CHAPTER XIV.
A Railway Proposed through the Canyons—The Brown Party, 1889, Undertakes the Survey—Frail Boats and Disasters—The Dragon Claims Three—Collapse of the Expedition—Stanton Tries the Feat Again, 1889-90—A Fall and a Broken Leg—Success of Stanton—The Dragon Still Untrammelled.
The topographic, geologic, and geodetic work of the survey did not cease with our departure from the river, but was continued in the remarkable country shown in the relief map opposite page 41, till the relationships and distances of the various features were established and reduced to black and white. That autumn, while we were engaged in these labours, Wheeler, with an elaborate outfit, entered the region, pursuing his desultory operations; and, drifting along the north side of the Grand Canyon for a little distance, he proceeded to the neighbourhood of St. George. The following year, for some unknown purpose, he crossed the Colorado at the Paria, though he knew that Powell’s parties had previously mapped this area. When the winter of 1872-73 had fairly set in we established a permanent camp at Kanab, where, under Thompson’s always efficient direction, our triangulations and topographic notes were plotted on paper, making the first preliminary map of that country. When this was ready, Hillers and I took it, and crossing the southern end of the High Plateaus, then deep with snow, we rode by way of the Sevier Valley to Salt Lake, where the map was sent on by express to Washington, whither Powell had already gone.
Camp at Oak Spring, Uinkaret Mountains.
Photograph by J.K. HILLERS, U.S. Colo. Riv. Exp.
Seventeen years passed away before any one again tried to navigate the Colorado. The settling of the country, the knowledge of it Powell had published, the completion of the Southern Pacific Railway to Yuma in 1877, and of the Atlantic and Pacific from Isleta to The Needles, in 1880-83, and of the Rio Grande Western across the Green at Gunnison Valley, simplified travel in the Basin of the Colorado. A new railway was then proposed from Grand Junction, Colorado, down the Colorado River, through the Canyons to the Gulf of California, a distance of twelve hundred miles. At that time coal was a difficult article to procure on the Pacific Coast, and it was thought that this “water-level” road, crossing no mountains, would be profitable in bringing the coal of Colorado to the Golden Gate. At present coal in abundance is to be had in the Puget Sound region, and this reason for constructing a Grand Canyon railway is done away with. There is nothing to support a railway through the three hundred miles of the great gorge (or through the other two hundred miles of canyon to the Junction), except tourist travel and the possible development of mines. These are manifestly insufficient at the present time to warrant even a less costly railway, which, averaging about four thousand feet below the surface of the surrounding country, would be of little service to those living away from its immediate line, and there is small chance to live along the line. In addition the floods in the Grand Canyon are enormous and capricious. Sometimes heavy torrents from cloudbursts plunge down the sides of the canyon and these would require to be considered as well as those of the river itself. To be absolutely safe from the latter the line would probably require, in the Grand Canyon, to be built at least one hundred and twenty feet above low water, so that for the whole distance through the Marble-Grand Canyon there would seldom be room beside the tracks for even a station. But Frank M. Brown had faith, and a company for the construction of the Denver, Colorado Canyon, and Pacific Railway was organised. Brown was the president, and in 1889 he formed an expedition to Survey the line.
