid 
 
HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 9 
 
 point, on the 100th meridian of longitude and western boundary of 
 Nevada Territory, whenever the same is required by said first-named 
 company, at cost, over that portion of the roads of said companies con- 
 structed under the provisions of this act/' 
 
 And under the terms of Section 13 of the same act, the Hannibal 
 & St. Joseph Railroad Company of Missouri was invited to extend 
 its road from St. Joseph, via Atchison, to connect and unite with the 
 road through Kansas, upon the same terms and conditions in all respects, 
 and authorized under these terms to build 100 miles in length beyond 
 the Missouri River. 
 
 The same authority was given the then existent "Leavenworth, 
 Pawnee & Western Railroad Company of Kansas." 
 
 And under Section 14, the Union Pacific Railroad Company was 
 "authorized and required to construct a single line of railroad and 
 telegraph from a point on the western boundary of the State of Iowa, 
 TO BE FIXED BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 upon the most direct and practicable route to be subject to his approval, 
 so as to form a connection with the lines of said company at some point 
 on the 100th meridian, from the point of commencement on the western 
 boundary of the State of Iowa, upon the same term.s and conditions in 
 all respects as are contained in this act for the construction of the said 
 railroad and telegraph first mentioned; and the said Union Pacific 
 Railroad Company shall complete 100 miles of the road and telegraph 
 in this section provided for, in two years after filing their assent to the 
 conditions of this act, as by the terms of this act required, and at the 
 rate of 100 miles per year thereafter, until the whole is completed. 
 
 "And whenever there shall be a line of railroad completed through 
 Minnesota or Iowa to Sioux City, then the said Pacific Railroad Com- 
 pany is hereby authorized and required to construct a railroad and tele- 
 graph from said Sioux City upon the most direct and practicable route 
 to a point on, and so as to connect with, the branch railroad and tele- 
 graph in this section hereinbefore mentioned, or with said Railroad 
 Company, said point of junction to be fixed by the President of the 
 United States not farther west than the 100th meridian of longitude 
 aforesaid, and on the same terms and conditions as provided in this act 
 for the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad and to complete the 
 same at the rate of 100 miles per year." 
 
 Like encouragement and aid having been given the Central Pacific 
 Railroad by this act, it was required "that if said roads are not completed 
 so as to form a continuous line of railroad ready for use from the Missouri 
 
10 HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 
 
 River to the navigable waters of the Sacramento River, in California, 
 by the first day of July, 1876, the whole of said railroad before mentioned, 
 and to be constructed under provisions of this act, together with all their 
 furniture, fixtures, rolling stock, machine shops, lands, tenements, 
 and hereditaments, and property of every kind and character, shall 
 be forfeited to, and be taken possession of, by the United States/' 
 
 The reasons prompting Congress to designate definitely some east- 
 ern limit of connection between their Union Pacific creation and other 
 lines are obvious. Just why the 100th meridian was selected, however, 
 does not appear, but to protect their Union Pacific investment and give 
 it the longest possible haul on coast business and still leave a proper 
 radiating distance between the Missouri River and a meridian limit 
 where lines then approaching the Missouri River from the East might 
 connect, they in their wisdom fixed upon the 100th meridian, consider- 
 ing, evidently, that this was far enough west to permit of such convenient 
 connection later on, after widening the area of approach from the Re- 
 publican to the Platte River Valley. 
 
 Under the requirements of this enactment of 1862, which has been 
 reviewed in part in preceding paragraphs, the directors of the Union 
 Pacific Company qualified and formally accepted its terms on June 27, 
 1863. 
 
 On the second day of December following, ground was broken in 
 North Omaha bottoms with fitting ceremony. 
 
 Present on that occasion were Governor Alvin Saunders, Mayors B. 
 E. B. Kennedy, of Omaha, and Palmer, of Council Bluffs, Judge Lar- 
 imer, Andrew J. Poppleton, Augustus Kountze, George B. Lake, Edward 
 Creighton, John I. Redick, Experience Esterbrook, J. J. Brown, George 
 Francis Train and others, A. J. Hanscom presiding. 
 
 Telegrams of felicitation were exchanged on this occasion between 
 this Omaha committee of arrangement and Mayor George Opdyke 
 of New York City, as follows: 
 
 "May this, the greatest work ever projected in any age or country, 
 prove a lasting bond of political and commercial union between the 
 Atlantic and Pacific States." 
 
 Another telegram from John Hay, Private Secretary to President 
 Lincoln, viz: 
 
 ''1 have not been permitted until today to present to the President 
 your communication of the 23rd of November. He directs me to 
 express his deep regrets that his illness will prevent him from giving 
 expression to the profound interest he feels in the success of a work so 
 vast and beneficial as that which you are about to inaugurate." 
 
HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC I 1 
 
 Telegrams from Brigham Young, Governor Stanford of California, 
 Governor Yates of Illinois, from the Mayor of Denver and others, con- 
 tributed to the joy of the occasion. 
 
 Brigham Young, then beginning, to be imperator of a great industrial 
 people, sent this message: 
 
 "Let the hands of the honest be united to aid the great national 
 improvement." 
 
 He gave his full share of aid in construction through the brawn 
 of his followers, until he saw that the company was bent on giving his 
 city the go-by, and then at the critical point in the great race, he with- 
 held his aid until he saw that the Central Pacific, too, intended to reject 
 his suit, and he must be content with a stub connection from Ogden. 
 
 In the meantime, the Pacific Telegraph Company had been chartered 
 by special act of Congress in 1861, and subsidized to the amount of 
 $40,000 per annum. Mr. Edward Creighton, of Omaha, was its chief 
 promoter and builder, having had charge of the construction work of the 
 telegraph line for Western Union interests from St. Louis to Omaha, 
 then recently completed. He seemed the best fitted of any man in the 
 West for this further undertaking. The Pacific Telegraph Company 
 blazed the way across the plains, and finished their line into Salt Lake 
 City with surprising promptness on June 28, 1862. 
 
 During the years 1853 to I860, Henry C. Farnam, Dr. Thomas C. 
 Durant, with Grenville M. Dodge, and Peter A. Dey in charge, were 
 building the Mississippi & Missouri Railroad (later the Chicago, Rock 
 Island & Pacific Railway), across the State of Iowa to the Missouri 
 River. Under the inspiration of the agitation and assurance of coming 
 Government aid for a Pacific railway, Mr. Dey was detached from his 
 Iowa field work and sent by Farnam over the proposed "Central" 
 route for reconnaissance and report of the conditions along the Platte 
 Valley route; the "Imperial Parallel" of 41/^ degrees, which later 
 surveys sustained as the nation's natural highway, as now used. 
 
 The information at hand made Thomas C. Durant the first and best 
 acquainted railroad builder in the country with what was to be under- 
 taken, pending the Government aid, which came, as anticipated, in 
 July 1862. 
 
 (NOTE) "In 1862, after the Chicago convention organizing the Union Pacific 
 Railroad Company, I was sent by Henry Farnam to reconnoiter the route from the 
 Missouri River to the Salt Lake Valley — General Dodge had, in 1861 , raised a regiment 
 and was continuously in the service of the United States until 1865. In 1862 Thomas 
 C. Durant had not interested himself in the Union Pacific." "The papers covering the 
 examination of the line and the report were turned over to Mr. Durant in the fall of 
 1863 by Mr. Farnam, as the latter then retired from active railroad construction." 
 (Extract from Mr. Dey's autograph memorandum.) 
 
12 HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 
 
 These war-troubled days were fast absorbing the resources of the 
 people; capital under private reserve was timid; the Government's 
 appropriation of alternate sections of public land through a ten mile 
 strip each side of the proposed line and its gift of gold-bearing bonds of 
 sixteen thousand, thirty-two thousand and forty-eight thousand dollars 
 per mile — according to location — was found inadequate and unattrac- 
 tive to men in high places of finance; stock subscription books had been 
 opened, but the money for construction expenses was not forthcoming. 
 
 The funds for final survey of the line to the junction of the North 
 and South Platte Rivers (near where North Platte city is now located) 
 had been found and contracts for short distances out of Omaha were 
 under negotiation. 
 
 One of the original surveys carried the line directly west from Omaha 
 to the Elkhorn River. This cross-country line had been established 
 by Peter A. Dey, engineer in charge; another line had been located 
 around the Mud Creek route, via Papillion, known in those days as 
 the "Ox-Bow Route.'' 
 
 Nebraska's first territorial legislature of 1855 did two distinguishing 
 things deserving of mention, and but two. Its first Act located the 
 Capital of Omaha; the second measure acted upon was a resolution 
 memorializing Congress in behalf of a Pacific railway. 
 
 Thomas B. Cumming, acting Territorial Governor, in a message 
 read January 16, 1855, said in part: "As an enterprise of such absolute 
 necessity, as a means of intercommunication between the Atlantic 
 and Pacific States and as a purveyor of a lucrative commerce with 
 India, China and the Pacific Islands; among these are the facts that the 
 Valley of the Platte is on the nearest and most direct continuous line 
 from the commercial metropolis of the East by railroad and the Great 
 Lakes, through the most practical mountain passes to the metropolis 
 of the West; that it is fitted by nature for an easy grade and that it is 
 central and convenient to the great majority of grain-growing states 
 of the Northern portion of the Union, being in latitude 41 degrees north, 
 it seems to me to be the desire of the friends of this great enterprise, one 
 of the most prominent and important of all measures of National develop- 
 ment upon the continent now under consideration of the people of the 
 
 NOTE: (This manuscript, in the rough, was submitted to Mr. Peter A. Dey 
 on Friday, October 15, 1909, at his home in Iowa City, Iowa, where Mr. Dey was pres- 
 ident of the First National Bank. He was considerate enough to read, correct and 
 approve this paper, and we, here and now, make acknowledgment of the great favor 
 he has done in setting us right on many points of doubt and incidents connected with 
 the early surveys and construction of the Pacific railways, which he remembered and 
 reviewed most vividly and interestingly; and we are indebted to him for several auto- 
 graph statements worthy of place in this record, which we have been glad to give them 
 elsewhere in their proper chronological connection under quotation credit.) 
 
HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 1 3 
 
 United States * * * * and I sincerely hope and believe that your 
 legislative memorial to Congress may have its legitimate weight in the 
 decision of a question of such momentous interest/' 
 
 The joint legislative committee to whom this bill was referred said 
 in their report as follows: 
 
 "The Valley of the Platte is well known to the West, it being the great 
 highway through which nine-tenths of the overland emigration passes 
 enroute to the Pacific. Those coming via St. Louis travel by water 
 up the Missouri River to Independence, Weston, St. Joseph and Council 
 Bluffs and, uniting at these points with those who come by land from 
 the east, pursue their way westward by converging lines that unite in 
 the Platte Valley at various points within 200 miles, a little north of a 
 due line west from Omaha, Bellevue and Florence ***** starting 
 from more westerly points on the Missouri River, there is less of land 
 travel than by any other route. There is a better connecting line of 
 good water, wood, stone, coal, soil and grass, than can be found on any 
 other route. This route lies also in the zone of the earth's surface where 
 the greatest variety of useful articles. can be produced; where men are 
 capable of the greatest endurance and where the greatest population 
 and wealth are most likely to accumulate.'* 
 
 While other states, political and industrial organizations, had 
 memorialized Congress from time to time, the perfervid pleadings of 
 all Nebraska's Governors, from Cumming to Saunders, for Government 
 help in the construction of a Transcontinental Railway did more than 
 any one other agency, perhaps, to change certain men prominent in 
 the affairs of the nation and enlist them in its cause and, finally, to cement 
 them to the sentiment that the Pacific railway must be built to "Keep 
 our country together." This general agitation brought the people 
 to a correct conclusion that a Pacific railway could not be built with 
 private capital, unaided by the Government; that the Government should 
 give one-half of the funds necessary, as a loan, and would then be merely 
 doing the least part of the whole; that the economics of transportation 
 of Government troops and supplies would be compensatory. 
 
 The Honorable Henry Wilson, speaking for a Pacific Railway Bill 
 in the 37th Congress, had said in explaining his vote: "1 give no grudg- 
 ing vote in appropriating either money or land; I would give one hundred 
 million dollars to build the road and do it cheerfully and think 1 had done 
 a great thing for my country. What are seventy-five or a hundred 
 millions in opening a railroad across the Central Regions of this Conti- 
 nent that shall connect the people of the Atlantic and Pacific and bind 
 us together? Nothing! As to the lands, I do not grudge them." 
 
1 4 HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 
 
 Working along the same lines, quietly but untiringly, were a little 
 coterie of Calif ornians, meeting when they could at the 'Frisco stores of 
 Huntington & Hopkins, Hardware, or at the Crocker Brothers, Dry 
 Goods, or Stanford's Grocery. Under the inspiring genius and moni- 
 torial guidance of Theodore D. Judah, they discussed the chimerical 
 scheme — or dream — of a railroad through the mountains to the East. 
 
 On the twenty-second day of February, 1863, ground was broken 
 at Sacramento and Central Pacific construction opened. Governor 
 Stanford presiding. 
 
 The names of these men: Collis P. Huntington, Mark Hopkins, 
 Charles and Edward B. Crocker, with Cornelius Cole, a San Francisco 
 editor, and Leland Stanford, are of ineffaceable record in Pacific Slope 
 History, men oi national note in their day. 
 
 The Central Pacific Railway was the vehicle of their fame and 
 fortune. Theodore D. Judah was its chief advocate and later its chief 
 engineer; he led, while most others falteringly followed, and the saddest 
 reflection of all is the unaccountable oblivion into which his name 
 has fallen. 
 
 Theodore D. Judah was the composite Durant and Dodge of 
 Central Pacific history. Has it come to this among men, that there can 
 be no industrial fame without fortune and all its attending caprice? 
 
 Eighteen hundred and sixty found more than a half million people 
 who had pioneered into the Western States and Territory. Then less 
 than 50 miles of railway had been built west of the Missouri River to 
 serve them, and not to exceed 250 miles of telegraph. 
 
 The enormity of the undertaking and its discouragements will be 
 better understood after reminding the reader that the whole route was 
 practically devoid of any construction material except the soil for the 
 grade. Six and a quarter million ties were needed and they must be 
 hewn from trees felled in Michigan and Pennsylvania or throughout 
 the River Valley regions of the South; three hundred and fifty thousand 
 tons of iron rails and their fittings; all bridge and structural supplies 
 must be wagoned by bull team from Central Iowa, at a staggering cost 
 and a shipping uncertainty almost intolerable to contractors; gold was 
 at a 50% premium; war time stringency; labor scarce and exacting and 
 a frontier field dangerous from Indian depredations, still no such record 
 for rapid construction has ever been made in the country's history. 
 
 Exactly three years, six months and ten days built the road. 
 
 Mr. Dey's natural engineering choice was for a route that would 
 bridge the Missouri River at Childs Mills or Bellevue, using the route 
 of the Papillion Valley to the Elkhorn, and avoiding the objectionable 
 grade and cuts through the hills of any line west from Omaha, but 
 
HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 1 5 
 
 President Lincoln had designated the eastern bank of the Missouri 
 River, opposite Omaha, as the terminus. So as between the two routes 
 through this Missouri River gateway, one directly west, and the other 
 via the Ox-Bow, Engineer Dey stood preferentially and unchangeably 
 for the short cut to Elkhorn, on which, grading to the amount of $100,000 
 was later done. 
 
 Incidentally, the necessity of return to this cross route, or Lane 
 Cut-off of today (opened for business May 15, 1908), is a silent, but 
 substantial, compliment to the wisdom of the original survey, vindicating 
 Mr. Dey, who has lived to see it built. 
 
 On the 7th day of March, 1864, President Lincoln made his second 
 and more definite executive order locating the terminus of the Union 
 Pacific Railway, "On the Western boundary of Iowa, east of, and oppo- 
 site, the east line of Section 10, Township 13, North of Range 13, east 
 of the Sixth principal meridian in the Territory of Nebraska, within the 
 limits of the township in Iowa, opposite the town of Omaha, Nebraska/' 
 
 The work of further construction is found under suspense, pending 
 further congressional assistance, which came on July 2, 1864. It, 
 among other things, doubled the land grant and permitted the Union 
 Pacific Railroad Company to issue first mortgage bonds, equal in amount 
 to the bonds the Government had authorized, and relegated the Govern- 
 ment bonds to a second lien on the property. It provided further 
 for the condemnation of a two hundred foot right of way, through 
 lands under private ownership or control, and permitted the Leaven- 
 worth, Pawnee & Western Railroad Company, then known as the 
 Union Pacific Eastern Division, to proceed and cross the 100th meridian 
 from the mouth of the Kansas River, via Lawrence and Topeka, and 
 continue to a point of connection in the West, and authorized the Central 
 Pacific to extend its line one hundred and fifty miles east of the limit 
 first designated in preceding acts; extending the same land and bond 
 assistance to the Sioux City & Pacific, westward from Sioux City to a 
 connection with the Union Pacific, as had been authorized for other 
 
 (NOTE): "The difference of opinion between Mr. Dey, Silas Seymour and Jesse 
 S. Williams was this: If Omaha was the initial point of the road, a generally direct 
 course to the Platte Valley was desirable; the maximum grade from the Missouri 
 River to the Summit and from the Summit west to the Papillion were the same. The 
 question was raised, was it correct engineering to increase the length of the road from 
 fourteen to twenty-three miles to avoid two intermediate grades of the same percentage, 
 while it was admitted that under existing conditions it would not be practical to materi- 
 ally decrease either of the four grades. * * * For reasons that were never explained 
 (to Mr. Dey) the policy of making Omaha the initial point was persisted in, although it 
 was developed early in 1 863 that a line of low grades could be reached from the vicinity 
 of Bellevue to the Elkhorn Summit, and that the descent into the Platte Valley might, 
 in the not distant future, be made without extraordinary outlay. In the years 1863 
 and 1864 it was almost impossible on the Missouri River to obtain labor in any line, 
 as a large percentage of able-bodied men were in the army." 
 
 CElxtract from Mr. Dey's autograph memorandum.) 
 
16 HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 
 
 Union Pacific connections from the East. This act also authorized the 
 bridging of the Missouri River. 
 
 This Sioux City & Pacific Hne was built into Fremont during the 
 fall of 1868; the Union Pacific reached there on the 24th of January, 1866. 
 The Act of 1862, creating the Union Pacific Company, directed 
 that the Board should meet in Chicago on the first Tuesday of September, 
 1862, for organization, which was done, and William B. Ogden, of Illinois 
 was chosen its first president. In this connection a chronological list 
 of all the presidents will be interesting to the student. 
 
 September, 1862 . . . William B. Ogden 
 
 October, 1863 JohnA. Dix 
 
 June, 1 868 Oliver Ames 
 
 April, 1871 Thomas A. Scott 
 
 March, 1872 Horace F. Clark 
 
 July, 1873 John Duff 
 
 June, 1 874 Sidney Dillon 
 
 June, 1884 Chas. F. Adams 
 
 December, 1890 Sidney Dillon 
 
 May, 1892 S. H.H.Clark 
 
 January, 1898 Horace G. Burt 
 
 January, 1904 .... Edward H. Harriman 
 
 October, 1909 Robert S. Lovett 
 
 October, 1911 A. L. Mohler 
 
 July, 1916 E. E. Calvin 
 
 A formal organization was perfected at the next meeting of the 
 Board on October 29, 1863, in New York City, when John A. Dix was 
 chosen president; and Dr. Thos. C. Durant vice-president, who threw 
 into this great national enterprise all his constructive genius and his 
 fortune. Dr. Durant's career with the Union Pacific opens and closes 
 as a builder. His work finished, he yielded the *'keys,'' the curtain 
 falls; he turned his back upon the country and the job and never saw 
 them after. 
 
