Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume III

FIRST AMERICAN TRANS-CONTINENTAL RAILROAD. 131 ested in the promotion of the trans-continental railroad, but by the employees of other systems building westward from Chicago. These last did not expect or desire to compete for the construction or to gain control of the Pacific Railroad, but wished to know the point from which it would jump off at the eastward end, so that they might aim their own pioneer lines, which were reaching out like long tentacles from points of vantage in the middle west towards that point, and make connections of great value when the work was done. Up and down the prairies small bands of surveyors ran their lines, at all latitudes between the Gulf of Mexico and the Canadian border line—most thickly along the forty-second parallel, near which over twenty-five thousand miles of re- connaissances are said to have been made. On the whole the country was open and rolling, with a constantly ascending grade from the Missouri to the Rockies, easy for the location of transit lines and offering few engineering difficulties as we look upon them to-day. But this whole territory swarmed with savage Indians, whose delight it had been for years to cut off the emigrant train, stampede the horses and cattle, murder the men, and capture the women and children. Hence the small parties of engineers work- Indian • t)ackwar<js anj forwards Hostility. ° offered the same inducement to bloodshed and theft, and few would have escaped had it not been for the guard of cavalry that was furnished. All through the reports of the engineers we read of Indian hostilities, of the unsettled state of the coun- try, and how certain reconnaissances had to be given up because of the insufficient garrison at Government posts. As a result of the preliminary surveys it was decided that Omaha, on the western bank of the Missouri, must be the starting-point. But for a time nothing was done. Various events conspired against a scheme for a trans- continental railroad coming to a successful The Central Pacific Company. issue. Sectional jealousies, arising out of the slavery question, prevented a definite marking out of the actual line to be taken. The South would find no money for a Northern route ; in the North no capital could be raised for a Southern line. Politics eventually helped matters, how- ever. In 1861 a few small merchants of Sacramento organized the Central Pacific Company (now merged into the Southern Pacific) to carry a track eastwards to the boundary of California to meet a line which., they urged, should be built westwards from the Missouri. The Sacramento merchants received support from intelligent opinion in the Eastern States, where, apart from the lure of the supposed Asian traffic that a trans-continental track would create, it was now realized that the isolation of a single state had its dangers. The building of the suggested railroad would bind California more closely to the Northern—anti-slavery—interest, and would enable the United States to repel with greater promptness any attack on the coast ports, and to control the Indian outbreaks which at times assumed serious proportions. Accordingly, in 1862, Congress subsidized corporations to build the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads, starting from Omaha and Sacramento respectively. The United States Govern- Charter of 1862. ment undertook to issue to the said corporations thirty-year bonds, bearing 6 per cent, interest, to be delivered in blocks as each forty miles of track was completed, examined, and accepted. For the plain divisions the subsidy was fixed at $16,000 per mile ; for mountain divisions, at $48,000 per mile ; and at $32,000 per mile for the desert divisions, where, though the “ going ” would be easy, the transport of men and materials would prove a difficult and costly business. In addition, alternate sections of land flanking the railway were allotted to the promoters.