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Title: The Overland Route to the Road of a Thousand Wonders

Author: Anonymous

Release Date: April 24, 2016 [EBook #51849]

Language: English

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                             _The_ OVERLAND
                          ROUTE to _The_ Road
                        _of_ a Thousand Wonders


 _The_ ROUTE OF _The_ UNION PACIFIC _& The_ SOUTHERN PACIFIC FROM OMAHA
                            TO SAN FRANCISCO
   A JOURNEY OF EIGHTEEN HUNDRED MILES WHERE ONCE _The_ BISON _& The_
                             INDIAN REIGNED


 Over the wagon trail of the hardy Pioneers runs the Overland Route as
 pictured in these pages; over vast plains, once prairie, now farmland;
past the high outpost of the Rockies; across the surface of that strange
inland sea, Great Salt Lake; over the crest of the high Sierra; through
            picturesque canyon and valley to the Golden Gate


                             ISSUED BY THE
                   UNION PACIFIC AND SOUTHERN PACIFIC
                         PASSENGER DEPARTMENTS
                                  1908

                   [Illustration: The OVERLAND ROUTE
    Union Pacific & Southern Pacific between Omaha & San Francisco]

[Illustration: DEFENDING THE WORK TRAIN. THERE WAS AN INDIAN ARROW SHOT
FOR EVERY SPIKE DRIVEN IN THE IRON TRAIL OF THE OVERLAND ROUTE.
ENCOUNTERS WERE NUMEROUS AND OFTEN FATAL.]




                           THE OVERLAND ROUTE


[Illustration: THE BUFFALO—CORONADO’S HUMP BACKED OXEN—PASSED WHEN THE
WAGON TRAIL GAVE WAY TO THE RAILROAD]

[Illustration: Drop-cap illustrated “T”]

The memory of the Overland Trail will not soon pass away. Traces of it
are left here and there in the West, but the winds and rain and the
erosion of civilization have nearly rubbed it out. Yet in its time it
was the greatest wagon way. All in all, from the Council Bluffs crossing
of the Missouri to the Golden Gate of the Pacific, it was two thousand
miles long.

Vague are legend and story, prior to the nineteenth century, of the
country it was to traverse. One legend indicates that Coronado visited
the land of the “humpbacked oxen” in the sixteenth century; a tale of
like uncertainty credits Baron La Honton with a visit to Great Salt Lake
in the century following. The Franciscan friars, Escalante and
Dominguez, saw Utah Lake in 1776, and carried home strange stories of a
sea of salt farther north.

The Lewis and Clark expedition to the mouth of the Columbia, starting
from St. Louis in 1804, is the beginning of the history of the Overland
Trail. Soon after came the Astor party, which in 1811 founded Astoria.
Thirteen years later, a most adventurous spirit, a daring hunter and
pioneer, Jim Bridger, began his picturesque career in the West. Caring
for no neighbors in the wilderness, at home in the high mountains, on
the treeless plains or in the desert, this fearless and intelligent man
sent out much accurate information and guided the Mormon “First Company”
to its future home.

In 1843 the Pathfinder, General John C. Fremont, began to spy out the
military ways across the West, and the same year the Oregon pioneers
took the first wagons westward to the Pacific.

The trail that began with the journey of these Oregon pioneers was
widened and deepened by the wheels of the Mormons in 1847; and when the
herald of the first California Golden Age sent forth a trumpet call in
’Forty-nine, heard around the world, the trail was finished from Great
Salt Lake across the mountains to the sea.

That era had its great men, for great men make eras. Ben Holladay,
William N. Russell, and Edward Creighton gave to the trail the Overland
Stage Line and the Pony Express and the telegraph.

Dating the beginning of transcontinental wagon travel from the days of
’Forty-nine, it was twenty years before the railway reached California.
The period was one of great out-of-doors men and women—the last of
American pioneers. When the old trail was in full tide of life, it was
filled with gold-seekers from the Missouri to the Pacific. A hundred
thousand souls passed over it yearly. Towns, stirring and turbulent,
some now gone from the map and some grown to be cities, flourished as
the green bay tree. Omaha, Salt Lake, and San Francisco, and such lesser
places as Julesburg, Cheyenne, Laramie, Carson, Elko, and Virginia City
were picturesquely lively. Hardly was there a stage station without its
stirring story of swift life and sudden death, and long and short haired
characters with fighting reputations were to be found anywhere from St.
Joseph to San Francisco.

[Illustration: HANSCOMB PARK, OMAHA, IS PLEASANT WITH SHADY TREES AND
SPARKLING WATERS]

The traffic of the old trail was of long wagon trains of emigrants; of
great ox outfits laden with freight for the mines; of Holladay’s
coaches, six teams in full gallop, station to station; of the fast
riders of the Pony Express, and of all other manner of moving men and
beasts that might join the line of the westward march. Outlaws lived
along the trail and as opportunity offered, plundered its followers; the
protesting savages having no place upon it, but perceiving in it an
instrument to alienate their dominion, burned its wagon trains and
destroyed its stages as opportunity offered. At times great herds of
buffalo obliterated sections of the trail. Yet it held its own until the
golden spike was driven, and passed away as a wagon road only when the
need for it passed. But the railway lines that took up the burden of
stage coach and Pony Express and ox team, have marked the way of the
trail upon the map of the West so that it shall endure as long as the
West endures.

[Illustration: THE OVERLAND ROUTE BEGINS AT THE MISSOURI, CROSSING FROM
COUNCIL BLUFFS TO OMAHA ON A DOUBLE TRACK BRIDGE OF STEEL]

In the early days when the gold seekers sought San Francisco across the
Isthmus, around the Horn, or by way of the trail, it is said that a
Dutch landlord in San Francisco greeted his guests with the query: “Did
you come the Horn around, the Isthmus across, or the land over?” Through
some such distinction from the waterways, the wagon road from the
Missouri came by its name, and to-day the railroad that succeeded it is
known everywhere as the Overland Route. The railway came in the face of
opposition and predictions of disaster. The builders were men to whom
difficulty merely meant more effort, men who were not to be denied. The
Pacific Railroads, as they were styled, were two; the Union Pacific and
the Central Pacific. Starting, one from the center, the other from the
extreme westward verge of the United States, they rapidly moved towards
a junction; the Union Pacific being built westward from Council Bluffs;
the Southern Pacific eastward from Sacramento. On May 10, 1869, they met
at Promontory, Utah, and then and there was signalized the spanning of
the continent by the driving of the golden spike. In the presence of
eleven hundred people, this last spike was driven into a tie of polished
California laurel by Leland Stanford, president of the Central Pacific,
and Thomas C. Durant, president of the Union Pacific. A prayer was said,
the pilots of the engines touched, and a libation of wine was poured
between, and the message, “The last rail is laid, the last spike driven,
and the Pacific Railroad is completed,” was flashed to the President of
the United States.

By a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, the beginning
of the Overland Route is at Council Bluffs, in Iowa.

The “Bluffs,” according to tradition, were for centuries the meeting
place of Indians to settle tribal disputes—a supreme court place of the
aborigines. The city antedates Omaha many years, and has buildings that
were old when Omaha was born. As a place of beauty and much activity
Council Bluffs is well worth a pause in a journey to visit.

The first rails of the Overland Route were laid westward from Omaha in
July, 1865. There was no rail line between Omaha and Des Moines, and the
first seventy-horse power engine was brought by wagons from Des Moines
to begin the work of construction. Ties came from Michigan and
Pennsylvania at a cost sometimes of $2.50 each. All supplies had to be
brought from the East.