 Very little construction work was accomplished until the spring of 
 1865. Four years of warfare, and preparations for war, had unsettled 
 business interests, and interrupted the agricultural and manufacturing 
 pursuits of the people. The whole South, which had previously been 
 a very responsive source of money supply, was under devastation of 
 war; but now all Northern enterprises, especially this one, had fallen 
 under the strongest sectional prejudice. No building material was 
 available east of the mountains; no native labor east of the Mormon 
 settlements on the West End, and all supplies must come by rail from 
 Des Moines, 140 miles away, or Boonville, the terminus of the North- 
 western; or via the slower, uncertain river service, closed in the winter. 
 
HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 1 7 
 
 War-time prices for everything made all contractors uncertain of 
 their estimates and impaired their credit. Under these disheartening 
 difficulties, Mr. Dey retired from the engineering staff in 1865. This 
 left J. E. House as charge d'affaires, D. H. Ainsworth followed as 
 Engineer in Chief, while Mr. House superintended the building of the 
 shops and completed the survey over the Platte Valley route to the bridg- 
 ing point on the Platte River, which all the engineering skill at the 
 country's command in latter years has not been able to improve upon 
 and in which no changes have been made west of the corrective short- 
 line recently built to a connection at Lane station. Mr. House, who died 
 in July, 1 908, lived to see this splendid endorsement of his unchangeable 
 locations west of the Elkhorn River and a greater portion of his line 
 double-tracked. 
 
 The time limits fixed by the Government for the completion of the 
 first one hundred miles and the time allowed to reach the 100th meridian 
 were drawing uncomfortably near; time was, therefore, the essence of 
 all further endeavor. 
 
 On October 4, 1864, H. M. Hoxie was awarded a contract to build 
 100 miles west from Omaha; the first forty miles was entrusted to Mr. 
 Peter A. Dey, as engineer. The difficulties attending have been recited. 
 Further discouragements confronting were the indecisions as to the 
 route west from the Summit between Omaha and where South Omaha 
 now stands, or as between the direct route to the Elkhorn River and the 
 Ox-Bow. 
 
 In October, 1864, Jesse L. Williams and Colonel Silas Seymour were 
 sent here by New York interests to review the surveys of Mr. Dey and 
 to report upon the most feasible Missouri River crossing. On their 
 return to New York City, they recommended a change from the Omaha 
 crossing, designated by President Lincoln, and that the river be bridged 
 seven miles farther south at Childs Mills, or Bellevue, where the line 
 would intercept the Papillion Creek valley and follow it northwesterly 
 to the Elkhorn River, along a water grade. The Union Pacific manage- 
 ment, sustained by confirming reports made by Colonel J. H. Simpson 
 for the Government, were prompted to petition President Andrew 
 Johnson to so modify the "Lincoln Location*' as to permit of the use of 
 this more favorable crossing. In this they were successful and presiden- 
 tial approval for the change was given. 
 
 This is still remembered by surviving citizens of Omaha as the 
 "Bellevue Scare," which aroused its people to heroic measures of self- 
 protection. Their protests prevailed and the Mud Creek, or Ox-Bow 
 route, was accepted by the management, and Council Bluffs-Omaha as 
 a crossing point. 
 
1 8 HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 
 
 On May 7, 1866, a joint resolution of Congress extended to June 
 27, 1866, the time limit of completion of the Leavenworth, Pawnee & 
 Western (Union Pacific Eastern Division) to the 100th meridian. 
 
 On July 3, 1866, a congressional act passed, authorizing the Union 
 Pacific Eastern Division to designate a new route in the direction of 
 Denver and to file its maps of same, when lands adjoining its changed 
 right of way would be reserved in same manner as if built to the 100th 
 meridian, northwesterly from Topeka as originally intended under the 
 act of 1862, but provided that no greater amount of land in the aggregate 
 should be appropriated than would have fallen to it under the original 
 survey, and provided further that the ''said company shall connect their 
 line of railroad and telegraph with the Union Pacific Railroad, but not 
 at a point more than fifty miles westwardly from a meridian of Denver, 
 Colorado/' 
 
 This act of July 3rd further authorized the Union Pacific company, 
 with the consent and approval of the Secretary of the Interior, to con- 
 tinue its road from Omaha until it met the Central Pacific, and likewise 
 authorized the Central Pacific Company of California to continue east- 
 ward until it met the Union Pacific. 
 
 Credit Mobilier 
 
 The Credit Mobilier was chartered in Pennsylvania early in 1865. 
 Its mission and its methods, much mistrusted and misunderstood, dis- 
 credited from the first, it drifted into dangerous political directions and 
 went down in dishonor two years later. This construction insurance 
 company (for such it was in purpose) took over the unfinished work of 
 the H. M. Hoxie contract on March 15, 1865, and carried it to the 100th 
 meridian, two hundred and forty-seven miles from Omaha. 
 
 On the capitulation of the Credit Mobilier, Oakes Ames, on August 
 16, 1867, took over its unfinished undertakings and pushed them with 
 record-breaking rapidity to a completion at Promontory on May 10, 
 1869, a distance of ten hundred and eighty-six miles, where on that 
 memorable day, in the presence of a distinguished assemblage, repre- 
 sentative of both East and West, they met the Central Pacific, which 
 had built six hundred and eighty-nine miles from Sacramento to this 
 point of connection. 
 
 It may be interesting to review in better detail the dates of construc- 
 tion progress: 
 
 The first rail was laid July 10, 1865, along the bottoms between 
 Cut-off Lake and the grade leading through the hills out of Omaha 
 toward the summit, near where Vinton and 29th Streets would meet 
 today. 
 
HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 1 9 
 
 On September 22, 1865, 10 miles were completed and in use, with 
 material on hand for a hundred miles more. The equipment on that 
 date consisted of four locomotives, thirty flat cars and five box cars. 
 
 On January 26, 1866, the first Government inspection was made by 
 Chairman Colonel J. H. Simpson, Major General Samuel R. Curtis 
 and Major William White. About thirty miles had then been railed. 
 
 During 1866 two hundred and sixty miles more were completed, 
 and in 1867 a two hundred and forty mile advance brought the line to 
 the summit of the Rocky Mountains, or Sherman Hill, 8,247 feet high. 
 
 In 1868, four hundred and twenty-five miles more were added, and 
 during the first four months of 1869, one hundred and twenty-five miles 
 of new construction took the line to Promontory. 
 
 The report of General Grenville M. Dodge, who had been called into 
 Union Pacific service and councils on May 15, 1866, as Chief Engineer, 
 written to the Eastern owners, said: "During the entire construction of 
 the road, a relentless, determined war has been waged all along the line 
 by the tribes of the plains, and no peace found until we had long 
 passed the hostile country and got beyond their reach.*' 
 
 The above statement was made by General Dodge in reviewing the 
 dangers and discouragements of the surveying parties under his charge. 
 
 He further said: "Every mile of the gauntlet had to be run within 
 the range of a rifle." 
 
 In 1866 began the active, systematic pursuit of final surveys through 
 the mountains. 
 
 In a report General Dodge, as Chief Engineer, made to President 
 Oliver Ames, on December 1 , 1 869, covering the operation of his engineer- 
 ing corps for the years 1868 and '69, he said: 
 
 "Was called to New York and instructed to finish locating the line 
 to Green River by June 1st, and to Salt Lake Valley the same fall, and 
 before winter closed in, to develop the country west of Salt Lake." 
 
 General Dodge further said in this report: 
 
 "I put James A. Evans in charge of the location from Laramie to 
 Green River and Mr. Jacob Blickensderfer, Jr., from Green River to 
 Salt Lake." 
 
 Closing this report. General Dodge said: "It is a wonder that 
 Messrs. Evans and Blickensderfer were able to find a location in so 
 short a time that has borne so well the critical test it has been sub- 
 jected to." 
 
 The original Charter authorized the Union Pacific Company to 
 build through Nevada to the California line; but the Act of July 3, 
 
20 HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 
 
 1866, changed this and allowed the Central Pacific to build east until 
 they met the Union Pacific, and gave the Union Pacific the same west- 
 bound privilege, and the race was on, both lines straining every nerve 
 to reach the construction limit of their charters, under which the Union 
 Pacific had been authorized to proceed west to the California line and 
 the Central Pacific to come east as far as it could; naturally, the latter 
 coveted Salt Lake or Ogden as its destination. 
 
 The race was to the swiftest; their grades met in Western Utah 
 during the winter of 1869 and passed, paralleling, until the Union 
 Pacific had progressed as far as 225 miles beyond this meeting point. 
 Meantime, Congress was asked to settle these terminal differences. 
 Finally, the owners made their owft agreement, and Promontory was 
 made the junction, and for a little time the point of interchange. Later, the 
 Union Pacific yielded about 50 miles of this final distance and conveyed 
 it to the Central Pacific under sale; 5/s miles under Union Pacific 
 ownership out of Ogden were leased to the Central Pacific and stands 
 in such relation today, and the remainder of the grade was abandoned. 
 
 Leavenworth, Pawnee & Western 
 
 For description of "The great Railroad Wedding — Driving of the Golden Spi\e" 
 see Appendix "D," page 39. 
 
 The Leavenworth, Pawnee & Western was incorporated in 1855 as 
 a Kansas company; organized in January, 1857; reorganized in June, 
 1863, and under authority of Congress its name was changed that year 
 to Union Pacific Eastern Division. Its first plan contemplated a line 
 from Leavenworth to Pawnee (now Fort Riley), thence westward. 
 
 Ground was broken at the Kansas-Missouri State Line (Wyandotte) 
 in the summer of 1 863 ; grading began in September of that year. Hallett 
 & Fremont (John C. Fremont) were the contractors who undertook the 
 work. 
 
 November 28, 1864, found 37 miles built to a point near Lawrence; 
 10 miles more were built the following year; Manhattan was reached 
 August 18, 1866, and on October 7th, the same year, Pawnee was reached, 
 135 miles out. During the year 1867 the line was finished to the 405th 
 mile post; in March 1870, to Kit Carson, and on August 15, 1870, it 
 was completed to Denver, the original Republican Valley survey having 
 been changed to the "Smoky Hill Route,'' west from Junction City. 
 After the line had been about half completed in the direction of Denver, 
 certain disaffected stockholders sought to change its course and build 
 to Los Angeles or San Diego via the Arkansas River and a Southern 
 route. 
 
