The five or six hundred men who saw the junction made at Promontory Point were strongly impressed with the conviction that the event was of great national importance; but they connected it with the development of transcontinental communication, and trade with China and Japan, rather than with internal development, or what railroad men call local traffic. They were somewhat visionary, no doubt, but none of them dreamed that the future of the Pacific road depended more on the business that would grow out of the peopling of the deserts it traversed than upon the through traffic.
It is not too much to say that the opening of the Pacific road, viewed simply in its relation to the spread of population, development of resources, and actual advance of civilization, was an event to be ranked in far-reaching results with the landing of the Pilgrims, or perhaps the voyage of Columbus.
The Great Salt Lake Trail is now crossed and recrossed by the iron highway of commerce. The wilderness is no longer silent; the spell of its enchantment is broken. The lonely trapper has vanished from the stern mountain scene. The Indian himself has nearly disappeared, and in another generation the wild landmarks of the old trail will be almost the only tangible memorials of the men who led the way.
FOOTNOTES.
[1] This John Coulter was the first white man to see and describe the wonders of what is now the National Park. His account, however, was received as a frontier lie, and the truth of his statements were not verified until long after the hardy adventurer's death.
[2] Fort Osage, on the Missouri River, was on the site of the present town of Sibley, where the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé Railroad crosses that stream.
[3] John Day was a remarkable man. His life was full of wonderful adventures. He became insane while on this expedition of Stuart's, and was sent back to Astoria, but shortly afterwards he died there. The well-known John Day's River was so called in his honour.
[4] From an inspection of the map which accompanied Stuart's march, this stream was evidently the headwater of the North Fork of the Platte; but he was not aware of the fact.
[5] Grand Island in the Platte River was thus originally named by the early trappers and voyageurs, the majority of whom were French Canadians.
[6] See Astoria, by Washington Irving.