90 
ROUTE NEAR THE THIRTY SECOND PARALLEL. 
distance from the Tah-ee-chay-pah Pass to the Straits of Martinez is 354 miles, following the 
route travelled by Lieutenant Williamson; but the location distance of a railroad would be 288 
miles. 
The most direct route to San Francisco from the Tah-ee-chay-pah Pass, will be found through 
one of the passes known to exist in the mountain range separating the San Joaquin valley from 
those of the Salinas river and San Jose river. The distance through them is about ten miles; the 
elevation of their summits about 600 feet. They may be reached from the Tah-ee-chay-pah 
Pass by passing around the head of the Tulares valley to its western side, or by keeping on the 
eastern side of the Tulares valley fifteen or twenty miles after crossing Kern river; then crossing 
the valley, in doing which it will be necessary to use piling for the distance of ten miles, to make 
a sufficiently firm road-bed over the soft, miry, alluvial soil. The distance to the port of San 
Francisco, by this route, from the Tah-ee-chay-pah Pass, is about 288 miles. The average 
grades, except through the short pass, will be two or three feet per mile. 
The soil of the Tulares and San Joaquin valleys is well constituted for fertility, and needs 
merely the proper amount of water to be highly productive. There are settlements along the 
eastern side of these valleys under the mountains. The San Jose valley is one of the best culti¬ 
vated and most populous districts of California. 
Sufficient water and fuel for working parties can be found at convenient distances on this 
section, and lumber and good building-stone at various points along the line in the mountains, 
fifteen or twenty miles from the foot of their western slopes. 
The sum of ascents, therefore, between the summit of the San Bernardino Pass and the port 
of San Francisco is 4,516 feet, (supposing the height of the pass through the coast mountains 
600 feet,) the distance 521 miles. 
This portion of the route is generally of a different character from that east of the Sierra 
Nevada and Coast ranges. Its topographical features, except the mountain passes, are favorable 
to the cheap construction of a railroad. The comparative proximity throughout the line of forests 
of pine and other trees, of good building-stone, and other materials for construction; of supplies 
of water and fuel for the working parties ; the fertility of the soil along large portions of the 
route, which by irrigation from unemployed mountain streams may be made productive,—these 
circumstances, together with the population already occupying certain portions of the route, afford 
the means of estimating how far the cost of the construction, and working of the road, will exceed 
that under nearly similar topographical circumstances in the eastern States, so far as similarity 
of topographical features can exist between countries of such different formations. 
The mountain passes are of a favorable character, their only objectionable feature being their 
high grades. Excepting at a few points, and for short distances not exceeding a mile or two at 
a time, they do not require heavy embankments, or difficult bridging, or heavy side-cutting in 
rock or even in earth. The only rock-cutting needed is that at the summit of the San Fernando 
Pass, through soft sandstone one-third of a mile, and in the New Pass, where, for the space of 
a mile, two or three tunnels, 100 and 300 feet in length, through slaty granite, will probably be 
required, with a cutting of 43 feet in clay, granite, &c., at the summit, for no great distance. 
The construction, however, will cost more per mile in this distance of 521 miles, than between 
the Sierra Nevada and the Rio Grande. In regard to the grades, there is on the Baltimore and 
Ohio railroad a grade of 117 feet per mile for a length of 17 miles. A 24-ton engine, on six 
drivers, can draw a train containing two hundred passengers, with 100 pounds of baggage 
each, in the worst condition of the rail, up a grade of 221 feet per mile, and a train of three 
hundred passengers and baggage up a grade of 150 feet per mile. 
The maximum loads are rarely carried over long roads. Even supposing twenty-ton engines 
used, with maximum loads for the grades over other portions of the road, it would merely be 
necessary to divide the load into three parts to pass a grade of 150 feet to the mile, over the dis¬ 
tances through which they extend, supposing the load previously adjusted to a grade of 40 feet 