 On June 26, 1865, the building of a line between Leavenworth and 
 Lawrence was started, and completed during the following winter. 
 
HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 21 
 
 Ih 1873 the Kansas Pacific became involved and fell into the hands 
 of receivers C. S. Greeley and Henry Villard, in whose control it was 
 held until 1879, when Sylvester T. Smith succeeded them in control. 
 In January, 1880, it was consolidated with the Union Pacific. 
 
 Denver Pacific Railroad 
 
 The Denver Pacific was organized in November, 1867, with Be'a M. 
 Hughes as President, David H. Moffat, Treasurer, and F. M. Case, 
 Chief Engineer, through whom the funds necessary for locating, grading 
 and cross-tieing the line were either subscribed or secured. The Union 
 Pacific had agreed to iron and equip it for operation. Grading was com- 
 menced in May, 1868, and its 106 miles completed during that year to 
 Cheyenne. In January, 1880, as elsewhere stated, the Kansas Pacific 
 was merged with the Union Pacific. The Denver Pacific was also in- 
 cluded in this merger, making it complete. 
 
 History of the Missouri River Bridge at Omaha and General 
 Grenville M. Dodge's Connection Therewith 
 
 A Union Pacific Transfer Company was organized and began opera- 
 tions in 1866. In connection with it, ferry boats were built to insure a 
 quicker handling of Union Pacific equipment and supplies. 
 
 The auxiliary Act of July 2, 1864, authorized the construction of a 
 bridge across the Missouri River somewhere between Bellevue and 
 Florence. 
 
 As previously noted, General Grenville M. Dodge accepted service 
 with the Union Pacific Company as Chief Engineer May 13, 1866. 
 In a letter written to J. Sterling Morton, November 12, 1902, he said: 
 "The first orders that came to me were to make an examination of the 
 Missouri River from the mouth of the Platte River to Florence to deter- 
 mine the best location from an engineering standpoint, for a railroad 
 bridge across the river.'' 
 
 "I made as thorough a preliminary examination as I could and on 
 December 3, 1866, reported that from an engineering point of view, 
 and taking into consideration the cost of the bridge and approaches, 
 grades and distances, the crossing at Childs Mills was the best. I com- 
 pared with it the crossing at South Omaha and at the 'telegraph pole' 
 (near the eastern approach of the present Illinois Central Bridge), 
 but arrived at the conclusion that wherever the bridge was built, it 
 should be a high bridge." 
 
 "Upon receipt of the report, the Company sent me additional in- 
 structions to continue this examination, and in making my report to 
 take into consideration the location of the bridge from a commercial, 
 
22 HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 
 
 as well as an engineering, point of view, bearing in mind that the terminus 
 of the road and our shops were then located in Omaha.'* 
 
 ''On January 15, 1867, I made my report favoring what was known 
 as the 'M. & M/ location, or the location of the present bridge, having 
 located the 'M. & M/ line to this crossing point in 1853." 
 
 General Dodge in an address delivered at Omaha, November 25, 
 1901, said in part: 
 
 "In 1858, if 1 recollect rightly, on returning from my reconnaissance 
 west with my party, which had been out the entire summer, I camped 
 them in Council Bluffs, and went to the Pacific House. At that time 
 Abraham Lincoln was visiting the Bluffs; he heard of my return from 
 my surveys and sought me out at the Pacific House and on the porch 
 of that hotel he sat with me for two hours or more and drew out of me 
 all the facts I had obtained on my survey and, naturally, my opinion 
 as to the route for a railroad west, and as to the feasibility of building it/' 
 
 "I thought no more of this at the time than that possibly 1 had been 
 giving away secrets that belonged to my employers in this work." 
 
 "In 1863, whilst in command of the District of Corinth, Mississippi, 
 I received a dispatch from General Grant to proceed to Washington and 
 report to the President, no explanation coming with the dispatch." 
 
 "When I reached Washington and reported to the President, I soon 
 ascertained that I was sent there for a consultation in regard to the 
 eastern terminus of the Union Pacific Railroad." 
 
 "He had remembered his conversation with me on the Pacific House 
 porch and under the law it had been made his duty to determine the 
 eastern terminus of the Union Pacific road, and those of you who re- 
 member that time, know what pressure was brought to bear on the 
 President to name different points far north and far south. After a 
 longer conversation with me, obtaining my views fully and the reasons 
 for them, the President finally determined to make it, as you all know, 
 on the western border of Iowa opposite this city." 
 
 "That decision, in my opinion, settled beyond all question the future 
 of your City and your State." 
 
 An act approved February 24, 1871, authorized the Union Pacific 
 Railway Company to issue bonds to the amount of $2,500,000, to cover 
 the cost of a Missouri River bridge and the grading of its approaches. 
 
 A contract was made with the Boomer Bridge Company of Chicago 
 in the spring of 1868, for $1,089,500. 
 
 On July 26, 1869, further bridge work was suspended and not re- 
 sumed until April 10, 1870, when a second contract was let to the Ameri- 
 
HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 23 
 
 can Bridge Company of Chicago, which brought the work to com- 
 pletion March 14, 1872, at a cost of $1,750,000. (Then, as stated above, 
 came the $2,500,000 Capitalization Act of February 24, 1871.) 
 
 The bridge built by the American Bridge Company was known as 
 the "Post's Patent;'* it was sixty feet above high water mark, eleven 
 spans, two hundred and fifty feet each. The west approach was reached 
 over a trestle sixty feet high and seven hundred and twenty-nine feet 
 long and the eastern approach graded for two miles on the Iowa side. 
 It was a single-track structure and no provision made for foot passengers 
 or teams, which was contemplated in its charter. 
 
 On the night of August 4, 1877, its eastern end was wrecked by a 
 cyclone. It was temporarily repaired and then used until the close of 
 1886, when it was rebuilt, widened to fifty-six feet, three inches, 1750 
 feet long, with filled approaches. 
 
 Douglas County gave to the original bridge company, $250,000 in 
 bonds; the City of Omaha, its station grounds; and Council Bluffs 
 voted $200,000 and the land needed, but never yielded the bonds to 
 the company. 
 
 Gauge 
 
 Prior to 1875, American railways were of varying gauge. Some in 
 England had a seven-foot spread between the rails; the Erie was on a 
 six-foot gauge, so were many of the railways west of the Ohio River 
 and throughout the South. Eastern States had established standards 
 varying from six feet down. Lines in Missouri were five and a half 
 feet, but the Vanderbilt lines and the Baltimore & Ohio (after which 
 we seem to have patterned as to grades and curvature) were four feet 
 eight and one-half inches, the standard of today. 
 
 The railways of Continental Europe were being readjusted to a five- 
 foot three-inch width. 
 
 This feature of gauge-fixing for the Pacific railroads was one of the 
 most embarrassing duties devolving upon President Lincoln, California 
 having legislated a five-foot standard — something at variance with any 
 other gauge in use in this country. The President finally settled upon 
 five feet, influenced, evidently, by Pacific Coast requirements. 
 
 Senators Trumbull of Illinois and Harlan of Iowa joined issues for 
 the then generally accepted new standard of the East of four feet eight 
 and one-half inches. California representatives resisted, insisting on 
 their standard of five feet, so on the second day of March, 1863, the fol- 
 lowing bill passed Congress, taking the matter out of the President's 
 hands. 
 
24 HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 
 
 "Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
 United States in Congress assembled, that the gauge of the Pacific 
 railroad and its branches throughout their whole extent, from the 
 Pacific Coast to the Missouri River shall be, and hereby is, established 
 at FOUR FEET EIGHT AND ONE-HALF INCHES/' 
 
 The maximum grade of the Baltimore & Ohio in 1862, was 116.2 
 feet per mile, and ten degrees the maximum curvature, which under 
 the terms of the original act of 1862, could not be exceeded on the 
 Pacific railroad. 
 
 Under an Act of March 3, 1869, the lands, originally given the 
 Union Pacific Railroad in aid of a newly-constructed Denver Pacific 
 branch, were transferred from the Union Pacific to the Denver Pacific, 
 to better encourage the construction of a line from Denver to Cheyenne, 
 and the act also authorized the Union Pacific Eastern Division to ex- 
 tend its line to Denver, there to connect with the Denver Pacific, and 
 further authorized the Union Pacific Eastern Division to bond and 
 mortgage its line for $32,000 per mile. 
 
 On April 10, 1869, a joint resolution of both branches of Congress 
 authorized the change of the name from the Union Pacific Eastern 
 Division to the Kansas Pacific Railway Company. 
 
 Under authority of Congress, on January 24, 1880, a consolidation 
 of the Union Pacific Railroad & Telegraph Company, the Denver 
 Pacific Railway & Telegraph Company, and the Kansas Pacific Railway 
 Company was legalized under the name of "The Union Pacific Railway 
 Company.'' 
 
 First Trains 
 
 The first train of which there is any record was run fifteen miles out, 
 to Salings Grove, in November, 1865. Among others, it carried General 
 Sherman, Thomas C. Durant and Andrew J. Poppleton, riding on flat 
 cars with nail kegs for seats. 
 
 The next was an inspection trip of Government Directors, which 
 left Omaha, September 11, 1866, escorted by Samuel B. Reed, then 
 General Superintendent, General Grenville M. Dodge, as Chief En- 
 gineer and Silas Seymour, as Consulting Engineer. 
 
 The Government was represented by the Honorable Jesse L. Williams 
 of Indiana, Honorable T. J. Carter of Illinois, Honorable Springer 
 Harbaugh of Pennsylvania, and the Honorable Charles C. Sherman of 
 Ohio. They made an eight-hour run to Kearney, where Gederal Dodge, 
 Jesse L. Williams, Major Chesbrough and Silas Seymour left the party 
 and continued on to Denver by stage. Their errand was a further 
 
HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 25 
 
 exploitation and report as to the most available mountain crossing, 
 which up to this time was undecided. 
 