[Illustration: OMAHA, METROPOLIS OF NEBRASKA, IN FIFTY YEARS HAS GROWN
FROM A VILLAGE TO ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT CITIES OF THE WEST]

The Council Bluffs and Nebraska Ferry Company was organized July 23,
1853. The promoters and the Indian Chiefs met in dignified conclave and
with pow-wow and peace-pipe a treaty was concluded and, title acquired
to the townsite and ratified by the Government, Omaha was founded in the
following year. The town that was once a fringe along the waterfront has
spread back over the uplands, and with great business blocks and
beautiful homes has become a city of a hundred and fifty thousand
people, a fitting gateway to the great West.

[Illustration: THE EASTERN ENTRANCE TO THE UNION-PACIFIC BRIDGE ACROSS
THE MISSOURI IS FITTINGLY CROWNED WITH A BUFFALO’S HEAD]

Near by is the site of historic Florence, gathering place of the Mormons
after their enforced and hasty exodus from their persecutors at Nauvoo,
Illinois. This was in the winter of 1846, and, after a brief rest, from
here on April 6, 1847, began the march of the first company of one
hundred and forty-three men, three women and two children to Salt Lake
over an unbroken trail, accomplished without the loss of one soul. The
journey occupied one hundred and nine days, in striking contrast with
the present fifty-six hour trip of the Overland Limited from Omaha to
San Francisco. The first company toiled through sand in canvas covered
wagons; the Overland Limited traveler has at his disposal modern drawing
rooms, state rooms, and sleeping car sections, a club cafe, with writing
desk, tables, and easy chairs, an observation parlor with easy seats and
library and a recessed rotunda, giving an open air view of the scenery.
Instead of circling a smoky camp fire with frying pan and toasting fork,
he dines at ease in a tastefully appointed car, supplied with the best
the markets of two sides of the continent afford, while at night he can,
at will, read in his electric lighted berth, the trials of earlier
wanderers.

[Illustration: THE BLOCK SYSTEM EFFECTUALLY SAFEGUARDS THE TRAINS OF THE
OVERLAND ROUTE]

Leaving Omaha, the Overland Limited passes through South Omaha, third
place in the United States in the packing of meat products. Just beyond
may be noted to advantage the block safety system, in operation on the
Overland Route all the way to San Francisco.

Fremont, well situated at the junction of the Platte and Elkhorn
valleys, is a prosperous and beautiful city of ten thousand people. The
next stop is Columbus, a place of four thousand people, junction point
of the Norfolk branch. Citizen George Francis Train, the irrepressible,
decided that Columbus was the geographical center of the United States,
and announced that the capital should be removed there at once; but so
busy was the country with the Civil War at the time, that the idea was
seemingly overlooked and has remained unadopted.

From Columbus the passenger is carried over a way that does not waver
from a straight line for forty-one miles. On every side is unrolled a
pastoral panorama as splendid as any in the world. To view it, when the
headers and binders are at work in the golden fields interspersed with
stretches of green growing corn, is to grasp the greatness of
agricultural Nebraska.

From Omaha westward to the first glimpse of the white summits of the
Rockies, the way is through visions of country loveliness. As the
Limited ascends on its journey westward and rises above the corn levels
nearer the Missouri, meadows join the grain fields. Stacks of hay are
deployed over the plains as are soldiers on a battlefield. The homes of
farmers are impressive with evidence of a prosperous and proper pride.
The fences are straight and symmetrical, the houses all well painted;
there are great red barns to remind you of Pennsylvania, and active
windmills tower over all as landmarks. The scene is given life by high
grade cattle, sleek horses, and flocks of well kept sheep. Above is bent
over the landscape a sky of clear blue, where troop the vagrant clouds
amid its arches, and all is permeated with air pure and sweet beyond
description. Such is Nebraska.

[Illustration: HERDS OF HIGH GRADE CATTLE HAVE USURPED THE PASTURES OF
THE BUFFALO]

The agricultural area along the line of the Overland Route, east of the
Rockies, from producing nothing fifty years ago, now yields annually a
half billion dollars, and this apart from and in addition to the immense
livestock and mineral output. Nebraska alone has a property value
exceeding two billion dollars.

[Illustration: CATTLE NOONING AT NORTH BEND, NEBRASKA, NEAR THE PLATTE
RIVER]

Grand Island is a thousand feet higher than Omaha. Here Robert Stuart of
the Astor party camped in 1812 and called the island in the river Le
Grande Isle. On Independence Day, 1857, a little company of Germans from
Davenport, Iowa, named their newly started town after the island, now
grown to a prosperous city of ten thousand people. Among other things
they do here is to make a thousand pounds of beet sugar annually for
each inhabitant. Grand Island and the section immediately to the west to
old Fort Kearney and beyond were the scene of many Indian fights when
the Overland Route was being built.

[Illustration: IN THE CITY PARK OF COLUMBUS, THE SEAT OF PLATTE COUNTY,
IS A MEMORIAL TO THE CIVIL WAR HEROES]

Kearney is the next town of importance westward. Not far from here is
the site of old Fort Kearney, where in these early days of progress were
acted more stories of desperate fights and literally hair-raising
adventures than Fenimore Cooper ever dreamed of, and where Major Frank
J. North, with his four companies of Pawnee Indians made history
defending the Overland Route against hostile Indians during the
construction period. As an Indian fighter he had no superior. It was fun
alive for him to take a band of scouts and clean out a whole tribe of
hostiles, and he did it so frequently that his name became a terror to
the Indians. The Plum Creek, Ogalalla, and Summit Springs campaigns
under Major North’s direction did much to prove conclusively to the
Sioux and Cheyennes that he was their absolute master. Kearney is now a
city of eight thousand people, and is the site of the State Normal
School. To the northwest from Kearney runs a branch line through the
beautiful Wood River Valley, opening to the city a great tributary
territory.

Lexington, now a prosperous town of twenty-five hundred people, was once
called Plum Creek. Here in 1867 the Southern Cheyennes, under Chief
Turkey Leg, captured and burned a freight train. In the subsequent
campaign already alluded to, they were thoroughly subdued and many of
them made good Indians. Lexington is now more famous for its great
irrigation system than for Indians. Great grain and vegetable crops are
raised.

West of Lexington sixty-six miles is North Platte, a place of four
thousand people, and much more lively than the North Platte River. Here
we have a good view of the river, which in summer time is the laziest
thing that moves in all Nebraska. Like Hammerton’s summer air, it “has
times of noble energy and times of perfect peace.” North Platte has
great agricultural and stock interests; hence have been shipped a
million tons of hay per annum. Here is the home of Buffalo Bill, most
famous perhaps of all the plains’ scouts. Near by is his famous Scouts’
Rest ranch.

From Kearney westward to Julesburg are little towns, around some of
which cluster memories of earlier days. To Ogalalla, for instance, in
Texas cattle-driving time were driven thousands of long-horns from the
Lone Star State to start by rail for the eastern markets.

[Illustration: THE ROUTE RUNS BY A SEA OF WIND-WAVED GRAIN NEAR SHELTON
AND GIBBON, NEBRASKA]

The West had many styles of wildness, and the cowboy style was one. It
was different from all others. The writer was familiar with them and can
discriminate. There was system usually in the frontier wildness; men
killed each other, but for some cause great or small. But cowboy
wildness was not to be measured by rule or reason. The cowboy was
picturesque. He wore a roll around his broad brimmed hat, a red sash
around his waist, big spurs, high heeled boots with the Lone Star of
Texas embroidered on the top, an open shirt and two six-shooters. In
appearance he was one-half Mexican and the other half savage.
Opportunity to shoot down a man or “up a town” meant the more fame was
his when he should return to the Brazos. His touch upon the trigger was
as “light and free” as the touch of Bret Harte’s Thompson and there was
no limit, while ammunition and targets lasted, to the “mortality
incident upon that lightness and freedom.”

