16 
ROUTES FOR A PACIFIC RAILROAD. 
ROUTES. 
For a Pacific railroad, the term route will cover the extreme breadth of country to which side 
examinations may reasonably extend, or to which any claim of location may carry a line by 
detour. The term route in these remarks must not be confounded with the word line. The route 
of a line is (strictly) defined by survey . The route to which the location of a line is referrible is 
described by reconnaissance. 
Two of the grand routes across the American continent are peculiarly adapted to the ready 
and rapid extension of a rough preliminary railroad. One of these routes passes south of the 
Sierra Nevada mountain range, and in the vicinity of the Mexican frontier. The other is that 
of the present emigrant road of the South Pass to California, Utah, and Oregon. Both of these 
routes are of flat plateau surface, and gravel substrata. Over one of them, the passage of trains 
would he obstructed during winter by the snow of the great plains; over the other, a northern 
population would he decimated during the summer by the fevers of the Grulf. Over one of them, 
the frosts of the northern winter would, during half the year, prevent the speedy progression of 
the works of construction; over the other, the miasmas of a southern summer would prove fatal 
to the health of the Celtic laborer. Over the northern route, pure water can he delivered from 
abundant sources of supply, at sufficient height above the rail, to he furnished at low cost for 
the use of locomotives; over the southern, it must he procured by more expensive methods, from 
fountains difficult of access and limited in quantity. The northern route is longer than the 
southern, hut, of central position, it can he more readily defended in the time of war. Con¬ 
tiguous to provision and labor-producing States, it can he more cheaply constructed, and, when 
built, will command and unite important and conflicting public and private interests. Long 
sections of both routes are destitute of timber, which can only be supplied by the use of the iron 
rail. Both of them differ from all other routes across the continents. Both are better suited to 
the speedy extension of an effective means of military transportation by railway than any others. 
Both are especially worthy the attention of government in the selection of the route of a road 
for the purposes of military defence; hut neither of them would so readily attract the notice of 
speculators in land grants, nor is either particularly adapted to the development of great agri¬ 
cultural interests. 
As the salient requisition, which gives government constitutional power to act in the premi¬ 
ses, is that of military defence, and the leading feature of that requisition is early communica¬ 
tion, the first step towards the solution of this intricate problem of overland communication is 
narrowed down to the choice of one or both of these routes; the subordinate or latent charac¬ 
teristics which subsequently come forward in the domestic relations, of development of inland 
territory, and of procuring the influx of western commerce, not being confounded with, hut in 
every respect kept distinct from, the peculiar and striking national feature which first won the 
attention, and is now strenuously urged as entitling this undertaking to the full notice of legis¬ 
lation. 
The most southern of these routes being beyond the field of the present report, I bring this 
whole view of the engineering merits of the question as giving great character to a forked road, 
which, reaching by a main stem from the central border of eastern civilization to the Mormon 
settlements, would there permit of the connexion of a short branch line to Puget Sound, and of 
the extension of a main trunk to California. 
This road, as first extended, would represent the word line, as delineated, or placed by the 
requirements of location, by the trace of actual survey, for preliminary service. But, as event¬ 
ually elaborated, it can only be described, at the present time, by the report of reconnaissance, 
as within the limits of all future claims of location by the word route. The rough road, built 
for the purpose of military transportation, must be placed, by engineering study, over a surface 
adapted to rapid extension, and be adjusted with great care at water crossings, summits o^ 