 It will be recalled that in the original act creating the Union Pacific 
 company, it was required that 100 miles of line be completed on or before 
 June 27, 1866, and the 247 miles to the 100th meridian, on or before 
 December 31, 1867. The first 100 miles were finished on June 2, 1866, 
 and by the fifth day of October of that year the 1 00th meridian had been 
 crossed, 245 miles of the road having been built in 182 working days. 
 
 Accordingly, invitations were sent to the President of the United 
 States, to Members of Congress, and to men prominent in commercial 
 and transportation affairs over the East, to join an excursion party 
 leaving New York on the fifteenth of October, to travel by the New 
 Jersey Central and Pennsylvanin Railroads to Pittsburg, thence via 
 the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne & Chicago to Chicago. Government 
 Directors, Jesse L. Williams of Fort Wayne, Springer Harbaugh of 
 Pittsburg and Sherman of Ohio, joined them en route to Chicago. 
 Williams and Harbaugh, having been recently over the line, returned 
 home after having helped to complete all necessary arrangements for 
 the trip. 
 
 At Chicago the party separated; some proceeded by rail over the 
 Chicago & North- Western to Dennison, Iowa, and staged to Council 
 Bluffs; others left via the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy and Hannibal 
 & St. Joseph, to St. Joseph, using two Missouri River packets north- 
 ward — the "Denver" with Captain Waddell, and the "Colorado" with 
 Captain Hooper. Forty-eight hours brought them to Council Bluffs, 
 where they arrived on Monday morning, October 22nd. 
 
 Prominent citizens of Omaha and Council Bluffs were on hand to 
 receive them. On the committee of entertainment were Governor 
 Saunders, Secretary Paddock, Mayor Miller, and Vice President Patrick 
 of the Omaha Board of Trade. A reception and ball was given them 
 at the old Hernden Hotel, later remodeled and enlarged, and used 
 as Union Pacific Headquarters until the completion of the present 
 headquarters building. Senator Patterson and Government Director 
 Sherman, Perry H. Smith, Vice President of the Chicago & North- 
 Western, George L. Dunlap, its General Superintendent, Honorable 
 B. F. Wade, United States Senator, and other notables of the East, 
 rejoined at Omaha. Vice President Durant, Webster Snyder, Major 
 L. S. Bent, General and Daniel Casement, Mr. Congdon of the Mechan- 
 ical Department, and others, took charge of the party West from Omaha. 
 Their palatial train consisted of nine cars, the Directors' car in the rear 
 and the "President Lincoln" car (then the property of Mr. Durant) 
 ahead of it; the balance, passenger coaches, a "mess car," and a baggage 
 
26 HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 
 
 and supply car, were built at Omaha shops. The train and party left 
 Omaha station at 10 o'clock the morning of October 24th, in charge of 
 Vice President Durant. 
 
 After a comfortable journey they arrived, and spent the night at Col- 
 umbus, where a Pawnee Indian entertainment was arranged. The morn- 
 ing of the 25th at 10 o'clock they left for the 100th meridian, where the 
 train halted for half an hour, "directly opposite the monument designat- 
 ing the point where the line of the road crosses the 100th meridian of 
 longitude, for the purpose of enabling Professor Carbutt to photograph 
 views representing the excursion train''^ — then west to the end of the 
 track at mile post 279, and witnessed the laying of 800 feet of track 
 during their brief stay of 30 minutes, after which they turned their 
 faces homeward, arriving at Omaha in the evening of that day. 
 
 Advent of Iowa Lines Into Council Bluffs 
 
 Chicago & North- Western Sunday, January 17, 1867 
 
 St. Joseph & Council Bluffs (K. C.) .... December 20, 1867 
 M. & M. (Chicago Rock Island & Pacific) .... June 9, 1869 
 
 Burlington & Missouri River in Iowa January 3, 1870 
 
 Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul September 1 , 1 882 
 
 Illinois Central December 18, 1899 
 
 Chicago & Great Western November 1 , 1 903 
 
 Advent of Other Lines Into Omaha 
 
 Omaha & North-Western (C. St. P. M. & O.) . . Summer of 1869 
 
 Omaha & South-Western Summer of 1 869 
 
 Omaha & South-Western absorbed by Burlington & 
 
 Missouri River in Nebraska, 
 
 Terminus at Kearney, Nebraska Summer of 1871 
 
 The St. Joseph & Denver City (St. J. & G. 1.) operated trains from 
 Hastings into Kearney over the Burlington's Hastings-Kearney line 
 from April 1, 1874, to December 1, 1875. 
 
 The Missouri Pacific reached Kansas City during October, 1865. 
 
 The Hannibal and St. Joseph reached St. Joseph, February 14, 1859. 
 
 Historical Incidents 
 
 The first locomotive purchased by the Union Pacific company was 
 the ''General Sherman," Thomas Jordan, engineer. 
 
 Their second engine, the "General McPherson,'' came up the Mis- 
 souri River on the packet, "Colorado," in July, 1865; was set up and 
 made ready for use on August 3, 1865, with Luther O. Farington as 
 engineer. 
 
HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 27 
 
 The first Union Pacific station building stood under the hill, near the 
 foot of Capitol Avenue and Dodge Street. T. C. Morgan was the first 
 agent. 
 
 Crowning Event 
 
 On August 13, 1870, the General Passenger and General Freight 
 Agents of the Central and Union Pacific lines, extended the following 
 invitation to the officers (and their families) of all the more important 
 lines throughout the East, as follows: 
 
 "The General Officers of the Central and Union Pacific Railroads 
 unite in extending to you a most cordial invitation to join in a special 
 excursion of the General Passenger, Ticket and Freight Agents of the 
 railroads of the United States and Canada.'* 
 
 "A special train of palace sleepers will leave Omaha fifteen days 
 previous to the sitting of the General Ticket Agents' convention at 
 Milwaukee, and return in time to accommodate those wishing to attend 
 that meeting.'' 
 
 "The train will pass en route, Great Salt Lake City, the canyons of 
 the Rocky Mountains, the passes of the Sierras, and other points of 
 interest, by daylight." 
 
 "We trust you will find it convenient to join the excursion, and unite 
 pleasure and rest with business, while studying the new relations exist- 
 ing between the great states and territories west of the Missouri River, 
 and the older states of the South and East; and more especially the 
 questions of necessity arising from the new routes opened up by the 
 Pacific Railway in connection with the several steamship lines established 
 between San Francisco and the Trans-Pacific ports of India, China, 
 Japan, Australia and the Sandwich Islands; and the ports of the North 
 and South Pacific." 
 
 "A correct knowledge of all the important facts connected with these 
 new developments can be obtained only by personal investigation. 
 Every railway on the continent is intimately interested. Union and 
 cooperation are required to utilize the advantages arising from the 
 position of our country in relation to the carrying trade between the 
 continents on either side." 
 
 (Signed) 
 
 T, H. Goodman. G. P. A., C. P. R. R. 
 Francis Colton, G. P. A., U. P. R. R. 
 C. W. Smith, G. F. A., C. p. R. R. 
 Wm. Martin, G. F. A.. U. P. R. R. 
 
 Sixteen days later, the following circular was issued: 
 
28 HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 
 
 Union & Central Pacific R. R. Line 
 
 General Passenger Department, Union Pacific Railroad 
 
 Omaha, August 31, 1870. 
 Dear Sirs: 
 
 Respectfully referring to the invitation from this line of August 15th, 
 asking you to join an excursion to the Pacific, you are hereby notified 
 that a special train for the conveyance of those invited will leave Omaha, 
 September 13th, arriving in San Francisco Sunday the 18th, or Monday 
 the 19th, according to stops en route which the party may wish to make. 
 
 Returning, leave San Francisco, Friday evening, the 23rd, arriving 
 at Omaha the 27th, Chicago, the 28th. 
 
 If you wish to remain in San Francisco a longer time than indicated 
 above, you can come earlier than the regular day of starting. 
 
 Joseph Young, Esq., General Superintendent of the Utah Central 
 Railroad, unites in the invitation and will take the special train over 
 his road to Salt Lake City and return. 
 
 (Signed) 
 T. H. Goodman, G. P. A.. C. P. R. R. 
 Francis Colton, G. P. A., U. P. R. R. 
 
 There had gathered at Chicago by September 12th, a representative 
 party of eastern and southern railway traffic officers. With "patronage" 
 divided among the various lines, they proceeded to Council Bluffs, 
 arriving at ten o'clock, the morning of the 13th. 
 
 They ferried the river to the Omaha side and were met by a com- 
 mittee of the common council and shown about the City; at noon were 
 lunched at the Wyoming House, where E. A. Allen, President of the 
 council, welcomed them. Mr. Allen's opening remarks were as follows: 
 
 ''Gentlemen; the train leaves at twelve-twenty; we will do the 
 talking; we expect you to do the eating." 
 
 From this luncheon they were taken directly to the train made up 
 of five Pullman palace drawing-room and sleeping cars, one smoking 
 car, a baggage car, and two coaches with a stationary organ, couches 
 and easy chairs — "All of them palaces of luxury and comfort." 
 
 At noon on Friday they arrived at Ogden, the terminus of the Union 
 Pacific, and were transferred to the Utah Central for Salt Lake City. 
 The first view of Great Salt Lake and its Valley inspired the following 
 beautiful description, worthy of review: 
 
 "Beyond it, for many miles, stretched the green, flowery valley, 
 with its blue lake shimmering in the sun, and bounded at last by an 
 
HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 29 
 
 abrupt wall of mountain. On our left still towered the range, rough 
 and jagged with crevices; its solid base green and gray; its rugged sum- 
 mits white with eternal snow. Side by side, grouped and blended, were 
 summer and winter, Italy and Switzerland; the dreamy Orient and the 
 restless Heart of the West. We would gladly have spent days in this 
 favored place of nature.'* 
 
 On their return to Ogden from Salt Lake, they were transferred 
 from the Pullman palaces of the Union Pacific to the "Silver Palaces" 
 of the Central Pacific. Six of these magnificent coaches, including 
 smoking and baggage cars, were provided. In addition, the super- 
 intendent's car, laden with refreshments and fruit, the gift of generous 
 San Franciscans, brought up the rear. A more beautiful train never 
 stood at a station to receive a more grateful party.'* 
 
 They left Ogden on schedule, on Friday at eight P. M., arriving at 
 the summit of the Sierras at the breakfast hour on Sunday, the 18th. 
 Descriptive of the trip, their reporter said: 
 
 "The ascent from Truckee mingles the grand with the beautiful. 
 The first rays of the sun added brilliancy to the landscape and tinged 
 the mountain peaks with gold. All were pointing to objects of beauty 
 and grandeur as we rounded a mountain peak or pursued our course 
 through a gorge, or darted through a tunnel; on every side and ever, 
 scenes awing, grand and beautiful, passed before." 
 