[Illustration: THE “OVERLAND ROUTE” STATION AT COLUMBUS]

Julesburg, 372 miles west of Omaha, was in 1865 an important stage
station on the Overland Route, and as a supply point was the subject of
much attention from the Indians. On one occasion a thousand Sioux and
Cheyennes attacked it, but were finally driven off. The station was
named after one Jules, agent for Ben Holladay’s stage line. He was
killed by J. A. Slade, a noted desperado, who fought both for and
against law and order. His career and that of his faithful wife are set
forth in Mark Twain’s “Roughing It.”

[Illustration: AT NORTH PLATTE, NEBRASKA, COLONEL CODY (BUFFALO BILL)
HAS A RANCH WHICH HE NAMED “SCOUT’S REST” IN MEMORY OF FRONTIER DAYS]

Long after Julesburg was an Overland Route railway station, the buffalo
fed on the plains around it. These animals should have some share in the
credit for the construction of the Overland Railways. Their destruction,
if deplorable, was a factor in the success of the builders. They
provided sustenance for the brawn of the workman almost all the way
across the plains from Omaha to the Rockies, and while rib steaks and
succulent humps comforted the inner man their robes kept warm the outer
one. The camp hunter did not have to travel far for meat those days.
Time was, and not so many years ago, when an Indian would trade a
buffalo robe for a cup of sugar or a yard of red flannel, but now save
in a few parks and exhibition places the buffalo has passed away. The
plains were at one time strewn with their white bones. It was the custom
of the Mormons to use the frontal bones of their skulls as tablets
whereon to write brief messages to the wagon trains following. One may
be seen in the Commercial Club museum, Salt Lake City, bearing in
Brigham Young’s writing the inscription:

[Illustration: THE NORTH PLATTE, KNOWN TO CIVILIZATION SINCE THE
EXPEDITION OF JOHN JACOB ASTOR IN 1812]

  “Pioneers camped here June 3, ’47, making fifteen miles a day. All
  well.

                                                         Brigham Young.”

After Sidney, a rich farming town of two thousand people, and in 1868 a
military post of importance, the Overland Limited stops at Cheyenne.
Shortly before reaching Cheyenne, Long’s Peak, with snow-clad summit
appears above the horizon.

[Illustration: WYOMING COWBOYS DELIGHT TO MATCH THEIR SKILL]

Five hundred and sixteen miles west and a mile higher than Omaha on the
last and highest of the tablelands that fringe the plains is Cheyenne,
capital of Wyoming and a growing, lively city of fifteen thousand
people. Above it loom the massive Rockies; around it are great plains,
partly irrigated from the great five hundred million-gallon reservoir.
Here each summer is held one of the most picturesque and representative
gatherings in the country—the Frontier Day celebration, when the
mountains and the most distant plains yield up their cattlemen and
cowboys, their hunters, trappers, Indians, and outpost men generally to
contest for honors in riding, tieing steers, horse breaking, shooting
and other frontier sports. No gayer or more picturesque crowd ever
assembled than this.

[Illustration: THE WYOMING COWPUNCHER IS STILL IN EVIDENCE AS A
PICTURESQUE AND USEFUL FACTOR OF THE PLAINS LIFE]

Cheyenne is a great livestock center, has railway shops, is the junction
for the Denver and Kansas City branch of the Union Pacific, and is
making progress as a mercantile and manufacturing place. With its
beautiful Carnegie library and half million dollar Federal building and
other excellent buildings, there is little to recall the town of the
early sixties, when its reputation was extended as a shipping center for
the long trails of cattle, and noted as a famous place for carved
saddles. Among its first pioneers was James B. Hickok (Wild Bill), a
brave gentleman, a great scout and guide, and noted throughout the West
as a superb horseman, and one of the most wonderful marksmen with a
six-shooter that ever lived. He was chief of scouts under Custer in the
Indian campaigns of 1868-69 and the latter paid him high tribute in his
book, “My Life on the Plains.”

Westward from Cheyenne the Overland Route rises steadily to the summit
of the Rockies, the crest of which it passes through by a long tunnel to
the slope whence waters flow to the Pacific. Near this tunnel is the
Ames monument.

[Illustration: AN INDIAN ENCAMPMENT AT CHEYENNE, WYOMING]

Here on the summit at Sherman, eight thousand feet above sea level, one
may pause for a sweeping glance that can take in the watersheds of two
oceans. The atmosphere is so clear that the eye can view the country for
hundreds of miles, though to the untrained sight, distances are
deceiving. Silhouetted against the northern sky is Long’s Peak;
northward the range breaks down on to the Black Hills with their Twin
Mountains; eastward the country slopes symmetrically to the plains,
treeless, level to where their horizon meets the curve of the sky.
Westward are tumbled a confusion of mountains immeasurable, and far off
to the southwestward if the weather be clear, may be seen the sparkling
ridge of the Snowy Range, refreshing with its suggestion of coolness.

[Illustration: THE STATE CAPITOL. CHEYENNE, WYOMING]

The roadbed of the Union Pacific is the best in the world. It is
absolutely dustless, and the stability of steel and ties insures the
smoothest possible riding. No other roadbed may equal this, for none
other has access to the famous Sherman granite, the best and cleanest
ballasting material known, which has created this unrivaled pink trail
across plains and mountains.

[Illustration: EXPERIMENTS ON THE GOVERNMENT FARM AT CHEYENNE HAVE
PRODUCED WONDERFUL RESULTS ON UNIRRIGATED LAND RECLAIMED FROM THE
SAGE-BRUSH PLAINS.]

Laramie has railroad shops and other industries. A clean and prosperous
city, the far reaching Laramie plains, once the bed of an ancient sea,
make of it a great livestock center. The State University, the United
States Experiment Station, the State Normal School, and the State School
of Music are here. The fishing and hunting in the streams and mountains
that can be readily reached from Laramie, constitute one of the few
really first-class hunting grounds left in the United States. More of
wilderness is accessible from Laramie and neighboring stations than
perhaps from any other railway station in our country.

[Illustration: AN ORIGINAL AMERICAN. CHIEF OF A DISAPPEARING RACE
                                       Copyright by F A Rinehart, Omaha.]

Laramie is the center of a wonderful mineral section; near by are soda
lakes large enough to raise all the world’s biscuits for centuries to
come.

West of Laramie and fifteen miles away rises Elk Mountain, 11,511 feet
high, which by its isolation was a noted landmark in the days of the
trail. Northward twenty miles, dark and rugged, is Laramie Peak, another
landmark of the Rockies, rising blue and solitary from the plain. Both
peaks are visible from the car windows.

Passing beautiful Rock River, we reach Hanna, on the eastern border of
the great coal measure of Wyoming. Six thousand people live here, but
only half are on the surface at any one time. Between Medicine Bow and
Fort Steele, now abandoned but once a celebrated fort, the best views of
the Medicine Bow range are to be had. At Fort Steele are hot springs,
and we cross again the North Platte River, but at an altitude some four
thousand feet higher than the Nebraska crossing.

Rawlins, named after Grant’s Secretary of War, is an important
distributing point of three thousand people, whence hunters, miners, and
stockmen outfit for the Wind River Valley and other sections north and
south. From Rawlins the ascent is made to the Divide, seven thousand one
hundred and four feet above sea level, the highest point between Sherman
and Ogden. The grades are gentle now, for along here some of the
heaviest and most skillful work in the reconstruction of the Overland
Route was done.

[Illustration: PASSENGER STATION AND GROUNDS AT CHEYENNE]

The next stop is at Rock Springs, the greatest coal mining town in the
West. The town itself has the typical appearance of an active country
town, and there is little on the surface to indicate the labyrinthine
workings of the great underground measures, part of the vast mineral
treasure house of the state. Wyoming is a state of both underground and
over-ground industries, with its coal mines, gold mines, copper mines,
its great flocks of sheep and herds of cattle, and lastly a newly
developed agricultural field of great possibilities.

