THE NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD.
The Northwest.--Its great extent and character.--Jay Cooke, Esq.--The
Northern Pacific Railroad and its advantages.--The general line of the
road.--The shortest route to Asia.--The Red River valley.--Puget
Sound.--The future of our country.
The vast reach of country lying between the Bed River and the Cascade
range of mountains possesses, to some extent, a climate little inferior
in healthfulness to that of Minnesota itself. The same dry, westerly
winds sweep over it, and are even more marked in their continental
character. Invalids will undoubtedly find as great advantages arising
from a residence there as in any other part of the Union, yet for the
present there are no means of easy access to any portion of this immense
district. By-and-by this will be changed.
The many natural curiosities abounding in this little-explored region
would alone prove sufficient to attract thither great numbers of our
people, but when the almost unparalleled attractions of the climate are
added, the travel and immigration must eventually become enormous.
The Northern Pacific Railroad,--the power which is destined to
transform these Territories into States,--is being pushed rapidly
westward, with the promise of an early completion.
To the energy of Jay Cooke, of Philadelphia, the distinguished banker
and philanthropist, will belong, perhaps, the chief honor of its
completion. Not that this great enterprise might not be begun and
carried to a triumphal close by others,--since the government subsidies
would, in time, together with the demand for this additional highway
across the continent, enlist men of resolute character and ample
means,--yet, withal, every new and great undertaking has somewhere a
correspondingly great spirit, impelling self and co-workers to the
contest and achievement of the desired ends, and we recognize in this
vast enterprise the hand of this indefatigable man. Of course the able
and influential associates in the board of directors must share in the
honor of this national work, and their names will go down in history as
among the benefactors of the country in which they lived.[E]
How lightly we speak now of continental roads since one is a veritable
fact. Novelties, to Americans, pass rapidly away.
How few realized, in 1860, that the coming decade would witness the
completion of one and the beginning of another iron road across the
continent. Ah! those brief years brought revolution in many things. The
social fabric of half the Union was not less overturned in this brief
period than were the accustomed avenues along which ran the world's
trade and commerce.
The Northern Pacific Railroad was chartered by Congress in 1864, and was
approved by President Lincoln on the second of July of that year. It has
no government aid beyond a right of way and cession of the public lands
along its line; each alternate section for a width of twenty miles in
the States and forty miles in the territories. This, as is estimated,
will give, according to the survey of Gen. W.M. Roberts, about fifty
millions of acres,[F] large portions of which are known to be very
fertile, while much will lie in the rich mining districts of Montana
Territory.
This generous donation of public lands by the people is well deserved by
this second great national enterprise. It is the only method whereby the
isolated and distant portions of the interior can become utilized. The
value of the remaining lands of the government will become tenfold what
the whole would be if left to time and private enterprise for their
development. The work was actively begun in 1870 on the Duluth end of
this road; and it is expected that the present year (1871) will see it
completed to the Red River, a distance of about two hundred and
thirty-three miles from the above-named city. Quite a number of miles of
iron had been laid at the time of our late visit, and as many more miles
graded; with half a thousand men actively engaged in forwarding the vast
undertaking.
The road is already completed to the Mississippi above Crow Wing, and
from there will follow in nearly a straight line to Fort Abercrombie,
the head of navigation on the Bed River. Here it will unite with the St.
Paul and Pacific Railroad (owned and operated by the Northern Pacific
Railway, a branch of which it now is), already in running order half the
distance from St. Paul. This line, with all its rights and franchises,
has been recently purchased by the Northern Pacific, and will greatly
aid in supporting the main trunk when completed.
In addition to the force on the eastern end of this road, there has been
assembled at the Pacific terminus an able corps of engineers and
contractors, who have already commenced the construction there, and thus
the great road across the continent will be pushed to final completion,
probably within five years from the first commencement of the
undertaking.
The road, as located by Engineer Roberts in his report, is laid from
the head-waters of Lake Superior in a nearly due westerly line across
the State of Minnesota to Red River, near Fort Abercrombie; thence
"across the Dakota and Missouri Rivers to the valley of the Yellow
Stone, and along that valley to Bozeman's Pass, through the Belt range
of mountains; thence down the Gallatin Valley, crossing the Madison
River, and over to the Jefferson Valley, and along that to the Deer
Lodge Pass of the Rocky Mountains; thence along Clarke's Valley to Lake
Pend d'Oreille, and from this lake across the Columbia plain to Lewis or
Snake River; down that to its junction with the Columbia; along the
Columbia to the Cowlitz, and over the portage to Puget Sound, along its
southern extremity, to any part which may be selected."
A branch road is to follow the Columbia River to the vicinity of
Portland, together with a link connecting the two western arms.
By this route, which may be materially departed from in the final
location, the distance will swell to near two thousand miles between the
two grand termini, and it is estimated will cost, with its equipments,
from seventy-five to one hundred millions of dollars.
The route of this road is known to be more feasible than was that of the
present line to California. Its elevations are much less, and the
natural obstructions of the mountain ranges more easily surmounted,
while the climate invites, on account of its high sanitary character,
both the immigrant and invalid.
