No. 1 



EXTRACT 



IROM TlIK 



ANNUAL REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF WAR. 



DECEMBEK, 1865. 



The reports of the officers employed under the appropriations made for explorations and 

 surveys to ascertain tlie most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Missis- 

 sippi river to the Pacific ocean, were submitted to Congress on the 27th of February last, v/ith 

 a report from this department, giving a general sketch of the country over which they extended, 

 a recapitulation of their results, and a comparison of their distinguishing characteristics ; from 

 which it was concluded that of the routes examined, the most practicable and economical was 

 that of the thirty-second ]iarallel. A report is herewith submitted from the officer in this 

 department charged with the revision of the work of the several parties, and I I'efer to it for 

 additional information derived from materials collected, on a further examination of them by 

 himself, and the several officers who made the particular surveys, as well as for the results of 

 explorations carried on during the past year. 



When the report was made, in February last, many of the maps, drawings, and scientific 

 papers, intended to form part of the report, and which could only be prepared after an elaborate 

 examination of the materials collected, had not been completed for want of time, and it became 

 necessary to substitute hastily prepared drawings and preliminary reports. This was particu- 

 larly the case with regard to the work on the route of the thirty-fifth parallel. A minute 

 examination of the material collected in that survey has resulted in showing the route more 

 practicable than it was at first represented to be, and in reducing to nearly one-half the original 

 estimates of the officer in charge of the survey, which, indeed, seemed, when they were sub- 

 mitted, to be extravagant, and were noted in the report from this department as probably 

 excessive. 



Another feature of interest developed in the course of the further examination of the work on 

 the route of the thirty-second parallel is, that the Colorado desert, which is traversed by the route 

 for a distance of 133 miles, and which, in the report referred to, was noted as consisting of a soil 

 that needed only water to render it highly productive, is, in fact, the delta of the Colorado river, 

 and, according to barometric levels, is so much lower than that stream as to be easily irrigated 

 from it. Thus, there is every reason to believe 4,500 square miles of soil of great fertility, of 

 which nearly one-half is in our territory, may be brought into cultivation in one unbroken 

 tract along the route. 



