The Seat of Empire

by Charles Carleton Coffin

The line of this road is from St. Paul, the head of navigation on the Mississippi River, to the head of Lake Superior, a distance of 140 miles. It connects at St. Paul with each of the long lines of railroad traversing the vast and fertile regions of Minnesota in all directions, and converging at St. Paul.

It connects the commerce and business of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers, the California Central Railroad, and the Northern Pacific Railroad, with Lake Superior and the commercial system of the great lakes, and makes the outlet or commercial track to the lakes, over which must pass the commerce of a region of country second to none on the American continent in capacity for production.

The land grant made by the government of the United States and by the State of Minnesota, in aid of the construction of this road, is the largest in quantity and most valuable in kind ever made in aid of any railway in either of the American States.

This grant amounts to seventeen square miles or sections [10,880 acres] of land for each mile of the road, and in the aggregate to One Million, Six Hundred and Thirty-two Thousand Acres of Land.

These lands are for the most part well timbered with pine, butternut, white oak, sugar maple, and other valuable timber, and are perhaps better adapted to the raising of stock, winter wheat, corn, oats, and most kinds of

agricultural

These lands are well watered with running streams and innumerable lakes, and within the limits of the land belonging to the Company there is an abundance of water-power for manufacturing purposes.

A glance at the map, and an intelligent comprehension of the course of trade, and way to the markets of the Eastern cities and to Europe, for the products of this section of the Northwest, will at once satisfy any one who examines the question that the lands of this Company, by reason of the low freights at which their products reach market, have a value—independent of that which arises from their superior quality—which can hardly be over-estimated.

Twenty cents saved in sending a bushel of wheat to market adds four dollars to the yearly product of an acre of wheat land, and what is true of this will apply to all other articles of farm produce transported to market, and demonstrates that the value of lands depends largely on the price at which their products can be carried to market.

THE LANDS OF THIS COMPANY ARE
NOW OFFERED TO