“Couldn’t you have run the road around the north end of this divide?” asked Mr. Blickensderfer.
“Yes, we could. The engineers surveyed for a line there, to strike the old Oregon Trail and the famous South Pass which had been used for many years by the emigrants. But we would lose a number of miles, and we’d miss the coal-fields. We also wished to build around the south, through Denver, but the mountains of Colorado seem to offer no easy passes.”
“This isn’t the Continental Divide, is it, general? Not the divide between the Atlantic and Pacific?”
“No. It’s a spur of the front range of the Rockies. Yonder in the west you can see the Continental Divide—a portion of it: the Medicine Bow Range of the main Rockies. From here the road descends into the Laramie Plains, and follows a wide trough or basin for perhaps 100 miles northwest, to round the Medicine Bow. After that, from the North Platte River the route is undetermined, but is being surveyed.”
“Yes, and once across the Laramie Plains you’ll carry yore water with you,” said Sol Judy, gazing ahead as, dismounted, he leaned on his long musket. “By Jinks, beyond the Plains there’s a stretch of desert country that even a bird can’t cross without packing its own supplies.”
“Which is one thing that we’ve come to look into,” General Dodge replied. “Percy Browne and his party are running a line, over in there, now. He has the division from the North Platte River west to Green River, 180 miles. The Tom Bates party are off in there, too,” the general added kindly, to Terry. “They’re working east from the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, while Browne works west from the North Platte edge of the Laramie Plains. So we’ll keep an eye out for your boy friend.”
“About like looking for a needle in a haystack,” remarked young Duff, aside, to Terry. “That all is the biggest country I ever saw.”
And big it was, as they marched down from Sherman Summit: range after range of towering mountains to south, west, and north with glimpses of immense valleys between, and the slumberous basin of the Laramie Plains below.
Engineer Evans’ survey stakes led on. He had run the line clear to the Laramie River at Fort Sanders. Superintendent Reed was an engineer, also, and had surveyed through the Wasatch Mountains and down to Salt Lake, in 1864. The talk about the country ahead was mighty interesting to Terry, and Mr. Corwith, and young Mr. Duff.
Sol Judy and others spoke well of the Laramie Plains.