THE NORTHERN PACIFIC ROUTE. 127 
The Cretaceous beds dip gently in various directions, but in general 
they lie nearly flat and constitute the bottom of a great sag or syn- 
cline 15 to 20 miles wide. Although this syncline is flat and broad, 
it has been subjected to much minor folding or wrinkling, which 
locally has tilted the beds or even broken them, where the pressure 
has been more severe. 
The Cretaceous rocks are much softer than the older rocks, and 
weathering has reduced them to low hills and 
rounded slopes that are a marked feature of the 
topography in the vicinity of Garrison. At this vil- 
age the old main line is joined by the more recent 
line through Butte. 
LINE WEST OF GARRISON. 
Garrison. 
Elevation 4,344 feet. 
St. Paul 1,182 miles. 
The famous Deer Lodge Valley, which is so conspicuous on the Butte 
line, continues west of Garrison as far as Drummond, but for some 
distance it is not apparent from the train. When viewed from some 
commanding eminence the valley is distinctly outlined, but when 
seen from the river level the immediate bluffs conceal and obscure the 
background, so that the traveler will probably fail to recognize the 
broader, more open valley in the bottom of which the stream has cut 
its present channel. The broad valley is underlain by soft Creta- 
ceous rocks similar to those which border it on both lines above their 
junction at Garrison. As explained on page 115, the bottom of the 
valley bulged up north of the place where Garrison is now located. 
Clark Fork had already established a meandering course on the sedi- 
ments, filling the old lake basin, and when the bulge occurred the 
stream simply persisted in its old course, cutting deeply into the 
underlying harder rocks and preserving all its former sinuosities. The 
railway can not follow the swings of the stream, because they are too 
short, so it strikes straight through, tunneling wherever necessary. 
The St. Paul road lies near the Northern Pacific on the left. 
Halfway between mileposts 53 and 54 there is a sign on the left 
which calls attention to the fact that here on September 8, 1883, was 
driven the last spike that established the connection between the 
eastern and the western ends of the Northern Pacific Railway. The 
event was celebrated in an elaborate manner, and prominent people, 
including William M. Evarts (as orator), Henry M. Teller, Secretary 
of the Interior, and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, were present. The com- 
pletion of the Union Pacific Railroad, in 1869, had been celebrated by 
similar ceremonies at Promontory, west of Ogden, Utah, and the 
gathering in Montana marked the completion of the second great 
transcontinental line. Since that time other roads have been con- 
_ structed across the continent without creating any marked attention, 
but these two roads were the pioneers and the completion of each 
was an event of nation-wide importance. 