Green River is a lively railway center with division headquarters. The
beautiful river of that name is of clear water, but gains its color from
the copper-green shale over which it runs. The wonderfully colored
shales give to the rocks that rise above it an added interest to their
striking forms. This is the paradise of the geologist. The Green River
Shales varying in thickness from a knife’s blade to several feet, are
full of fossils, fish, insects, and whatnot of ancient life. In them
have been uncovered the skeletons of huge ancient monsters. Agates and
other gems are found hereabouts in great variety and quantity.

At the next stop, Granger, the line of the Overland Route to Portland,
Seattle, Tacoma and Spokane branches off to the northwest.

[Illustration: AT LARAMIE IS LOCATED THE UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING]

From Leroy, seventy-four miles west of Green River, the new line to Bear
River is taken, avoiding the old time Tapioca hill. This new stretch of
road is most picturesque; the approach to the famous Aspen tunnel is
through the historic Pioneer Valley, about which the train climbs with
graceful sweeps. Next to the cut-off over Great Salt Lake the Aspen
tunnel affords the best illustration of what genius and money may do to
accomplish wonders in railway construction. The tunnel, a mile and a
tenth long, passes through Aspen ridge, four hundred and fifty-six feet
below the mountain top and at an altitude of seven thousand two hundred
and ninety-six feet. The distance saved is ten miles, the greatest grade
is forty-three feet to the mile, and the sharpest curve three degrees,
thirty-six inches.

Evanston, nine hundred and twenty-seven miles from Omaha, is the end of
a division, a prettily placed city with a Federal building, a Carnegie
library and many natural attractions. The streams provide great trout
fishing, and many hunting parties start on mountain expeditions from
Evanston. Just beyond we pass Castle Rock, a symmetrical stone sentinel
posted in the desert and which in the day of wagon migration was a
welcome sign that not far beyond the “Promised Land” would be found. To
the south lie the Uintah Mountains.

Yet a little way beyond the graving tools of nature have wrought out two
canyons, indescribable in their beauty, infinite in their variety.

[Illustration: AT FORT SANDERS, A FEW MILES SOUTH OF LARAMIE, IN 1867,
GENERAL GRANT AND HIS SUITE WERE PHOTOGRAPHED EN ROUTE OVER THE UNION
PACIFIC TO ARRANGE TREATIES WITH THE INDIAN TRIBES WHICH OPPOSED THE
RAILROAD CONSTRUCTION]

The train drops gently into Echo Canyon, running over rails alongside a
mountain torrent. All along the way are Nature’s cathedrals. There are
turrets and domes of gray stone, matching the architecture of an
oriental city. At almost every step of the journey through the canyons
are new and exquisite pictures, rock-framed, or strange monuments of
stone. Immense rocks, perched on the verges of precipices, seem to
threaten a fall into the abyss. The train passes under frowning cliffs,
crossing and recrossing the rushing river; now by waterfalls and
cascades; now bursting into a zone of sunshine, then into the twilight
between higher walls. The colors are the gray of rock and green of pine,
with here and there a splash of iron red.

[Illustration: EROSION HAS SCULPTURED MANY MONUMENTS OF WEIRD SHAPES AND
BRIGHT COLORS FROM THE RED SANDSTONE OF THE LARAMIE PLAINS]

Winged Rock, Kettle Rocks, Hood Rock, Hanging Rock, Pulpit Rock, The
Narrows, Steamboat Rock, Monument Rock, The Cathedral, Battlement Rock,
The Witches, Eagle’s Nest, The Devil’s Slide, The Devil’s Gap, and The
Devil’s Gate are names given to wonderful rock formations which can be
comprehended only by the eye, words being valueless. The canyon walls
are from five hundred to eight hundred feet high, and possess more weird
and striking rock formations than any other known canyons of equal
length.

[Illustration: AT COLORES, ROCKS TURNED BY THE LATHE OF THE WINDS INTO
UNUSUAL SHAPES, ARE IN SIGHT FROM THE CAR WINDOW]

Out of the Canyon the train breaks into one of Utah’s wonderful valleys,
and in a little while reaches the Union Station at Ogden.

Here the passenger who wishes to visit Salt Lake makes an hour’s side
trip through a garden section to the capital of Zion. There is no extra
expense—all Overland Route tickets are good via Salt Lake or will be
made good upon presentation to the Ogden Union Depot Ticket Agent.

Salt Lake has been famous more than half a century. In the lifetime of
the great Overland Trail it was the great oasis in the two thousand mile
journey between the “States” and the Pacific; and westward or eastward
bound, the travelers looked forward to it with fond anticipation. To the
Mormons it was Zion—home of their faith and haven from persecution,
where they might build a kingdom.

Salt Lake came into life on July 24, 1847, when there was not an
American settlement west of the Missouri and California was under
Mexican dominion. With the arrival of the first train of one hundred and
twenty-one wagons began far western agriculture. The new comers put
their hands to the plow the clay of their coming and began the first
irrigation canal built by the white race in America. And while redeeming
the wilderness and making the deserts blossom, they built a city with
such careful planning of streets and open places, of statues and public
buildings, such attractions of tree and vine, of home and temple, of
park and boulevard, that it has become a place of great interest to all
travelers, even though world-wide weary.

Salt Lake has that historic interest due such an oasis of the old
Overland Trail, where, before the days of that Trail, came a little band
of people so strong in their faith that unfaltering they left trodden
ways a thousand miles to build their temple in the desert. With
background of mountains (the Wasatch Range) and face set toward a
marvelous, silent sea, Salt Lake’s estate is one of natural charm.

Metropolis of the great intermountain country, with fertile, irrigated
valleys, the city’s destiny is perhaps chiefly to be forecasted in
manufactures. To-day, with its mountains of minerals, cheap coal, great
smelters (placed a proper distance from the city’s homes), it has first
rank among the ore reducing centers of the country.

The great turtle-shaped Tabernacle houses the sweetest organ in the
world—one that sings and almost speaks. Its acoustic properties are such
that a whisper lives from one end to the other. Seven thousand people
may at one time hear a spoken word. Near by is the Temple, a building of
remarkable architectural interest, home of the Mormon church and
sanctuary of its secrets. The museum adjoins the Tabernacle. The Lion
House, the Bee Hive and Amelia’s Palace have part in history.

The new Union Depot of the Overland Route in Salt Lake City will be in
architecture and appointments equal to any in the country.

[Illustration: ROCK RIVER, FULL OF LUSTY TROUT, COMES SPARKLING FROM
DISTANT SNOW PEAKS AND PASSES UNDER A MODERN BRIDGE]

The greatest charm of Salt Lake City is in the many broad, tree-lined
avenues, with streams of water flowing along the curbs. On either side
in the principal residence districts, are beautiful homes, largely built
from the proceeds of Utah mines. The public buildings are attractive,
and the city park a resting place with lovely lawns and flowers and
groves. The hot springs (within the city) and Fort Douglas should be
visited, nor should any stranger depart without passing an afternoon at
Saltair, the principal bathing resort on Salt Lake, with its immense
pavilion, promenade walks, and wharves extending far out into the salt
water. Here one may float for hours in warm, buoyant salt water—buoyant
and salty indeed beyond any other water on earth save the Dead Sea.

No people are more kindly and hospitable than those of Salt Lake. They
differ among themselves as to the plan of salvation, but are united in
the belief that if there be a heaven on earth, Salt Lake is that heaven,
and its portals are open to all who may choose to add themselves to the
eighty thousand there now.

Ogden has some twenty thousand people. Its present considered commercial
and manufacturing importance is but a suggestion of the greatness to be.
Ogden Canyon, easy of access, is a mountain rift with beauty of stream
and wall. The sugar mills and electric power plants are interesting.

