"Passing along the Flathead River for a short distance, we entered the valley of the Jocko River. The same general remarks concerning Clark's River Valley are applicable to the Flathead and Bitter Root Valleys. The climate, the valleys, the timber, the soil, the water-powers, all are here, awaiting only the presence of the industrious white man to render to mankind the benefits implanted in them by a beneficent Creator."
The entire distance from Lake Superior by the Yellowstone Valley to the tide-waters of the Pacific below the cascades of the Columbia will be about eighteen hundred miles. It is nearly the same distance to Seattle, on Puget Sound, by the Snoqualmie Pass of the Cascade Range.
The Union Pacific line has had no serious obstruction from snow since its completion. It has suffered no more than other roads of the country, and its trains have arrived as regularly at Omaha and Sacramento as the trains of the New York Central at Buffalo or Albany. That the Northern Pacific road will be quite as free from snow-blockades will be manifest by a perusal of the following paragraphs from the report of Mr. Roberts:—
"There is evidence enough to show that the line of road on the general route herein described will, in ordinary winters, be much less encumbered with snow where it crosses the mountains than are the passes at more southerly points, which are much more elevated above the sea. The difference of five or six degrees of latitude is more than compensated by the reduced elevation above the sea-level, and the climatic effect of the warm ocean-currents from the equator, already referred to, ameliorating the seasons from the Pacific to the Rocky Mountains. An examination of the profile of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific lines between Omaha, on the Missouri River, and Sacramento, California, a distance of 1,775 miles, shows that there are four main summits,—Sherman Summit, on the Black Hills, about 550 miles from Omaha, 8,235 feet above the sea; one on the Rocky Mountains, at Aspen Summit, about 935 miles from Omaha, 7,463 feet; one at Humboldt Mountain, about 1,245 miles from Omaha, 6,076 feet; and another on the Sierra Nevada, only 105 miles from the western terminus at Sacramento, 7,062 feet; whilst from a point west of Cheyenne, 520 miles from Omaha, to Wasatch, 970 miles from Omaha, a continuous length of 450 miles, every portion of the graded road is more than 6,000 feet above the sea, being about 1,000 feet on this long distance higher than the highest summit grade on the Northern Pacific Railroad route; whilst for the corresponding distance on the Northern Pacific line the average elevation is under 3,000 feet, or three thousand feet lower than the Sherman Summit on the Pacific line.
"On the Union Pacific road the profile also shows that for 900 continuous miles, from Sidney westward, the road has an average height of over 5,000 feet, and the lowest spot on that distance is more than 4,000 feet above the sea, whereas on the Northern route only about sixty miles at most are as high as 4,000 feet, and the corresponding distance of 900 miles, extending from the mouth of the Yellowstone to the valley of Clark's River, is, on an average, about 3,000 feet lower than the Union Pacific line. Allowing that 1,000 feet of elevation causes a decrease of temperature of three degrees, this would be a difference of nine degrees. There is, therefore, a substantial reason for the circumstance, now well authenticated, that the snows on the Northern route are much less troublesome than they are on the Union Pacific and Central Pacific routes" (Report, p. 43).
That the Northern Pacific can be economically worked is demonstrated by a comparison of its grades with those of the line already constructed. The comparison is thus presented by Mr. Roberts:—
"The grades on the route across through the State of Minnesota and Territory of Dakota to the Missouri River will not be materially dissimilar to those on the other finished railroads south of it, passing from Chicago to Sioux City, Council Bluffs, etc.; namely, undulating within the general limit of about forty feet per mile, although it may be deemed advisable, at a few points for short distances, to run to a maximum of one foot per hundred or fifty-three feet per mile. There is sufficient knowledge of this portion of the route to warrant this assumption. And beyond the Missouri, along the valley of the Yellowstone, to near the Bozeman Pass, there is no known reason for assuming any higher limits. In passing Bozeman Summit of the Belt Range, and in going up the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains, it may be found advisable to adopt a somewhat higher gradient for a few miles in overcoming those summits. This, however, can only be finally determined after careful surveys.