 A stay of two hours was taken at the summit, during which time 
 "we enjoyed ourselves as children, rambling over the mountain, in search 
 of lichens, mosses and ferns, of which each lady brought away a large 
 selection. Fifteen miles more of the same enchanting scenery; the 
 long ridges of the Sierras, bristling with pine trees like huge chevaux- 
 de-frise, filled up the back-ground. We arrived, after several false 
 alarms, at the real Cape Horn — a scene of sublime grandeur unequaled 
 on the whole Transcontinental Railroad." 
 
 At five P. M. the train reached Sacramento, where the party was 
 joined by Mr. Town, General Superintendent and Mr. Corning, his 
 assistant. The trip was completed to Oakland without incident; then 
 to San Francisco, where old friends were met and the time spent in sight- 
 seeing. 
 
 Mr. Neilson, who spoke at the Agricultural Park Fair then going on, 
 said: "The Pacific Railroad has been built ostensibly to accommodate 
 the traffic of 700,000 people, residents of the Pacific Slope, but there are 
 2,000,000 others in the golden lands of Australia and New Zealand, as 
 active, enterprising, wealthy and fond of travel as are we, to whom 
 our great Transcontinental Railroad is destined to become an accom- 
 
30 HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 
 
 modation fully as great as to us. These colonies have an immense 
 passenger traffic with Great Britain. Their traffic has hitherto passed 
 along two routes. One, by steamer up the Red Sea, thence by railroad 
 across the Isthmus of Suez, then again by steamer up the Mediterranean. 
 This voyage was accomplished in 56 days, at a cost of not less than $600 
 for first-class passage. Second-class passengers were not taken along 
 this line at all. The other route, by sailing-vessels around the 'Horn.' 
 The passage was a stormy, uncomfortable and tedious one that averaged 
 one hundred days and cost $400, first-class. The Red Sea route during 
 three or four months of the year was so exceedingly unhealthful as to 
 deter all persons not absolutely compelled by business to travel along it. 
 
 ''For a moment let us consider what we have to offer as a substitute 
 for these two routes. From England to New York we have the finest 
 steamers in the world, averaging the trip in nine days. [Now less than 
 five days.] Then we have our Grand Transcontinental Railroad with 
 all the varied experiences it opens up to the traveler, accomplishing 
 the space from Ocean to Ocean in less than seven days. [In late years 
 accomplished in ninety to one hundred hours.] Steamers averaging 
 twelve knots per hour on the mild Pacific, though much less than is now 
 steamed on the more stormy Atlantic, would, nevertheless, reach Mel- 
 bourne in twenty days. Thus the whole voyage between England and 
 Australia would occupy but thirty-six or say forty days. With stoppages, 
 we would still accomplish the distance in at least a fortnight less than by 
 the unhealthful Red Sea Route." 
 
 Referring to a bill before Congress asking for Ship Subsidy, Mr. 
 Neilson said: "It is to the interest of the railway men to use their in- 
 fluence to secure the passage of that bill as, without a subsidy, no steam 
 line could compete with the wealthy Peninsula & Oriental Company, 
 which was so largely subsidized by the English Government, and takes 
 the mails and traffic via the Red Sea.'* 
 
 Tuesday was spent in sight-seeing about San Francisco. Wednesday 
 morning an excursion was arranged over the San Jose Railroad, visit- 
 ing San Mateo, the guests of Alvinza Hay ward; then to Fair Oaks, 
 Marilo Park, and Belmont. The following morning a trip was arranged 
 around Golden Gate Harbor on the Pacific Mail Company's ship, 
 "America, '* and on the "Crysopolis," tendered the party by the Cali- 
 fornia Steam Navigation Company. 
 
 Friday, September 23, 1870, was their last day on the Coast. Resolu- 
 tions of appreciation of their treatment by the Central Pacific people 
 were drafted and tendered; a dinner at the Grand Hotel closed the day 
 and all further Coast incidents of the trip. From that dinner they were 
 driven to the docks and ferried to Oakland, "The Brooklyn of San Fran- 
 cisco," where stood the "Silver Palace Train" to convey them homeward. 
 
HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 3 1 
 
 T. A. Weed, in his farewell talk to his San Francisco hosts, said 
 "No country without these vast plains and far-rolling rivers, snow- 
 capped mountains. Golden Gate, and Union and Central Pacific Rail- 
 ways, would be big enough to hold us in the future/' 
 
 "Gentlemen, after all we had read and heard of this colossal enter- 
 prise of laying the iron rail across such vast regions, and upon and 
 around such frowning mountains, we confess our anticipations are 
 exceeded. We are agreeably surprised at the completeness of your 
 grades, at the perfection of your track and the equipment of your road. 
 In these latter respects you can favorably compare with our Eastern 
 roads." 
 
 "It will give us pleasure on our return to commend the road for safety 
 and comfort to all transcontinental travelers." 
 
 Then followed the presentation of a pin of beautiful setting to Mr. 
 T. H. Goodman, G. P. A., C. P. R. R., and another suitable offering of 
 the same sort was given Mr. Beverly R. Keim, A. G. P. A., U. P. R. R. 
 This took place at Humboldt, on the plains. The trip from there to 
 Omaha was without particular interest. In a closing account of the 
 trip, it was said: "And now we have passed over the Pacific roads and 
 comprehend something of the grandeur of this colossal enterprise of 
 laying the iron track across 2,000 miles of plain and mountains. We 
 have seen that the road is a fixed fact. Passing and repassing, we saw 
 it firmly bedded, strongly culverted and bridged, splendidly equipped 
 and efficiently worked. * * *" 
 
 "With its Eastern railroad and Trans-Pacific steam connection, we 
 saw that by an enlightened view and a liberal policy on the part of all 
 concerned, the most sanguine expectations of far-seeing statesmen would 
 be realized and the American Continent made the highway from Europe 
 to Asia, and to the ports of the North and South Pacific, with the proph- 
 ecies of Thomas H. Benton, uttered fifteen years ago in the United 
 States Senate, on the verge of fulfilment." 
 
 Mr. Benton had said: "The world is in motion following the track 
 of the sun to its dip in the Western Ocean. Westward the torrents of 
 emigration direct their course and soon the country between the Mis- 
 souri River and California is to show the most rapid expansion of the 
 human race that the ages of men have ever beheld. It will all be settled 
 up and that with magical rapidity; settlements will promote the road — 
 the road will aggrandize the settlements. Soon it will be a line of towns, 
 villages, cities and farms. ***** Twenty-five centuries have 
 fought for a commercial road to India, we have it as a peaceable posses- 
 sion. Vasco de Gama, in the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope,* and 
 the opening of a new route to India, independent of the Moslem power. 
 
32 HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 
 
 eclipsed in his day the glory of Columbus, balked in the discovery of 
 his well-defined route. Let us vindicate the glory of Columbus by 
 realizing his divine idea of REACHING THE EAST BY GOING 
 WEST/' 
 
 On Tuesday, September 27th, at 2 P. M., this distinguished party 
 reached Omaha in safety and separated; scattering among the four 
 lines crossing Iowa, they reached Chicago twenty-four hours later, 
 accomplishing the return trip from San Francisco in four days and 
 sixteen hours, which closed the incident; in our estimation the greatest 
 railroad excursion in our country's history. 
 
 The completion of the Pacific railways, Omaha to San Francisco, 
 was made a day of national rejoicing, with civic and military parades 
 in Chicago and Eastern cities. But four times so far in our history has 
 there been any such notice taken of industrial achievement: first, the 
 laying of the Atlantic Cable; second, the construction of the Erie Canal; 
 third, the completion of the Pacific railways; fourth, the opening of the 
 Panama Canal. 
 
 The present Union Pacific Railroad Company was incorporated 
 January 1 , 1897, under an act of the Utah Legislature, approved January 
 22, 1897, authorizing the formation of a corporation to "purchase and 
 operate railroads." 
 
 This new corporation purchased all the properties and appurtenances 
 of the old company, acquiring them under a sale made by Judge W. D. 
 Cornish, Special Master of the Court, in front of the freight station, 
 Ninth and Jackson Streets, Omaha, Nebraska, on November 1, 1897, 
 under a bid of $57,564,932.76. (The World's Greatest Auction). 
 
 Up to the spring of 1899, 16.62 miles of second track had been laid 
 on the Union Pacific. By January 1, 1919, 974.10 miles of second track 
 had been laid, and 4.14 of third and fourth track. 
 
 In 1899, there were 12,178 feet of permanent steel and concrete 
 bridging; January 1, 1919, 56,377 feet. 
 
 A total of 1 70 miles of new first main track has been constructed on 
 new locations since 1899, and a total distance saved of 39.78 miles as 
 follows: 
 
 Lookout to Medicine Bow re-alignment 12.03 miles 
 
 Leroy to Bear River " 9.56 " 
 
 Summit to Lane " 8.94 " 
 
 Allen Junction to Dana " 3.87 " 
 
 Howells to Huttons " 3.11 " 
 
 Rawlins to Tipton " 1 .44 " 
 
 Green River to Bryan " .45 " 
 
 Cooper Lake to Lookout " .38 " 
 
 Total 39.78 miles 
 
HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 33 
 
 Grade reductions have brought the roadway to practically a con- 
 trolling maximum of 43 feet to the mile, or .8%; except westbound, 
 Cheyenne to Buford, where the maximum is still 82 feet to the mile; 
 Echo to Baskin, eastbound, 63 feet; Omaha to Summit, 66 feet; Carr 
 to Borie, 65 feet. On the Kansas Division, Ellsworth to Kanopolis, 
 eastbound, 90 feet; Carniero to Kanopolis, westbound, 79 feet. A reduc- 
 tion in curvature has been made from a maximum of about 12 degrees 
 to about 6 degrees. 
 