[Illustration: GREEN RIVER RUNS OVER COPPER-STAINED ROCKS AND PEBBLES
THROUGH A COUNTRY OF ROMANTIC SCENERY AND ABUNDANCE OF WILD GAME.]

Utah is great in agriculture, fruit growing, stock raising and mining.
The mines have yielded four hundred million dollars—gold, silver,
copper, lead, and coal. The fruits are of fine flavor and exceptional
keeping quality. Of its agricultural area, a large proportion is as
gardenlike, perhaps, in its intensive cultivation, as any part of the
West, with proportionately rich yields. The livestock and sheep
industries, have made many wealthy or well-to-do.

Before journeying farther west it may be well to consider the two eras
in the history of the Pacific Railroads.

The total first cost of the Pacific Railroads—Union and Central
Pacific—was $115,214,587.79. Such was the report of the Secretary of
Interior to the committee of inspection. The work was undertaken
westward from Omaha (1865) and eastward from Sacramento (1863). The
intense rivalry generated by the desire of each company to build as far
as possible before the junction should be effected resulted in marvelous
celerity in construction, if the conditions be taken into consideration.
Collis P. Huntington said before the Senate Committee of Congress:

  “There were difficulties from end to end; from high and steep
  mountains; from snows; from deserts where there was scarcity of water,
  and from gorges and flats where there was an excess; difficulties from
  cold and from heat; from a scarcity of timber, and from obstructions
  of rock; difficulties in keeping supplied a large force on a long
  line; from Indians, and from want of labor.”

[Illustration: NEAR THE TOWN OF GREEN RIVER, RISE NUMBERS OF SANDSTONE
BUTTES IN INFINITE VARIETY OF SHAPE AND COLOR. THE ENTRANCE TO THE
INFERNO MIGHT WELL BE IMAGINED HERE]

[Illustration: WYOMING IS FAMOUS FOR ALWAYS KEEPING ITS LAVISH PROMISES
TO SPORTSMEN.]

For six hundred miles there was not one white inhabitant; for stretches
of one hundred miles not a drink of water.

Yet ten miles of track were laid in one day, and for several days faster
than ox teams could follow with loads. Twenty-five thousand workmen were
employed, and more than five thousand teams. At one time thirty ships
were en route from the Atlantic coast to San Francisco with supplies.
Between January, 1866, and May 10, 1869, over two thousand miles of
railroad were constructed through the wilderness.

Less dramatic has been the reconstruction of the Pacific railroads, and
yet not less in interest. By the year 1900, the transcontinental traffic
of the country and its promise for the future had outgrown its first
main highway. To the present owners and management, under the direction
of the president, E. H. Harriman, fell the task of reconstruction; the
task of tearing up the old track and replacing it with new; of
abandoning a large part of the route and choosing new grades; of cutting
through mountains by tunnels where formerly the track was laid around or
over them; of replacing wooden bridges with steel; and short sidetracks
with long ones. The expense of the work of reconstruction to date
probably nearly equals the first cost.

In this work of rebuilding, the eight-million dollar Great Salt Lake
cut-off stands prominently as the most startling of achievements in
railway work. The old road through the country where the golden spike
was driven was abandoned as a part of the main highway for a distance of
146.68 miles. To save grades and distance, the cut-off was built across
the heart of the lake from Ogden to Lucin, 102.91 miles and so nearly
straight that it is only one-third of a mile longer than an air line.

[Illustration: AN OVERLAND COACH, PHOTOGRAPHED IN THE DAYS OF THE MORMON
EXODUS FROM ILLINOIS TO UTAH]

[Illustration: CHIEF WHITE WHIRLWIND IN HIS WAR ARRAY. A GRIM AND
FORMIDABLE WARRIOR IN BYGONE DAYS OF THE OVERLAND ROUTE
                                     Copyright by F. A. Rinehart, Omaha.]

The curves which have been thus saved by the new line would be
sufficient to turn a train around eleven times. The power saved in
moving an average freight train because of less grades would lift an
average man eight thousand five hundred miles. The power saved in moving
such a train because of the shorter distance would be sufficient to
carry a man two hundred round trips between New York and San Francisco.
The heart of Great Salt Lake is crossed by the Overland Limited by
daylight. The lake covers two thousand square miles, is eighty-three
miles long and fifty-one miles wide; its greatest depth is thirty feet.
In every five pounds of water there is one of salt of which thirteen
ounces is common salt, a density exceeded only by the Dead Sea.

Twenty-seven and a half miles of the cut-off are over the water, with
roadway sixteen feet wide at the bottom and seventeen feet above the
lake’s surface. The work began in June, 1902, and on November 13, 1903,
the track was completed across the lake. During that time in supplying
piles for trestles and subsequent fills a forest of two square
miles—thirty-eight thousand two hundred and fifty-six trees—was
transplanted into the waters of Great Salt Lake. Each day hundreds of
carloads of gravel were poured in between the piles to make a solid
pathway—sometimes more than four hundred cars in one day. The roadway is
on the surface of a foot of rock ballast and beneath that a coat of
asphalt upon a plank floor three inches thick, resting upon a
practically indestructible substructure. For thirty-six miles there is
no grade at all. The steepest grade in the one hundred and three miles
is five inches to the hundred feet. The saving in the vertical feet in
grades compared with the old route is fifteen hundred and fifteen feet;
in degrees of curvature 3.919.

[Illustration: THE “OVERLAND LIMITED” CROSSING HAM’S FORK, NEAR GRANGER,
WYOMING]

There is something fascinating about Great Salt Lake—something in its
weird, silent waters that draws you to it irresistibly. There are no
words to describe the impression made when first you see it lying out
there in the desert, its dense green waters reaching away to the dusky
mountains that mark its farther shore. Other waters, alive, break with
white crested riffles at the touch of the breeze; but these waters seem
dead, and naught but the fury of a storm can break their placidity. No
craft ply upon their surface, and nothing lives within them save a queer
shrimp, a third of an inch long, and small flies before their wing
stage; and but for the gulls, herons, and pelicans that came to the lake
some time in the misty past, there would be no show of life upon its
broad expanse. These same birds fly twenty miles for fresh water and
food.

Over this strange sea, with no counterpart on the continent, the
travelers of the world now pass. East and west the scenes of the two
most majestic ranges of America spread before their eyes; but the
enchantment of this ride across the lake of mystery will linger in the
memory long after the beauty of mountain peak and grandeur of mountain
wall shall have passed to the realm of things forgotten.

Westward from Lucin the route follows the old overland trail to the
eastern base of the Sierra, across a region for half a century described
in geographies as the Great American Desert.

This one-time desert is now proved to be possessed of mineral riches
beyond dreams—gold, silver, copper, iron, soda, borax, sulphur, and
other minerals in abundance. Agriculturally, too, the Carson Valley
within the “Desert,” under Uncle Sam’s nine million dollar irrigation
enterprise, is proving the worth of Nevada soil and water properly
associated.

In 1833 Kit Carson and Jim Beckwith, with a few Crow Indians, crossed
Nevada, and in 1846 Carson guided Fremont across it, but the Mormons
were the first settlers.

[Illustration: ECHO CANYON, UTAH, WHERE THE SHRIEK OF THE LOCOMOTIVE
REVERBERATES AMID A THOUSAND CLIFFS AND PEAKS]

[Illustration: PULPIT ROCK IN ECHO CANYON. FROM THIS NATURAL ROSTRUM
BRIGHAM YOUNG IS SAID TO HAVE PREACHED HIS FIRST SERMON IN THE “PROMISED
LAND” TO HIS FOLLOWERS, IN 1847]

In 1860 the famous pony express service of Jones, Russell & Company was
begun between Sacramento and Salt Lake City, with schedule of three and
one-half days. The first express left Sacramento, April 4, 1860, and the
first arrived from Salt Lake City April 13, 1860. The record for time
was held by the relay of pony express riders that carried President
Lincoln’s message from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, seventeen
hundred and eighty miles, in five days and eighteen hours. The through
stage line across Nevada was established in 1865, when the Overland
stage Company extended the line between Virginia City and Sacramento (in
operation since 1860) to Salt Lake City and connected with Ben
Holladay’s line thence to the Missouri River. The through telegraph line
was completed across Nevada in 1865.

