No. 1. 
EXTRACT 
FROM THE 
ANNUAL REPORT OE THE SECRETARY OE WAR. 
DECEMBER, 1855. 
The reports of the officers employed under the appropriations made for explorations and 
surveys to ascertain the most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Missis¬ 
sippi river to the Pacific ocean, were submitted to Congress on the 27th of February last, with 
a report from this department, giving a general sketch of the country over which they extended, 
a recapitulation of their results, and a comparison of their distinguishing characteristics ; from 
, which it was concluded that of the routes examined, the most practicable and economical was 
that of the thirty-second parallel. A report is herewith submitted from the officer in this 
department charged with the revision of the work of the several parties, and I refer to it for 
additional information derived from materials collected, on a further examination of them by 
himself, and the several officers who made the particular surveys, as well as for the results of 
explorations carried on during the past year. 
When the report was made, in February last, many of the maps, drawings, and scientific 
papers, intended to form part of the report, and which could only he prepared after an elaborate 
examination of the materials collected, had not been completed for want of time, and it became 
necessary to substitute hastily prepared drawings and preliminary reports. This was particu¬ 
larly the case with regard to the work on the route of the thirty-fifth parallel. A minute 
examination of the material collected in that survey has resulted in showing the route more 
practicable than it was at first represented to he, and in reducing to nearly one-half the original 
estimates of the officer in charge of the survey, which, indeed, seemed, when they were sub¬ 
mitted, to be extravagant, and were noted in the report from this department as probably 
excessive. 
Another feature of interest developed in the course of the further examination of the work on 
the route of the thirty-second parallel is, that the Colorado desert, which is traversed by the route 
for a distance of 133 miles, and which, in the report referred to, was noted as consisting of a soil 
that needed only water to render it highly productive, is, in fact, the delta of the Colorado river, 
and, according to barometric levels, is so much lower than that stream as to he easily irrigated 
from it. Thus, there is every reason to believe 4,500 square miles of soil of great fertility, of 
which nearly one-half is in our territory, may he brought into cultivation in one unbroken 
tract along the route. 
