Pickett's Gap

by Homer Greene

It is the law in Pennsylvania that when a railroad company locates its route for a railroad by making its survey and setting its stakes, and that route is duly approved by its board of directors, it can hold the location as against any other company making a subsequent survey.

At the time of the events here recorded, two rival railroad corporations had become suddenly aware of the value of Pickett’s Gap as an outlet from the anthracite coal fields easterly to the Delaware river and to tidewater. Not that the project of building a railroad across that section of country was by any means a new one. On the contrary, it had been talked of for years. Indeed, a survey had once been made to within a mile of the mouth of the gap, but the stakes had rotted away or been destroyed long before. It was due to a combination of certain great railroad and coal interests that the subject had been now revived. And the engineers, looking over the ground, became suddenly impressed with the importance of securing the Pickett’s Gap route. From that moment it was a race between the Delaware Valley and Eastern Railroad Company and the Tidewater and Western Railroad Company to secure the right of way through Pickett’s Gap. This gorge, the only opening for fifteen miles through the ridge that flanked the westerly shore of the Delaware, became thenceforth the objective point toward which the engineers of both railroad companies bent all their energies. The D. V. & E. worked up toward it from the Delaware and the east; while the T. & W. came down the country from the west, adopting, unknown to its rival, the old survey of former years. From information received at the office of the T. & W. it was known that Nicholson, the D. V. & E. engineer, was, on a certain day in September, working up from the shore of the Delaware toward the mouth of the gorge, and that, in all probability, he would set his stakes in that coveted glen on the following day. There was only one way to outwit him and gain precedence, and that was by connecting with the terminal point of the old survey, and making a night location through the gap. This scheme originated in the fertile mind of the chief engineer of the T. & W., and he sent his most trusted lieutenant, Charlie Pickett, to carry out the plan. No better selection could have been made, for Charlie Pickett was familiar with every foot of the ground. By his own unaided effort through thirteen years he had risen through the various positions of axeman, chainman, flagman, rodman, and leveller, until now, as transitman, he was intrusted with the most careful and critical work of one of the youngest and most vigorous of the railroad corporations of Pennsylvania.

But both Pickett and his chief had miscalculated Nicholson’s energy. Instead of stopping for the night on the easterly slope of the ridge that overlooked the Delaware, that wiry and energetic custodian of the fortunes of the D. V. & E. had, as we have already seen, pushed his survey vigorously through Pickett’s Gap, and was the first to occupy the route. That Charlie Pickett did not know this when, in the moonlight, he set his stakes between the walls of the glen, was not his fault. There was nothing on the ground to indicate that any engineer had preceded him. Nor did Nicholson know, when he led his men up through the gap on the following morning, that the stakes at which he glanced as he hurried on had not been set by him. The mist hung about him like a thick cloud when he set up his instrument near the big rock in the potato field and continued his survey, and it was no wonder that the change in the line of stakes did not attract his attention. Indeed, the true state of things was not known that day nor the next by any person save one,—poor, unfortunate Dannie Pickett. And the longer he held his secret locked in his breast, the more fearful he became of a final disclosure. How long his reckless, not to say criminal, deed could remain unknown to others he did not know; he did not dare to think.

A few days later Abner Pickett was sitting on his porch enjoying an after-dinner smoke. Dannie was at school, and Gabriel was in the back lot. A very trimly dressed young man descended from a wagon at the front gate and walked up the path. It was with fear and trembling that he approached Abner Pickett. He had heard many stories of the old man’s peculiarities, of his opposition to railroads in general, and of his bitter resentment against the D. V. & E. in particular. He had been led to believe that it would be almost safer to beard a lion in its den, than to face this irrepressible old man in his own home on such an errand as this.

It was the duty of his company, however, under the law, to make at least an attempt to settle, and it was his mission to-day, however fruitless it might be, to use all of his skill and strategy in the effort to purchase a right of way through Pickett’s Gap. He put on a most courteous demeanor.

“This is Mr. Pickett, I believe?”

“Pickett’s my name,” replied the old man, calmly. “Will you come up on the stoop an’ take a chair?”

“Thank you very much. My name is Safford, Mr. Pickett. I represent the Delaware Valley and Eastern Railroad Company.”

“Yes?”

“You are doubtless aware that this company has laid out a route for a railroad through your land?”