[Illustration: IMAGINATION RUNS RIOT AMID THE BRILLIANT COLORING, THE
CURIOUS CARVINGS OF THE CLIFFS OF THE ECHO AND WEBER CANYONS. A FERTILE
FANCY HAS STYLED THESE “THE WITCHES’ ROCKS”]

Nevada is in great part the bed of an ancient ocean ribbed with lean
mountains. Multitudes of travelers have noted that the rain, driven in
from the Pacific, falls heavily in the valleys of California and up the
western slopes of the Sierra, and on the summit of the mountains creates
a deep blanket of snow, but to thirsty Nevada gives little save the snow
fed rivers that flow down the mountain sides. So while they see skies
marvelously clear and crests of brown far-off hills snow-crowned (under
the sunlight seemingly tipped with flame), and drink the rare air, to
the fevered face a balm and to the lungs as rare old wine to the palate,
yet they pass it by and see nothing in the waste out of which to create
a home. The Sierra watershed and government money are to change all
that. Changed, also, is its mining life to-day. Capital, with new
railroads—yes, and Capital, new railroads,—yes, and automobiles,—have
torn the mask from the face of this treasure land. The dawn of the day
of this land of mystery between the Rockies and the Sierra is here. Salt
Lake City is now probably the greatest smelting center of the world and
the once named ‘Great American Desert’ is helping give as neighbors to
the green fields, running streams and fruitful orchards of the Mormon
haven, the tall chimneys and mighty fires of many furnaces. Discoveries
of new mining districts follow hard one upon the heels of another.

[Illustration: THRUST FROM THE RED SOIL RISE TWO DAZZLING WALLS OF
WHITE—FORTY FEET HIGH, TWENTY FEET APART; SHEER FROM THE BRINK OF THE
CLIFF TO THE WATERS OF WEBER RIVER—THE DEVIL’S SLIDE]

When the glaciers in the infinite past were set in flow, grinding rocks
to make soil from which food could be raised for races of men not then
in existence save in the mind of God, Nevada and Utah were not left
valueless. Rather, when the world was freighted for its long voyage,
some of the richest stores were given this intermountain land to keep,
and jealously has she guarded them with barren mountains for sentinels
and lusterless sage for a cloak.

  “A wide domain of mysteries
  And signs that men misunderstood
  A land of space and dreams; a land
  Of seas, salt lakes and dried up seas.
  A land of caves and caravans,
  And lonely walls and pools;
  A land that has its purposes and plans.”

[Illustration: CROSSING WEBER BRIDGE THE TRAIN PLUNGES INTO A TUNNEL
HEWN THROUGH THE ROCK, LEAVING THE SERPENTINE RIVER FOR AWHILE]

[Illustration: ALL DAY LONG HEAVY SHADOWS HANG OVER DEVIL’S GATE AND THE
FOAMING WATERS CHAFE AGAINST ITS ROCKY PORTALS]

So wrote Joaquin Miller thirty years ago; more and more the “purposes
and plans” of the great basin become apparent. In forty-seven years
Nevada alone has yielded in treasure $1,700,000,000.

But the store of riches is not alone in mines. Silt-laden rivers born in
snow-clad mountain heights for untold centuries have carried their
riches into the great basin. The principal streams of Nevada have no
outlet but disappear in sinks. The Truckee, rising at Lake Tahoe almost
at the summit of the Sierra, tumbles down the mountain side to a last
resting place in Pyramid and Mud Lakes. The Carson River, rising in
equally lofty heights, sinks in a lake of the same name, and the
Humboldt, companion to the railway through central Nevada, flows from
the Great Wells at the base of the Ruby Range and westerly finds its way
120 miles to a vanishing point in Humboldt Lake.

To give life to the desert by joining again these streams with the
silt-surface earth of the Nevada valleys through irrigation, is the task
now in hand. Ere finished, the commonwealth should be as great in
agriculture and horticulture as in mining.

In Nevada’s 110,000 square miles are many thousands of fertile acres
requiring but the touch of water to make them productive. Here are some
of the great grazing lands of America. A total of not far from 10,000
carloads of cattle, horses and sheep is exported from Nevada every year.

[Illustration: IN OGDEN CANYON IS THE HERMITAGE, BUILT AMID ROMANTIC
SURROUNDINGS AND ATTRACTING MANY LOVERS OF TROUT AND SCENERY]

The Great Salt Lake Cut-off of the Overland Route westward from Ogden is
now of course the main line; the old line runs to the north of Great
Salt Lake, crossing the mountains at Promontory at an elevation of 4907
feet and rejoining the Great Salt Lake Cut-off at Umbria Junction.
Through trains no longer are operated via Promontory and in the march of
progress that station which one day held the attention of the entire
country as the junction point of two great railways binding together the
East and the West is now only a name on a side line. Yet the day of its
birth was one of glory. New York City celebrated it with the chimes
ringing out Old Hundred and a salute of one hundred guns; Philadelphia
rang all its bells in celebration and Chicago rejoiced with a mass
meeting where Vice President Colfax spoke, and sent through the
decorated streets a parade four miles in length. Omaha turned loose with
all of its firearms and paraded with every able-bodied man in town in
line, and closed the day with fireworks and illuminations. As usual, San
Francisco was fore-handed with its rejoicing, starting its celebration
two days in advance of the driving of the golden spike, and continuing
it two days thereafter to preserve a proper equilibrium. Bret Harte
wrote a poem for the event.

The reasons for abandoning the old historic route in favor of the new
mid-sea pathway across Great Salt Lake are more eloquently expressed in
the diagram on page 47 than can be done by words.

Westward from Ogden, on the new route passing the Lake stations and then
Lucin and Montello, the first place of importance is Cobre, junction
point with the new Nevada Northern Railway with its line southward
through Cherry to Ely, a distance of 153 miles. At Ely is a mountain of
copper, one of the great mines of the world. Vast development work is
under way here. The Cherry Creek section has gold and silver; as far
back as 1876 twenty carloads of ore were teamed 150 miles to the railway
and shipped to a smelter, returning an average of $800 to the ton.
Absence of transportation has prevented development until now.

[Illustration: THE ENTRANCE TO THE BEAUTIFUL OGDEN CANYON IS BUT A SHORT
CAR RIDE FROM THE CITY. ITS SPARKLING WATERS FORM THE BASE OF THE CIVIC
SUPPLY]

[Illustration: THE OLD MORMON TRAIL, PATHWAY OF THE PIONEERS, CAN STILL
BE TRACED NEAR SALT LAKE CITY]

Wells, end of the first section going west, is the source of the
Humboldt River. There are some thirty springs, very deep,—some perhaps a
thousand feet—and never failing. They made of Humboldt Wells a great
camping and watering place in the days of the old Overland Trail, three
roads, the Grass Creek, the Thousand Springs Valley and the Cedar Pass,
converging here. Wells is headquarters for a great cattle country, with
ranges extending into Idaho on the North and Utah on the east, and is
the supply town for many rich mining districts.

The little town of Deeth is a trading center with all the promise of
several hundred square miles of tributary territory very little
developed and very rich in mineral resources.