 Some of the important reconstruction undertaken has been the 
 cutoff from Summit to Lane, at a cost of more than $3,000,000; the 
 relaying and double-tracking of the line from Kansas City to Topeka 
 and the ballasting of the whole distance of 67 miles at a final cost of 
 about $3,000,000; the enlargement and modernization at a cost of a 
 million and a half dollars of the Union Pacific Shops at Omaha, equipped 
 throughout with the latest machinery of the most serviceable sort 
 regardless of expense. 
 
 A new Union Station at Omaha was appropriated for and made 
 ready very soon after the new owners took charge — a standing credit 
 to the City and the Company. 
 
 Then followed general work of improvement, enlarging and re- 
 modeling interior shops, icing plants and station structures and the 
 expansion of Omaha terminal yards with four newly-laid main tracks 
 from the west approach of the bridge to the Summit, increasing its 
 track area 44,635 feet, or nearly eight and one-half miles. 
 
 Tie-treating plants, with a capacity of a million and a half ties per 
 year, have been built at Topeka and Laramie, and something of the 
 greatest concern to the patronizing public has been the installation of an 
 electric signal system complete, from Council Bluffs to Ogden, Kansas 
 City to Ellis, Julesburg to Denver, and Denver to Cheyenne. This 
 improvement covers over 1,598 miles of automatic block signaling, with 
 twenty-four interlocking plants, operating 546 working levers; all at a 
 cost of three million dollars. 
 
 In order to obtain a maximum grade of sixty feet to the mile, an 
 additional track was built, between April and December, 1915, through 
 Weber Canyon, from Wahsatch to Emory, Utah. 600,000 cubic yards 
 of material, weighing 1 ,200,000 tons, was removed, and several extensive 
 fills were made. Traversing the canyon, the new line, which has a much 
 lighter curvature, is some sixty-five feet above the old. All eastward 
 traffic is now routed over the new line, which affords additional view- 
 points for the striking scenery of the gorge. 
 
34 HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 
 
 One of the notable engineering feats of modern times was consummated 
 in December 1916, when the steel bridge of the Union Pacific Railroad 
 crossing the Missouri River from Council Bluffs to Omaha was moved 
 out of the way and a new steel structure was rolled into place and 
 riveted to the former piers. This colossal operation was perfected in 
 about an hour, with practically no disturbance to traffic. The new 
 bridge, which weighs about eleven and a quarter million pounds and 
 cost approximately $1 ,000,000.00, is the third to occupy the historic site. 
 Six railroads in addition to the Union Pacific use the bridge and some 
 300 trains daily pass over its tracks. 
 
 The property has been re-equipped with the new rolling stock (in- 
 cluding power) of the latest and most serviceable pattern, best adapted 
 to its mountain and valley lines, for both passenger and freight service. 
 
 January 1, 1919, found 140 miles of track with 100-pound rail; 
 1,960 miles with 90-pound rail; 720 miles with 80-pound rail; 500 miles 
 with 75-pound rail; the remainder with rails of 70 pounds and less. 
 
 A special page in the appendix shows Union Pacific equipment in 
 detail. 
 
 The present-day press and periodicals have drifted into indulgencies 
 characterizing the Union Pacific as an impoverished, enfeebled "streak 
 of rust," prior to what they seem to designate as the "reconstruction 
 period of 1900." By some it is probably done for the emphasis of com- 
 parison, others are space writers whose utterances reveal an impaired 
 memory or a misdirected pen, for there has never been an hour since the 
 10th day of May, 1869, when this railroad and its companion line, the 
 Central Pacific, have not been well abreast of the times and maintained 
 its creditable physical condition throughout all the states and territories 
 they served. Wisely and well-built and equipped from the first, they 
 have been kept so. 
 
 The pioneer "Hotel train of 1870"* which left Council Bluffs every 
 Thursday at eight A. M., with a six P. M. arrival at Ogden on Saturday, 
 carried the first sleeping and dining-car service across the plains. 
 
 The Union Pacific was the first in the far west to install tourist 
 sleepers to the Coast over its lines and those of its co-operating connec- 
 tions; the first line west of the Missouri River to equip its through trains 
 with dining-car service; and took the first dining cars into the City of 
 Denver. 
 
 *See Appendix "C" 
 
HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 35 
 
 The Union and Central Pacific led all lines to the Coast with their 
 palatial vestibuled "Golden Gate Special" in 1888-9; library, barber 
 chair, and bath — an exclusive Golden Limited, of Pullman's best 
 creation. 
 
 It was also the first line to start exclusive, expedited mail trains and 
 today handles one of the heaviest special mail routes in the United States. 
 
 As early as 1888 the Union Pacific began ballasting with Sherman 
 gravel, which has given it one of the smoothest and cleanest road beds in 
 America. 
 
 The first Sherman gravel went down between mile 4.53 and 4.80; 
 Sherman gravel ballasting began actively under the presidency of S. H. 
 H. Clark in 1892, and was under suspense only during a part of its re- 
 ceivership period. 
 
 The Union Pacific was the first to semaphore its railroad cross- 
 ings and the first in this field to electric light its trains and engines; 
 the first to equip itself with electric block and interlocking plants, the 
 first to double-track its line and the first to install composite telephones 
 along its railway wires. 
 
 There has never been a year when the Union Pacific, Denver Pacific 
 and Kansas Pacific, taken together, have not been self-sustaining. 
 
 They went down and into receivership on October 13, 1893, under 
 the weight of their outside obligations, such as the Union Pacific, Denver 
 & Gulf; Fort Worth & Denver City, and some other lines whose secur- 
 ities they had guaranteed. 
 
 The receivership was essentially heneficia dissimulata; something 
 of this sort was necessary to relieve them lawfully and effectually from 
 Government interlacement of interests and to free them from side lines 
 sapping their substance. It was, therefore, a process of filtration and 
 refinement unregretted. ^> ~ 
 
 The fertility and dependable earning-power of this great property 
 soon passed within range of the keen discernment of Mr, Edward H. 
 Harriman, and seemingly stood first in his favor. It has been splendidly 
 responsive to the quickening touch of his master hand. 
 
 A Napoleonic spirit of enterprise distinguished Mr. Harriman and 
 his associate owners and managers among all others in the field of Ameri- 
 can transportation. 
 
 Without stint or stickle, millions were appropriated and devoted to 
 betterments which brought the property up to its present new century 
 standard. 
 
 It is a matter of greatest regret with the people of the west that our 
 late President could not have been longer spared to see the full fruition 
 of this magnificent investment; for he builded even better than he knew. 
 
36 HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 
 
 Appendix **A'' 
 
 First Annual Report Made of Union Pacific Earnings and a 
 Comparison with the Present Earnings 
 
 The first report was made by T. E. Sickles, Chief Engineer and 
 General Superintendent, for the calendar year of 1870. The figures 
 shown in comparison are from the Annual Report for the calendar year 
 of 1918. 
 
 1870 1918 
 
 (Calendar) (Calendar) 
 
 Freight earnings $3,058,514.71 $72,679,801.68 
 
 Passenger earnings 3.818.627.55 18,055.066.36 
 
 Mail earnings 274.513.58 1,662.821.56 
 
 Express earnings 281.691.76 2.250.888.28 
 
 Miscellaneous earnings 191.929.53 3.794.787.10 
 
 Total $7,625,277.13 $98,443,364.98 
 
 Passengers carried 142,623 4.957.924 
 
 Tons freight one mile— local 51,670,294 772,962,861 
 
 Tons freight one mile— through 20,108.812 8.772.024.951 
 
 Tons freight one mile— total 71.779,106 9,544,987.812 
 
HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 
 
 37 
 
 Appendix **B'' 
 
 Comparison of Equipment Owned by the Union 
 Pacific at the End of the Calendar Year of 
 1870 and the End of the Calendar Year of 1918 
 
 MOTIVE POWER 
 
 Calendar Year 1870 
 
 Passenger engines 27 
 
 Freight engines 118 
 
 Switch engines 5 
 
 Total 150 
 
 Calendar Year 1918 
 U. P. R. R. and O. S. L. R. R. 
 
 Passenger engines 369 
 
 Freight engines 756 
 
 Switch engines 1 89 
 
 Total 
 
 1.314 
 
 CARS 
 
 Coaches 40 
 
 Baggage cars 11 
 
 Mail cars 8 
 
 Express cars 8 
 
 Pay cars 2 
 
 Officers' cars 2 
 
 Lincoln car 1 
 
 Emigrant cars 22 
 
 Cabooses 62 
 
 Wreckers and derrick cars 6 
 
 Flat cars 1 , 1 65 
 
 Box cars 1,154 
 
 Stock cars 48 
 
 Dump cars 52 
 
 fNow included with baggage cars. 
 *Now included with coal cars. 
 
 Coaches 171 
 
 Baggage cars 1 93 
 
 Mail cars 11 
 
 Express cars f 
 
 Pay cars 
 
 Officers' cars 21 
 
 Lincoln car 
 
 Emigrant cars 
 
 Cabooses 589 
 
 Wreckers and derrick cars 26 
 
 Flat cars 1 ,563 
 
 Box cars 1 8,722 
 
 Stock cars 5,958 
 
 Dump cars * 
 
 Coal cars 7,049 
 
 Ballast cars 2,671 
 
 Steam shovels 8 
 
 Tool cars 1 72 
 
 Water and tank cars 177 
 
 Chair cars 1 85 
 
 Composite cars 8 
 
 Dining cars 64 
 
 Instruction cars 3 
 
 Observation cars 11. 
 
