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WHOLESALE TOWN-MxVKING. . 17 



Collegt enterprise is fast converting it into a fine, well-bnilt to^yn ; 

 U;i then Solomon, sm-rounded by salt s^Drings, and situated at tlie 

 e grr entrance of a fertile valley, 250 miles long. Lastly, we reach 

 ,e s!:^ Salina, 185 miles west of the Missom-i, where we exchange 

 " the cars for the camp, the locomotive for the mule team. 

 M On the 1st of June, 1867, this little town of 1,000 inhabi- 

 tants was the terminal station at the end of the line. Eight 

 (dues" months afterwards, when we were hastening home, the train 

 cliool;, took us up 100 miles to the west, and two other towns — 

 ftlies Hayes City and EUesworth — ^had sprung up west of it. The 

 i^ej eight towns I have just named are not temporary trading- 



posts, called suddenly into existence by the presence of a 

 w4(L large staff of railroad officials and workmen, and destined to 

 iJuf* perish, one after the other, as the customers pass onward 

 jjgji^ with the advancing line. At one time, each of these places, 

 1$ besides many others now no more, served its time as the 

 ^ ^ terminal depot, and was thereby forced into existence with 

 -' hot-house rapidity. But the natural advantages of their 

 ^.fr positions, situated as they are for the most part at the mouths 



of streams,— such as the Big Blue, the Eepublican Fork, 

 Solomon Fork, and Big Creek, — which water rich valleys of 

 100 miles and upwai'ds in length, not only ensure their 

 future existence, but add to their size and importance month 

 by month, as settlers arrive and bring the lands of these 

 valleys under cultivation. 



Wholesale town-making may not be a romantic theme, or 

 one capable of being made very attractive to the general 

 reader ; but it is the great characteristic of this part of our 

 route, and is only to be seen to perfection along the line of 

 these great railways. On the Platte, where the central line 

 across the continent often advances at the rate of two miles a 

 day, town-making is reduced to a system. The depot at the end 



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