20 
CONCLUSION OF THE OFFICIAL REVIEW, ETC. 
distance is represented as "being most favorable for a railroad ; the remaining one-third being 
nearly equally divided between ground of a rolling and mountainous character. 
The examinations of this party, in reference to the practicability of procuring water, show 
that it may he obtained at suitable distances by common wells and conduits, supplied from per¬ 
manent streams. In some localities artesian wells might probably be resorted to successfully. 
The estimated cost of the whole distance, 345 miles, is $15,300,000, or about $44,000 per 
mile. The estimate, based upon a thorough re-examination of the ground, and a close study of 
the subject by the officers in charge of the survey, coincides very nearly with that made by the 
officer who presented the general revisory report upon the first explorations. 
It is deemed proper to call especial attention to this coincidence, so strongly exhibiting the 
general reliability of these estimates, because a minority report made at the last session of Con¬ 
gress, from a cooamittee of the House of Representatives, characterized the estimates, based on 
the reconnaissances of the topographical engineers, as unreliable, and adduced to sustain that 
disparaging reflection, the fact that on one of the lines explored, the preliminary estimate of 
the officer in charge greatly exceeded that which he presented after a further study of his obser¬ 
vations in the field ; this, too, being in disregard of the fact that the first estimate was hastily 
made by the explorer to meet a pressing demaud for his report, and was at the time stated by 
him to have been prepared in anticipation of the future examination of the data he had collected. 
In the remarks of the revising officer which accompanied the reports it was also pointed out 
that this estimate was probably largely in excess. 
Although the two lines between the Gila and Rio Grande, of which the estimated cost is so 
nearly alike, are over different routes, the features of the ground, so far as they would affect the 
cost of construction of a railroad, are nearly identical; the advantages of the new line depending 
upon other considerations already enumerated. 
Similar remarks may be applied to the estimated cost of the two routes between the plains of 
Los Angeles and San Francisco, though the coincidence there is not so close, the character of 
the ground being such as would cause a difference of expense in the road bed formation. 
In addition to his own results, the officer in command of this party has presented those of an 
instrumental survey from San Diego bay, through Warner’s pass, to the Colorado desert, made 
under the auspices of the San Diego and Gila Railroad Company. 
The engineer of this company estimates the cost of a railroad on this route from San Diego to 
Fort Yuma, distance 189.1 miles, at $7,571,500 ; one half of this distance being estimated at 
$14,615 per mile, and the other half at $65,085 per mile. These estimates are much less than 
those contained in the reports of the officers of this Department for routes passing over similar 
ground. Either standard of cost per mile applied to the routes from Fort Yuma to San Diego 
and from Fort Yuma to San Pedro, through the San Gorgonio pass, gives about the same total 
amount of cost for each route. The line to San Diego forms the shortest route to the Pacific, 
the distances being, from Fulton to San Diego, 1,548 miles ; from Fulton to San Pedro, 1,618 
miles. If the final terminus of a Pacific railroad is to be San Francisco, the route through the 
San Gorgonio pass to San Pedro is preferable to that to San Diego, since the former port is 
about 100 miles nearer to San Francisco. 
The party directed to explore the country between the Sacramento and Columbia rivers, with 
a view to ascertain the practicability of connecting these valleys by a railroad, examined two 
routes—one east, the other west of the Cascade range. 
The former accomplishes the passage of the western chain of the Sierra Nevada by following 