 Motor cars 24 
 
 Miscellaneous 59 
 
 Baggage and Mail 64 
 
 Baggage, Mail and Passenger 12 
 
 Baggage and Passenger 33 
 
 Motor Trailers 10 
 
 Snow Plows 28 
 
 Boarding Cars 1 .900 
 
 Ballast Distributing 21 
 
 Pile Drivers 11 
 
 Roadway Box 237 
 
 Roadway Flat 376 
 
 Roadway Gondola 58 
 
 Parlor Cars 2 
 
38 HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 
 
 Appendix ''C' 
 
 The Hotel Train of 1870* 
 
 Under date of October 26, 1909, Mr. W. A. Deuel, then General 
 Manager of the Denver, Northwestern & Pacific Railway Company (The 
 Moffat Line), wrote us from Denver, Colorado, as follows: 
 
 "The hotel train was put on during the Hammond and Mead Admin- 
 istration in the spring of 1870. The original scheme was to run the 
 train and train-crews from Omaha to San Francisco, using a Union 
 Pacific and Central Pacific conductor on each train. For some reason 
 the Central Pacific declined to enter the agreement, and the Union 
 Pacific discontinued the train after running it for several months. Ten 
 dollars excess fare was charged. The train was very popular with the 
 traveling public." 
 
 Mr. Deuel recalls that this "Hotel Train of 1 870" was of complete 
 Pullman construction throughout; three sleepers, one diner and buffet 
 car, and one baggage car. It was a weekly train; left Council Bluffs 
 every Thursday morning at eight o'clock, and was due at Ogden at six 
 o'clock in the evening of the Saturday following. Returning, it left 
 Ogden Monday morning, arriving at Omaha Wednesday evening. It 
 was double-crewed, having two conductors and baggagemen and four 
 brakemen. Mr. Deuel, who was its first conductor, handled the train 
 to North Platte and was there relieved by Conductor Heath, who took 
 charge of the train from North Platte to Laramie. At Laramie Conductor 
 Deuel resumed and completed the trip to Ogden. Each conductor was 
 supported by his own crew. 
 
 The train was handled with hand brakes and link and pin couplers 
 and was scheduled at an average speed of twenty miles an hour. 
 
 This service was continued for a period of about six months during 
 the open, or summer, season of 1870. 
 
 *Referred to on page 34 of the text. 
 
HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 39 
 
 Appendix *'D" 
 The Great Railroad Wedding — Driving the Last Spike 
 
 American history, in its triumphs of skill, labor and genius, knows no 
 event of greater, thrilling interest, than the scene which attended the 
 driving of the last spike, which united the East and West with the bands 
 of iron. The completion of a project so grand in conception, so success- 
 ful in execution, and so fruitful and rich in promise, was worthy of 
 world-wide celebrity. 
 
 Upon the 10th of May, 1869, the rival roads approached each other, 
 at Promontory, Utah, and two lengths of rails were left for the day's 
 work. At 8 A. M., spectators began to arrive; at quarter to 9 A. M., 
 the whistle of the Central Pacific Railroad was heard, and the first 
 train arrived, bringing a large number of passengers. Then two addi- 
 tional trains arrived on the Union Pacific Railroad from the East. At 
 a quarter of 11 A. M., the Chinese workmen commenced leveling the 
 bed of the road, with picks and shovels, preparatory to placing the ties. 
 At a quarter past eleven the Governor's train (Governor Stanford) 
 arrived. The engine was gaily decorated with little flags and ribbons 
 — the red, white and blue. The last tie put in place was eight feet 
 long, eight inches wide and six inches thick. It was made of California 
 Jaurel, finely polished, and ornamented with a silver escutcheon, bearing 
 the following inscription: 
 
 'THE LAST TIE LAID ON THE PACIFIC RAILROAD, MAY 
 10, 1869." 
 
 Then follow the names of the directors and officers of the Central 
 Pacific Company, and of the presenter of the tie. 
 
 The exact point of contact of the road was 1,085.8 miles west from 
 Omaha, which allowed 690 miles to the Central Pacific Railroad, from 
 Sacramento, for their portion of the work. The engine Jupiter, of the 
 Central Pacific Railroad and the engine 1 1 9 of the Union Pacific Rail- 
 road, moved up to within 30 feet of each other. 
 
 Just before noon the announcement was sent to Washington, that 
 the driving of the LAST SPIKE of the railroad which connected the 
 Atlantic and Pacific, would be communicated to all the telegraph offices 
 in the country the moment the work was done, and instantly a large 
 crowd gathered around the offices of the Western Union Telegraph 
 Company to receive the welcome news. 
 
 The manager of the company placed a magnetic ball in a conspicuous 
 position where all present could witness the performance, and connected 
 the same with the main lines, notifying the various offices of the country 
 that he was ready. New Orleans, New York and Boston instantly 
 answered "Ready," 
 
40 HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 
 
 In San Francisco, the wires were connected with the fire-alarm in 
 the tower, where the heavy ring of the bell might spread the news 
 immediately over the city, as quick as the event was completed. 
 
 Waiting for some time in impatience, at last came this message 
 from Promontory Point, at 2:27 P. M.: 
 
 "ALMOST READY. HATS OFF, PRAYER IS BEING 
 OFFERED.'' 
 
 A silence for the prayer ensued; at 2:40 P. M., the bell tapped again, 
 and the officer at Promontory said: 
 
 ''WE HAVE GOT DONE PRAYING, THE SPIKE IS ABOUT 
 TO BE PRESENTED.'' 
 
 Chicago replied: "WE UNDERSTAND. ALL ARE READY IN 
 THE EAST." 
 
 From Promontory Point: "ALL READY NOW; THE SPIKE 
 WILL SOON BE DRIVEN. THE SIGNAL WILL BE THREE 
 DOTS FOR THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE BLOWS." 
 
 For a moment the instrument was silent, and then the hammer 
 of the magnet tapped the bell, ONE, TWO, THREE, the signal. Another 
 pause of a few seconds, and the lightning came flashing eastward, 2,400 
 miles to Washington; and the blows of the hammer on the spike were 
 repeated instantly in telegraphic accents upon the bell of the Capitol. 
 At 2:47 P. M., Promontory Point gave the signal, "DONE;" and the 
 great American Continent was successfully spanned. Immediately 
 thereafter, flashed over the line, the following official announcement 
 to the Associated Press: 
 
 Promontory Summit, Utah, May 10: THE LAST RAIL IS LAIDl 
 THE LAST SPIKE IS DRIVEN! THE PACIFIC RAILROAD IS 
 COMPLETED! The point of junction is 1,086 miles west of the 
 Missouri River, and 690 miles east of Sacramento City. 
 
 LELAND STANFORD, 
 Central Pacific Railroad. 
 
 T. C. DURANT, 
 SIDNEY DILLON. 
 JOHN DUFF, 
 
 Union Pacific Railroad. 
 
 Such were the telegraphic incidents that attended the completion 
 of the greatest work of the age — but during these few expectant moments, 
 the scene itself at Promontory Point, was very impressive. 
 
 After the rival engines had moved up toward each other, a call 
 was made for the people to stand back, in order that all might have a 
 
HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 41 
 
 chance to see. Prayer was offered by Rev. Dr. Todd of Massachusetts. 
 Brief remarks were then made by General Dodge and Governor Stan- 
 ford. Three cheers were gi\en for the Government of the UNITED 
 STATES, for the Railroad, for the Presidents, for the Star Spangled 
 Banner, for the laborers, and for those respectively, who furnished 
 the means. Four spikes were then furnished — two gold and two silver, 
 by Montana, Idaho, California and Nevada. They were each about 
 seven inches long, and a little larger than the iron spike. 
 
 Dr. Harkness, of Sacramento, in presenting to Governor Stanford 
 a spike of pure gold, delivered a short and appropriate speech. 
 
 The Hon. F. A. Tuttle, of Nevada, presented Dr. Durant with a 
 spike of silver, saying: 'TO THE IRON OF THE EAST. AND THE 
 GOLD OF THE WEST, NEVADA ADDS HER LINK OF SILVER 
 TO SPAN THE CONTINENT AND WELD THE OCEANS." 
 
 Governor Spofford, presenting another spike, said: ''RIBBED IN 
 IRON, CLAD IN SILVER, AND. CROWNED WITH GOLD, ARI- 
 ZONA PRESENTS HER OFFERING TO THE ENTERPRISE 
 THAT HAS BANDED THE CONTINENT AND WELDED THE 
 OCEANS.'' 
 
 Dr. Durant stood on the north side of the tie, and Governor Stan- 
 ford on the south side. At a given signal, these gentlemen struck the 
 spikes, and at the same instant the electric spark was sent through the 
 wires, east and west. The two locomotives moved up until they touched 
 each other, and a bottle of wine was poured, as a libation on the last rail. 
 
 A number of ladies graced the ceremonies with their presence, and 
 at 1 P. M., under an almost cloudless sky, and in the presence of about 
 eleven hundred people, the greatest railroad on earth was completed. 
 
 A sumptuous repast was given to all the guests and railroad officers, 
 and toward evening the trains each moved away and darkness fell upon 
 the scene of joy and triumph. 
 
 Immediately after the ceremonies, the laurel tie was removed for 
 preservation, and in its place an ordinary one substituted. Scarcely 
 had it been put in its place, before a grand advance was made upon it 
 by the curiosity seekers and relic hunters and divided into numberless 
 mementoes, and as fast as each tie was demolished, and a new one sub- 
 stituted, this too, shared the same fate, and probably within the first 
 six months, there were many new ties used. It is said that even one 
 of the rails did not escape the grand battery of knife and hack, and the 
 original had soon to be removed to give place to another. 
 
42 HISTORY OF THE UNION PACIFIC 
 
 A curious incident, connected with the laying of the last rails, has 
 been little noticed hitherto. Two lengths of rails, 56 feet, had been 
 omitted. The Union Pacific people brought up their pair of rails, and 
 the work of placing them was done by Europeans. The Central Pacific 
 people then laid their pair of rails, the labor being performed by Mon- 
 golians. The foremen, in both cases, were Americans, Here, near the 
 center of the great American Continent, were representatives of Asia, 
 Europe, and America, America directing and controlling. 
 
Copyright applied for May, 1919 
 Union Pacific Railroad 
 
I