[Illustration: IT IS A FAR CRY FROM THESE DAYS OF THE OVERLAND LIMITED
TO THE PRAIRIE SCHOONER OF PIONEER DAYS WHEN TIME AND DISTANCE SEEMED
ALMOST UNLIMITED]

Elko is picturesquely lively and on the verge of a business renaissance.
It has had many ups and downs in a varied life. A million dollars in
freight charges were paid here the first year after the railroad was
finished, and thirty years ago it had waterworks, a bank, hotels,
courthouse, churches, etc., when Nevada was almost terra incognita.
Today it has more people (probably 2500 all told) than ever before. The
shales near by possess gases rich beyond measure, which may be developed
to furnish light, heat and power for the rich two hundred mile section
of which Elko is the commercial center. It is a town of attractive
homes, good schools and churches. The Tuscarora, Columbia and Mountain
City mining districts use Elko as a gateway to the world. There are good
mineral springs here, including a “chicken soup” spring, alleged to
supply food and medicine to any traveling Ponce de Leons.

[Illustration: THE STATUE OF BRIGHAM YOUNG, THE SUCCESSFUL LEADER TO THE
PROMISED LAND]

At Carlin are railroad shops, and the employees with the assistance of
the Company maintain a handsome library. The old emigrant road divided
just before reaching Carlin and reunited at Gravelly Ford. Once upon a
time Shoshone Indians were plentiful hereabouts.

At Palisade, the Eureka and Palisade Railroad, eighty miles long,
delivers its train loads of ore from the iron, silver and lead mines to
the south for shipment to the smelters along the Overland Route. Rich
oases, such as Pine Valley and Diamond Valley, are along the branch.

[Illustration: AN EARLY PHOTOGRAPH OF AN OVERLAND CARAVAN CLOSE TO SALT
LAKE CITY]

Battle Mountain is the junction of the Overland Route and Nevada Central
Railway, a line ninety-three miles long, extending southward to Austin,
once a famous mining camp and yet the center of a mining district of
much prominence. Battle Mountain lies three miles to the south. In the
early sixties it was the scene of a fierce fight between immigrants and
Indians. The Indians, while admitting they were worsted, claim to this
day “heap white men killed.” The town is in the center of a productive
agricultural section, and the Galena, Pittsburg, Copper Canyon and other
productive mining districts, such as are springing up all over Nevada,
help make it prosperous.

At the right of the station in Golconda are several mineral springs of
much value, ranging in temperature from cold to hot enough to boil an
egg in a minute. A good hotel is connected with the springs, which in
any populous country would be visited by thousands of ill people. The
great gold and copper deposits of Golconda are now being developed and
extensive furnaces built.

[Illustration: THE MORMON TEMPLE AT SALT LAKE CITY, BUILT OF STONE FROM
THE NEIGHBORING MOUNTAINS, STANDS BY THE SPACIOUS TABERNACLE, FAMOUS FOR
ITS ACOUSTICS AND THE MUSIC OF ITS CHOIR]

Winnemucca, “Napoleon of the Piutes,” was the best known chief of that
tribe of Indians, and Winnemucca town was named in his honor. It is a
lively place and has perhaps as large a trading area as any city in the
West. For thirty years a stage ran between here and Boise City, Idaho,
two hundred and fifty miles. Until the building of the Oregon Short Line
Winnemucca was gateway to all of Southern Idaho. Today its trade area
covers Northern Nevada and Eastern Oregon. The Paradise mines, 25 miles
northeast; the Kennedy mines, 50 miles south; and the great sulphur
mines, 30 miles northwest, use it as a trading depot. The business done
in the enterprising town of 2,000 people is not to be measured by its
population.

[Illustration: EAGLE GATE IS ONE OF THE INTERESTING MONUMENTS OF EARLIER
ZION]

Humboldt and Humboldt House for thirty-five years have been famous among
Overland travelers as a place of delight with shady groves, green lawns
and flowing fountains. Apples, peaches, plums, and cherries grow in the
oasis. At a point near Humboldt the old Oregon trail diverged from the
Overland Route toward Northern California and Southern Oregon. All along
through this section of Nevada, the Overland Route takes the way
prepared by the Humboldt River.

[Illustration: SALT LAKE CITY AND COUNTY BUILDING, SHOWS WELL THE MODERN
PROGRESS OF THE CITY]

No longer, however, does it wind with the stream, but burrows through
mountains and spans the river as often as need be to save curves,
distance and grades. In the last few years $10,531,425 have been spent
in recreating this section of the main trans-continental highway.

[Illustration: THE LION HOUSE, BUILT BY BRIGHAM YOUNG TO SHELTER HIS
FAMILY]

Lovelock, with its irrigation canals, great alfalfa fields and herds of
cattle, is made by the union of the waters of the Humboldt and the
fertile soil of its meadows. In a few years Lovelock will be multiplied
a hundred fold in Nevada. An hour’s ride beyond is a favored section for
the mirage, a summer-time illusion. It is said in the days of the trail
many an emigrant thought he saw in the distance a second Lovelock, more
lovely, only to be undeceived at even.

[Illustration: THE TITHING HOUSE IS ONE OF THE EARLIEST STRUCTURES]

At Hazen, the overland trains leave the passengers who are to go fortune
hunting in Southern Nevada among the mines. Rawhide, Fairview, Wonder,
Tonopah, Goldfield, Bullfrog, Manhattan, Rhyolite, Beatty and a score
more of millionaire making camps already well known to prospectors,
capitalists, and stock brokers throughout the country, are reached by
the Nevada-California branch railway from Hazen, which connects at Mina
with the Tonopah and Goldfield Railroad. In these regions the scenes of
the Comstock Lode days of half a century ago are being repeated. Towns
are created overnight—millionaires are made between meals. Stock
exchanges ride high upon the enormous output of the mining certificates.
Goldfield, but recently a desert, is a city of ten thousand people with
good hotels, banks, daily papers, water, electric and gas plants,
railroad, telegraph and telephone service, and indeed all the utilities
of a modern city. Tonopah is of like history with somewhat smaller
population. Here are all the cosmopolitan and adventurous spirits that
are lured by gold, making these camps on the human side picturesque
beyond measure. Marvelous are the stories, the true ones perhaps most so
of all. One man went to Tonopah on $150 he had borrowed; in three years
he was worth $2,000,000. Another owned a bed, a tent, and a ten days’
food supply; Goldfield—and today he owns a million dollars. A few men
leased a mine; in five months they added to their property two million
dollars. Little wonder it is a land of optimism; each treasure seeker
has such examples before him to inspire him with hope; and the Nevada
camps are the most hopeful and probably the most wonderful mining camps
in the world.

[Illustration: TO SALTAIR, ON THE BORDERS OF GREAT SALT LAKE, CLOSE TO
THE CITY, GO THOUSANDS DAILY TO BATHE IN ITS STRANGE WATERS, TOO SALT
FOR LIFE, TOO HEAVY FOR THE LIGHTER WINDS TO CURL, TOO BUOYANT TO SWIM
IN SWIFTLY]

[Illustration: Sign, “Last Spike”]

Hazen is also the junction point for another railroad, a fourteen-mile
branch line to Fallon, the commercial center of the Truckee-Carson
reclamation project.

[Illustration: PROMONTORY POINT AT THE EASTERN END OF GREAT SALT LAKE.
HERE WAS THE JUNCTION OF THE TWO LINES WHERE THE LAST SPIKE WAS DRIVEN,
BINDING THE NORTH AMERICAN CONTINENT WITH A TRAIL OF STEEL]

[Illustration: ACROSS THE SILENT DESOLATE SEA, THE TRAIN RUNS ON THE
GREAT SALT LAKE CUT-OFF, THE BUILDING OF WHICH IS ONE OF THE TRIUMPHS OF
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY]

[Illustration: THE PELICAN REARS ITS YOUNG ON THE LONELY ISLANDS OF THE
INLAND SEA]

The United States Government has diverted the waters of the Truckee and
Carson Rivers by a series of canals, reservoirs and laterals upon
250,000 acres of the bed of an ancient lake with deep rich soil composed
of materials washed down from the surrounding mountains. Already water
is ready to irrigate about 100,000 acres, of which a large part is
Government land and the remainder either railroad or privately owned
land which can be purchased at reasonable figures. About 50,000 acres
have been settled upon and nearly one thousand farms more are ready for
settlement.

