The Great Salt Lake Trail

by Henry Inman; Buffalo Bill

The explorations by the government for a Pacific railroad are all matters of official report, long since published and open to all. They were the basis for the future explorations of all the transcontinental lines, except the Union Pacific, then known as that of the forty-second parallel of latitude. That line, and the country from the Arkansas to the Yellowstone, was explored and developed mainly by private enterprise, and it is by far the most practicable line crossing the continent —the shortest and quickest, of lightest curvature, and lowest grades and summits. It is not, in an engineering point of view, the true line from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but in a commercial point of view it is.

In an engineering point of view we demonstrated, before the year 1860, that the true line was up the Platte to its forks, to which point the Union Pacific is now built, then up (where the Oregon Short Line now runs) to the Columbia, and then to tide-water at Portland. The Union and Central were built for commercial value, and to obtain the shortest and quickest line from ocean to ocean. The line of the Central was controlled almost entirely by the development of the mining industries in California and Nevada until it reached the Humboldt; then its natural course would be to reach Salt Lake and the Mormon settlements. The Union Pacific objective point was the Pacific Coast by way of the Great Platte Valley and Salt Lake. . . .

When we reached the mountains a series of questions arose as to how this base should be determined. The eastern base was determined by Mr. Blickensderfer, who was appointed by the government. After examining the country he declared it to be right at the foot of the mountains, where the heavy grades to overcome the first range, the Black Hills, were made necessary —a very proper decision. The west base of the Sierra was located near Sacramento, where the drift of the mountains reached into the valley, or where, you might say, the first approach to the mountains begins, but long before the heavy grades commenced.

A good story is told, the truth of which I will not undertake to vouch for, in relation to the fixing of the base. By the original railroad act, as we have noticed, the President was to fix the point where the Sacramento Valley ended and the foot-hills of the Sierra Nevada began. Chief Engineer Judah, in his report, had designated Barmore's, thirty-one miles from Sacramento, as the beginning of the mountains. This corresponded with a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, made in April, 1864, in the case of the Liedsdorff grant. The contestants of the grant attempted to fix the eastern boundaries at Alder Creek, eighty miles nearer Sacramento. This grant, by Mexican authority, was bounded by the foot-hills on the east. The Supreme Court decided that the foot-hills commenced about thirty miles from that city. Several attempts were made by Mr. Sargent, then a member of Congress, and since United States Senator, soon after the passage of the original act, to bring the attention of President Lincoln to this subject, but the President's constant occupation, with weightier duties forced upon him by the great war, prevented his action. The time came, however, when it could be no longer delayed.

Owing to the increase of subsidy among the hills and mountains, it was important to the railway company that the foot-hills should begin as near as possible to Sacramento. The senator claims the credit of moving the mountains from Barmore's to Arcade Creek, a distance of twenty-four miles. His relation of the affair to his friends is this: Lincoln was engaged with a map when the senator substituted another, and demonstrated by it and the statement of some geologist that the black soil of the valley and the red soil of the hills united at Arcade. The President relied on the statements given to him, and decided accordingly. “Here you see,” said the senator, “how my pertinacity and Abraham's faith removed mountains.”

Reconnoissances made in 1862, 1863, 1864, had demonstrated that a serious question would arise in reaching the Humboldt Valley from the western foot of the Wahsatch Mountains in the Salt Lake Basin. Should the line go north or south of the lake? The Mormon Church and all of its followers, a central power of great use to the transcontinental roads, were determinedly in favour of the south line. It was preached from the pulpits and authoritatively announced that a road could not be built or run north of the lake. But our explorations in an earlier day unqualifiedly indicated the north side, though an exhaustive examination was made south, and only one line run north, it being our main line to the California state line surveyed in 1867.

The explorations by parties south of the lake, and the personal examinations of the chief engineer, determined that it had no merits compared with the north line, and on such report the north line was adopted by the company and accepted by the government.

Brigham Young called a conference of his church, and refused to accept the decision; prohibited his people from contracting or working for the Union Pacific, and threw all his influence and efforts to the Central Pacific, which just at that time was of great moment, as there was a complete force of Mormon contractors and labourers in Salt Lake Valley competent to construct the line two hundred miles east or west of the lake. The two companies also had entered into active competition, each respectively to see how far east or west of the lake they could build, that city being the objective point, and the key to the control of the great basin.

The Central Pacific Company entered upon the examination of the lines long after the Union Pacific had determined and filed its line, and we waited the decision of their engineers with some anxiety. We knew they could not obtain so good a line, but we were in doubt whether, with the aid of the Mormon Church, and the fact that the line south of the lake passed through Salt Lake City, the only commercial capital between the Missouri River and Sacramento, they might decide to take the long and undulating line; and then the question as to which (the one built south, the other built north, and it would fall to the government to decide) should receive the bonds and become the transcontinental line. However, the engineers of the Central Pacific, Clements and Ives, took as strong ground, or stronger than we, in favour of the north line, and located almost exactly on the same ground the Union Pacific had occupied a year before; and this brought the Mormon forces to the Union Pacific, their first love.

The location of the Union Pacific was extended to the California state line, and that of the Central Pacific to the mouth of the Weber Cañon. The Union Pacific work hastened, and most of the line graded to Humboldt Wells, two hundred and nineteen miles west of Ogden, and the Union Pacific met the track of the Central Pacific at Promontory Summit, one thousand one hundred and eighty-six miles west of the Missouri River, and six hundred and thirty-eight miles east of Sacramento, on May 9, 1869, to the wonder of America, and the utter astonishment of the whole world, completing the entire line seven years before the limit of time allowed by the government. . . .