THE OVEELAND ROUTE COUNCIL BLUFFS TO OGDEN. 



17 



Although Fremont; the seat of Dodge County, is on the flood plain 

 of Platte Valley, where few exposures of rock can be seen, it stands 



near the contact of the Dakota sandstone and the 

 Fremont. overlying Benton shale, a fact determined by obser- 



vations made both north and south of the valley. 

 The sandstone * may be seen in the blufls at the south 

 end of the wagon bridge south of the city, but the 



Elevatbii 1,196 feet. 



Population 8,718. 

 Omaha 46 miles. 



shale is not exposed, 

 tied by loess. 



ainly 



main line of the old trail from 



Uaiiiornia ana Urcgon, wmcii before the Union racihc was built was 

 known as the Overland Trail.^ In front of the station stands a rough- 



^ The rocks in eastern Nebraska referred 

 to the Dakota or basal sandstone of the 

 Upper Cretaceous series are about 300 feet 

 thick and consist of sand with clay and 

 local beds of conglomerate. The sand- 

 stone was named for Dakota City, S. Dak., 

 where collections were made of fossil 

 plants that were described by Profs. Ileer 

 and Lesquereux and later became known 

 as the characteristic Dakota flora, for 

 many years the oldest deciduous-leaved 

 flora known in North America. This flora 

 comprises large and well-preserved leaves 

 of poplars, willowsj oaks^ alders, birches, 

 beeches, sycamores, persimmons, tulip 

 trees, magnolias, and sassafras and shows 

 that many of the familiar and still domi- 

 nant types of plants had already been 

 firmly established at this remote time. 

 However, none of the particular species 

 of Dakota plants here discovered are 

 known to have survived in this region 

 beyond the close of the Dakota ei>och. 



surface of the country from the Eocky 

 Mountains eastward to a maximum dis- 

 tancG of 1,000 miles or more. It furnishes 

 excellent water to the citizens of 11 

 States. 



^ Although four transcontinental rail- 

 road routes were surveyed by the Govern- 

 ment, the results being published in 11 

 large volumes, the first line built, the 

 Union Pacific, was explored and located 

 by private enterprise. The Overland 

 Trail seemed to offer the best advantages 

 for railroad construction, inasmuch as it 

 utihzed the most feasible passage over the 

 mountains. Gen. Grenville M. Dodge, 

 the chief engineer of the Union Pacific 

 during the period of construction, says of 

 it: "This route was made by the buffalo, 

 next used by the Indians, then by the fur 

 traders, next by the Mormons, and then 

 by the overland immigrants to California 

 and Oregon. It was known as the great 

 Platte Valley route. On this trail, or 

 The Dakota is exposed in places in I close to it, were built the Union and Cen- 

 the bluffs of Platte Eiver from Fremont tral Pacific railroads to California and the 



to Plattsmouth. It is one of the greatest 

 water-bearing formations in America. It 

 rises gently toward the west, jilthough 

 covered by younger rocks, and crops out 

 again in the foothills of the Eocky Moun- 

 tains (see fig. 3), where the surface waters 

 enter it. These waters slowly percolate 

 through its sands for about 450 miles to 

 supply the numerous wells in the Platte 

 Valley and elsewhere. The Dakota sand- 

 stone extends 400 miles or more north of 

 the Union Pacific Railroad and an equal 

 distance to the south and underlies the 



Oregon Short Line branch of the Union 

 Pacific to Oregon/' Its historj^ as a defi- 

 nite route seems to have begun in 1804, 

 when Lewis and Clark visited and de- 

 scribed the locality that became its east- 

 ern terminus. A fur-trading company 

 sent out by John Jacob Astor in 1810, 

 which founded Astoria, Oreg., at the 

 mouth of Columbia Eiver, the following 

 year, returned by a route which had never 

 before been traversed, but which corre- 

 sponded essentially with that later known 

 as the Oregon Trail. Astor had planned 



92213°— Bull. 612—15- 



2 



