Opening the iron trail

by Edwin L. Sabin

Little was heard from the engineering parties in the field. They were scattered all through the mountains, from up in Wyoming down into Colorado, and on across into Utah, beyond Salt Lake. In fact, last year the surveys for the best routes had been pushed clear to California—so as to be ready.

The parties that had come in, in the winter, to report and draw their maps, had gone out again in early spring for another season’s work. Some of the parties even had stayed out all winter, measuring the snow falls and learning the weather at the passes.

General Sherman, commanding this Military Division of the Missouri, which extended from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains, had issued orders that the military posts should furnish General Dodge with all the soldiers who might be spared, so that the road and the survey parties should be protected.

Just the same, the surveying job was a dangerous job; ten and twelve miles of the survey lines were run, each day, and the chain-men and rod-men sometimes were far separated from the soldiers—and the chief of the party was supposed to go in the advance, to discover the easiest country.

Last year the mountains and the deserts on either slope had been pretty well covered. Now it was understood that the road was not to turn south for Denver and the Colorado Rockies—no good passes had been found; it was to turn for the northwest, instead, and cross the Rockies in Wyoming, by a pass that General Dodge himself had discovered in one of his Indian campaigns two years ago.

So onward marched the rails—that double line ever reaching westward. Back and forth, hauling the truck, Terry rode old yellow Jenny—and how many miles he traveled, to every one mile of track, he never quite figured out, but seemed to him that he already had ridden the distance to San Francisco.

“We’ll be after changin’ the base to a new Julesburg—as soon as the rails reach yon,” said the men.

“Sure, if it’s base o’ supplies ye mane, that’ll be changed before ever the rails get there,” was the answer. “Any day now they’ll be comin’ through—wid their gin mills an’ their skin-games an’ all on wheels, to be set up an’ waitin’ for our pay-car.”

And that was true. The railroad followed up along the north side of the South Platte River. The Overland Stage road followed up along the south side, with the six-horse teams and the round Concord stages plying over it between North Platte and Denver, on the Salt Lake haul. And stage road and railroad grade headed westward toward the old stage station at Julesburg.

It seemed likely that a new Julesburg would be the next supply base. It was about the right distance from North Platte, the last base, or ninety miles; for about every ninety or one hundred miles the supply base was relocated, farther along, at end o’ track.