[1] The Locomotive reached St. Joseph, Mo., over the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad. The telegraph came up the Missouri River from St. Louis. The telegraph crossed the plains in advance of the railroad.
[2] Pony Express followed the old Platte route, via Forts Kearney, Laramie, the South Pass, Fort Bridger, to Salt Lake.
[3] Butterfield Overland Company's route went through the Indian Territory, Texas, and Arizona, with a branch line coming from Memphis, Tenn., via Fort Smith, Ark. The coaches ran day and night, ordinarily making the trip in twenty-five days.
[4] The Pacific Railway. A bill authorizing it was carried through Congress in 1859. It provided for three great lines, namely, the Northern, Southern, and Central, all of which have been built. The coming on of civil war checked the enterprise at this time. Government had already caused all the practicable routes to be surveyed. As far back as 1846 Lieutenant Emory noted down the practicability of the route up the Arkansas, down the Rio Grande and Gila to San Diego or Los Angeles, while on the march for California. This is, practically, the Southern Pacific route of to-day.
[5] California and Nebraska routes. That begun in California is called the Central Pacific. The one leaving Omaha is the Union Pacific. Both lines have many branches. On the California side the first passenger train reached the top of the Sierra, Nov. 30, 1867. The Union Pacific did not push its work until the war was nearly over. By the autumn of 1866 it was forty miles west of Fort Kearney. By the time the Central Pacific was in the Truckee Valley (140 miles built), the Union Pacific was at the Black Hills (500 miles built). Brigham Young built a portion of the road in Utah.
KANSAS, NEVADA, NEBRASKA AND COLORADO ADMITTED.
Kansas came into the Union (1861) as the seceding States went out. Though peaceful progress was arrested by the war, which kept most of her able-bodied men in the field, she, the youngest State, did her part bravely and well in that memorable conflict of arms, by the side of the older ones. She kept the name of the nation which had dwelt along her great river before the coming of the white men. With the cessation of civil strife began an era of prosperity, hardly paralleled in the history of the nation, and owing, chiefly, to the fertility of her soil, which has raised her to the front rank of agricultural States.
Nevada[1] may be said to have sprung from the side of California, though originally forming part of Utah. For a time it was known only as Washoe, from the Indians living about the east foot of the great Sierra.
A little surface gold was found here as early as 1850 by emigrants who carried the news to California. Their report brought a number of eager gold-seekers into the gulches around what has since grown up to be Virginia City, and it was while searching for gold that rich silver ores were discovered early in 1859, on Mount Davidson. Here on the eastern slope of this mountain, near the newly discovered silver lode, the town of Virginia began with a few log huts. In sixteen years it had a population of twenty-five thousand. In 1864 Nevada was admitted to the Union.
Nebraska[2] in soil and climate is quite like Kansas, though somewhat less fertile. Though opened to settlement at the same time Kansas was, emigration was mostly directed to the latter State by the slavery excitement. In 1861 the area of Nebraska was much reduced by the forming of Dakota, though it is still larger than all New England. Omaha,[3] Plattsmouth, and Nebraska City grew up as outfitting points for the commerce of the plains. All were villages in 1857. As the railway system of Iowa unerringly directed itself toward the Platte, Omaha, the capital, grew in importance; but when the terminus of the Pacific Railway was fixed there, its future was assured. From this time onward the progress of Nebraska was marked. In 1867 it came into the sisterhood of States.