18 THE CONSTRUCTION OF A FIRST SECTION OF THE ROAD. 
The argument that the difficulty of selecting a route prevents such a conclusion need not be 
entertained, if the route is chosen on the constitutional grounds of the cheapest and earliest 
consummation of the military defence of the Pacific possessions by overland railways. 
If the whole question of the construction of a permanent road to the Pacific resolves itself 
into the prior construction of a railroad to the Pacific of less elaborated character, so too the 
construction of a preliminary railroad to the Pacific resolves itself into the building of the first 
mile of the very first section of the best route for that road adjacent to the border settlements. 
The first section of the main stem of the forked route of the emigrant road does not, how- 
ever, commence at the first unfinished portion of the Pacific railroads (so called) of Iowa or Mis- 
souri. The two hundred and fifty miles of severe undulating surface extending between these 
lines of rail, now tending west, and Missouri river, is of a character to prevent early completion; 
and the people of the Pacific coast and the present claims of the nation will not permit awaiting 
the three, four, or five years it will require to bring these roads to Missouri river. 
Neither can it commence at Fort Kearney, which is the proper point of intersection of all 
eastern lines. This point is as far inland toward the west, and wagon-roads will not furnish 
the cheap and rapid transportation required for weighty materials of construction. 
From the peculiarity of surface offered —4a surface graded and ballasted by the act of nature— 
the first section of the pioneer railroad of the emigrant plateau route must be supposed to com- 
mence on Missouri river, near the mouth of the Platte. 
As the navigation of the Missouri, as high as this point, is ample for the transportation of 
rails, equipment, and furnishing, the road—finding its own means of rapid extension—woul 
reach the mountains, over the flat sandy surface offered, at about the same period of time that 
the local roads of Iowa and Missouri were completed, to become its connecting links with east- 
ern lines—say in three, four, or five years. 
The line (of five hundred (500) miles length) would traverse the edge of a range of low sand. 
hills, skirting a broad and fertile river valley, which reaches, without a break in surface, from 
the mouth of the Platte to the first broken country of the great grazing section of the Black 
Hills (so called). 
Under the present system of legislation—the aiding of the extension of railroads by specula- 
tions based on the augmentation of the price of government lands to the actual settler—reasons 
ntight be offered why Congress can assist in the construction of this road of five hundred (500) 
miles on far more equitable grounds than have hitherto led to the multiplication of rivaling 
and competing roads across the border. 
The fact that this line would become the first section of a Pacific railroad, and the needs of 
Calitornia, Utah, Oregon, and Washington find a place in a discussion which has hitherto been 
devoted to those of Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota, or the wealthy capitalists 
of eastern cities, is probably the cause why this line could not thus be aided. 
The following domestic relations entitle it to notice, without reference to the fact that it would 
become a section of the Pacific railroad, viz: 
While other divisions of the publie domain are favored by navigable waters, by which the 
appliances of civilization may be transported, the narrow belt of fertile soil which this line 
traverses can only be laid open to the pioneer by the passage of a railroad. Like many of the 
richest regions of the west, the country is sparsely wooded; and during the growth of wood, 
(by keeping out the prairie fires,) fuel and building timber cannot be transported for the use 
of settlers by the insufficient means of a wagon-road. 
The needs of better means of transportation than this route now affords have become so great, 
that it has been proposed to secure them for the benefit of the Mormon settlements, by building 
a canal from the head-waters of Yellow Stone river toward Utah, and by a detour of over three 
thousand (3,000) miles of river and canal navigation. 
The construction of the road would shorten by five hundred (500) miles the distance now 
travelled by the overland emigration, and prevent the great loss to the nation in domestic stock 
M ent t P ATE i 
