24 



GUIDEBOOK OF THE WESTERN UNITED STATES. 



Grand Island, the seat of Hall County, is a railroad center, a 



division station of the Union Pacific, where extensive 

 shops are maintained, and a city of considerable com- 

 mercial importance, having numerous factories and 

 mills. It is in an agricultural district where the raising 

 of sugar beets is one of the principal industries. About 

 7,000,000 pounds of granulated sugar is produced here every year. 



The first known reference to Grand Island is contained in the 

 account of Robert Stuart, an employee of John Jacob As tor, who 



left Astoria in 1812 and traveled eastward over what was later 



Grand Island. 



Elevation 1,861 feet. 

 Population 10,326. 

 Omaha 153 miles. 



known as the Oreg 

 made through 



1 oumej 



was 



a country then wholly unknown. '^Le Grande Isle'' 

 was the first place he was able to recognize on his way east. Grand 

 Island, a strip of land about 42 miles long, included between two 

 channels of the Platte River, had previously been visited by trappers, 

 most of whom were French Canadians, but white people did not 

 settle here until 1857. In 1866 the Union Pacific was built north 

 of the north channel and the site of the city of Grand Island thus 

 determined. 



of central North America lay beneath 

 the sea, but "svith the Tertiary period 



began a new order of things. The sea, 

 which had extended from Iowa to Utah, 

 was expelled by uplift from the interior 

 of Norih America, and in the midst of 

 the region the sea formerly covered the 

 Rocky Mountains began to rise. It is 

 this change from a quiescent sea to 

 mountainous uplands, with all the dis- 

 turbances attending it, that marks the 

 division in geologic time between the 



sea, was changed to dry land and, so 

 far as is known, has never since been 

 covered with sea water. The plains were 



low — not much above 

 Rivers heading in the 

 newly upheaved mountains washed sedi- 

 ment out upon low-lying plains, where 

 it accumulated because the streams were 



to carry it away. This 



doubtless very 

 sea level at first 



too slug»j:ish 



Cretaceous and the Tertiary period. If in North America during Cretaceous 

 at the present time the waters were 



newly emerged land became inhabited 

 by animals, some of which were doubt- 

 less developed from ancestors that lived 



expelled from the Gulf of Mexico and 

 high mountains raised in their place, the 

 ulting changes in climate, geography, 

 etc., would be less conspicuous than 

 those which marked the change from 

 Cretaceous to Tertiary in the interior of 

 North America. 



The earth movements that formed 

 the Rocky Mountains also brought the 

 Great Plains and the intermontane basins 

 above sea level, so that the r^on now 

 traversed by the Union Pacific from 

 Omaha to the "Wasatch Mountains, which 

 had formerly lain under the water of the 



time, though others immigrated 



from 



other continents. The skeletons of these 

 animals were buried in the sands and 

 muds deposited by the streams, and from 

 the fossil remains of their bones the paleon- 

 tologist is able to determine to some 

 extent their forms, appearance, and habits. 

 Great changes took place also in the 

 climate, a fact indicated by the charac- 

 ter of the plants, a critical study of which 

 shows that although the same general 

 types of vegetation that had flourished 

 throughout the Cretaceous continued into 



the Tertiary the species were nearly all 

 different. 