The line from Omaha to California shows that for nine hundred miles the
road has an average height above the sea of over five thousand feet, the
lowest point in that stretch being over four thousand; while the
corresponding distance, embracing the mountain ranges, along this
Northern Pacific line, is near two thousand feet lower than the other,
giving, in this difference in elevation, according to the usual
estimate, over nine degrees advantage in temperature. This becomes
important in an agricultural view, as well as in the immediate and
constant benefit in the increased facility for operating a railway.
In addition, the curvature of the thermal lines of the continent bear
away to the northward of the surveyed route of this great enterprise,
insuring almost entire freedom from snow obstructions other than is
common to any of the principal railway lines in the States themselves.
The extent of country tributary to this road is entirely unparalleled by
that of any other. Along the present finished continental line an
uninhabitable alkaline desert stands across and along its pathway for
many miles, while the Northern line leaps from valley to valley, all
more or less productive, and in which large supplies of coal and timber
are found sufficient for ages to come.
Of this region, and the general line of this road, the Hon. Schuyler
Colfax writes as follows:--
"Along the line of the Northern Pacific Railroad, as it follows up the
water-courses, the Missouri and the Yellowstone on this side, and
descends by the Valley of the Columbia on the other, a vast body of
agricultural land is waiting for the plow, with a climate almost exactly
the same as that of New York, except that, with less snow, cattle in the
larger portion of it can subsist on the open range in winter. Here, if
climate and fertility of soil produce their natural result, when
railroad facilities open this now isolated region to settlement, will
soon be seen waving grain-fields, and happy homes, and growing towns,
while ultimately a cordon of prosperous States, teeming with population,
and rich in industry and consequent wealth, will occupy that now
undeveloped and almost inaccessible portion of our continental area.
"But this road is also fortunate in its pathway across the two ranges of
mountains which tested so severely the Pacific Railroads built on the
central line, and the overcoming of which reflected such well-deserved
honor on their energetic builders. At the Deer Lodge Pass, in Montana,
where it crosses the Rocky Mountains, its altitude above the sea is
three thousand five hundred feet less than the Union Pacific Railroad at
Sherman, which is said to be the highest point at which a locomotive can
be found in the world. And on the Pacific side of the continent it is
even more fortunate. From Arizona up to the Arctic Circle the Columbia
is the only river which, has torn its way through that mighty range, the
Andes of North America, which in California is known as the Sierras, but
which in Oregon changes its name to the Cascades. Nature has thus
provided a pathway for the Northern Pacific Road through these
mountains, the scaling of which, on the other line, at an elevation of
over seven thousand feet (a most wonderful triumph of engineering), cost
the Central Pacific millions of dollars, and compelled them for seventy
miles to maintain a grade of over one hundred feet to the mile--twice
the maximum of the Northern Pacific at the most difficult points on its
entire route.
"It is fortunate, also, in its terminus on the Pacific coast. No one who
has not been there can realize the beauty of Puget's Sound and its
surroundings. One hundred miles long, but so full of inlets and straits
that its navigable shore line measures one thousand seven hundred and
sixty miles, dotted with lovely islets, with gigantic trees almost to
the water's edge, with safe anchorage everywhere, and stretching
southward, without shoals or bars, from the Straits of Fuca to the
capital and centre of Washington Territory, it will be a magnificent
_entrepôt_ for the commerce of that grandest ocean of the world, the
Pacific."
One of the chief districts to be opened to trade and commerce by the
construction of this road is that known as Prince Rupert's Land, in
British America. This region of country has been recently organized
under the name of Manitoba, and embraces the rich and extensive valleys
of the Red, Assiniboine, and Saskatchewan Rivers. A population of
several thousands already inhabit this section, and a branch railway is
to be constructed along the valley of the Red River from the point of
crossing by the Northern Pacific Road, and under its immediate auspices.
The influence on this people, whose interests will then be almost wholly
identified with those of our own, cannot be doubtful. It requires no
prophecy to determine their ultimate destiny. The time is not distant
when all of British America must become "one and indivisible" with us,
and the knell of parting government is likely to be sooner sounded in
the region of the Red River than elsewhere along the line of our
frontier.
An additional advantage inheres in this Northern Pacific line of prime
importance, and that is in the fact of its offering to commerce a
shorter route by several hundred miles to the Pacific coast than that
which now exists. To Japan and China, from Puget Sound, is likewise, by
more than half a thousand miles, less than from the port of San
Francisco. This difference is sufficient to give, eventually, to this
route the carrying trade of those countries.
Who can question the greatness and power which lies slumbering along
the line of this royal road, through which, as through a great, pulsing
artery, the life,--even now already dawning,--will soon throb with a
force which shall vitalize this Territory, vast as an empire, and richer
than the fabled realms of an Arabian tale.
FOOTNOTES:
[E] _Board of Directors_.--Messrs. J. Gregory Smith, R.D. Rice, Thomas
H. Canfield, W.B. Ogden, William G. Morehead, W.G. Fargo, B.P. Cheney,
Geo. W. Cass, Frederick Billings, William Windom, James Stinson, Samuel
M. Felton, Charles B. Wright. _Trustees_,--Messrs. Jay Cooke and J.
Edgar Thompson.
[F] The line, it is now judged, will give about sixty millions of acres.