[Illustration: LOOKING WESTWARD ALONG THE PATHWAY MADE FROM SHORE TO
SHORE WHERE TIME AND NATURE WERE DEFEATED]

The Government has invested several million dollars in the project and
guarantees the water supply. The public land may be taken up under the
Homestead Act and it is the purpose of the Reclamation Service that
settlers shall have farm units varying in size from forty to one hundred
and sixty acres, according to the location, smoothness of the surface
and quality of land. The average size of the farms is 80 acres. The
intensive cultivation possible under an irrigation system makes it most
profitable to till a farm of moderate size. The railroad lands are now
on sale at an average price of about $5 per acre and other privately
owned lands may be secured at from $5 to $20 per acre. The cost of the
water system is assessed against the land on the basis of ten equal
annual payments and is now determined to be $30 per acre or $3 per year
without interest. There is additional charge for maintenance of the
canal system, which in 1908 amounted to 40c per acre. The only other
charges to settlers are $6.50 for a forty-acre farm and $8 for an
eighty-acre farm, the Government fees for filing; save that if the farm
is within the railroad grant limit the fee becomes $8 for a forty-acre
farm and $11 for an eighty-acre farm. The filing charge before United
States Commissioner at Fallon is $1.

[Illustration: SEAGULLS IN COUNTLESS NUMBERS GIVE LIFE TO THIS AMERICAN
DEAD SEA]

[Illustration: THE PLAINS AND MOUNTAINS OF NEVADA HAVE A CHARM ABOVE THE
RICHES THEY YIELD TO THE INSISTENT SEEKER]

With water absolutely assured by the Government and the fertility of the
land unquestioned, no one possessed of energy and good health with
sufficient money to purchase the actual needs of a residence and farm
cultivation, say from $1000 to $2000, need fear failure. The Carson
Valley is to be a great garden spot, rich in small fruits such as
apples, pears, peaches; rich in surface crops such as potatoes, onions,
sugar beets; rich in dairy products, in great fields of alfalfa and
herds of live stock. An experimental farm is maintained by the
Government and already it has been proved that almost any temperate zone
crop can be grown successfully. Probably the highest cash markets in
America, the great mines of Nevada, Utah and California, are near at
hand and the surplus can be exported to the eastern and western borders
of the continent and perhaps yet farther.

[Illustration: A STORY NOT NEEDING WORDS—WHY THE OLD ROUTE WAS
ABANDONED]

The Nevada & California Railway extends southward into the Owens River
Valley from Mina, well known for its agricultural oases along the river,
for its mines and for its superb scenery, its western wall of mountains
being the highest and most impressive in the United States proper.

[Illustration: THE HUMBOLDT RIVER, CROSSED AT RYNDON, PROVES NEVADA NOT
EVERYWHERE THE DESERT IT IS TOO OFTEN ASSUMED TO BE]

[Illustration: IN PALISADE CANYON, NEVADA, THE OVERLAND LIMITED FOLLOWS
THE COURSE OF THE RIVER, WHICH REFLECTS EVER CHANGING PICTURES OF
CASTELLATED CLIFFS AND VERDANT BANKS]

[Illustration: AT HUMBOLDT STATION, ONE OF NEVADA’S RAPIDLY SPREADING
OASES]

[Illustration: IRRIGATION AT LOVELOCK AND MANY OTHER PLACES IN NEVADA IS
RAPIDLY SHOWING THAT NOT ALL ITS WEALTH LIES IN MINES]

Reno, the most important and substantial Nevada cities, is 18,000 people
and growing rapidly. To it the Virginia and Truckee Railroad brings
business from the south, while the Nevada-California-Oregon Railway
connects it with Northern California, Plumas and Modoc Counties (now
being further developed by new lines under construction) and Southern
Oregon. There is much good farming territory tributary; the Truckee
meadows and Carson Valley are close by. The Truckee-Carson project will
add to its trade greatly. The two factors giving greatest force to
Reno’s forward movement are, however, the establishment of great railway
terminals and shops by the Overland Route at Sparks, adjoining Reno, and
the position of the city as the chief commercial center of the richest,
and now the most actively exploited mining area in America. It has all
the utilities of a city even to suburban electric railway service, is
kept informed by four newspapers and carries $6,000,000 in deposit in
six banks. The Nevada State University is one of the foremost schools of
the West, and in its mining and agricultural department work ranks
especially high. The Mackay Mining Building, dedicated June 6, 1908, is
the pride of the university.

Carson City, Nevada’s capital, is a beautiful place of 5,000 people on
the Virginia & Truckee Railway, thirty-one miles from Reno. It is the
oldest town in the State, has an abundance of good water and good shade,
creditable State buildings, and a United States branch mint. It trades
freely with Southwestern Nevada and the Inyo Valley of California.

[Illustration: THE HEAD GATES NEAR HAZEN, NEVADA, OF THE CARSON-TRUCKEE
IRRIGATION PROJECT WHEREBY THE GOVERNMENT PLANS TO GIVE IRRIGATED LANDS
TO SETTLERS AT THE COST OF THE WATER]

Virginia City, fifty-two miles from Reno on the Virginia & Truckee Ry.,
and the adjoining town of Gold Hill, are famous places, once the center
of tremendous mining activity. The treasure houses underneath held
wonderful stores of wealth. Virginia City at one time had 30,000 people,
one-third of the population being always underground. The place was
built on the steep slope of Mount Davidson, 6200 feet above sea-level.
Until the discovery of the Comstock Lode (an ore-channel four miles long
and three-quarters of a mile wide, along the eastern base of Mount
Davidson, eighteen miles southeast of Reno), men worth $200,000 were
called rich, and the world’s millionaires could be counted on one’s
fingers. In June, 1859, miners (among whom were Peter O’Riley, Patrick
McLaughlin, James Finney, John Bishop, W. P. T. Comstock, and a man
named Penrod) working in the ravine along the base of Mount Davidson,
were much annoyed by a strange blue-black substance that clogged their
rockers. Finally a sample was taken to Nevada City, Cal., for assay. It
yielded over $6,000 per ton in gold and silver. Since the day of the
rush that followed that discovery, work on the Comstock Lode has never
ceased. From that ore-channel have been taken more than $700,000,000;
the Consolidated California Virginia took out in six years $119,000,000
and paid $67,000,000 in dividends. Of the history of that wonderful
time, little can be said here, and such men as William Sharon, John P.
Jones, John W. Mackay, James G. Fair, I. W. Requa, Marcus Daly, Adolph
Sutro, made famous by their connections with the Comstock Lode, must be
passed by with merely mention of names. Mark Twain’s “Roughing It” and
contemporary works, provide “mighty interesting” reading about that
treasure era.

[Illustration: A WESTERN MINNEHAHA
                                     Copyright by F. A. Rinehart, Omaha.]

[Illustration: AT RENO MODERN BUILDINGS AND THE FINE BRIDGE THAT SPANS
THE TRUCKEE MARK THE UPBUILDING OF NEVADA’S PRINCIPAL CITY]

Reno is at the foot of the Sierra Nevada, the great wall rising to the
westward and separating California from the rest of the country. This
highest of mountain chains in our country extends several hundred miles
north and south. Perhaps no other range of mountains in the world has
attractions so great or of such variety. The Sierra Nevada, the Snowy
Range, or, as John Muir has more aptly termed it, the Range of Light,
has many main ridges extending from 6,000 to 12,000 feet above sea
level, with guardian peaks over 14,000 feet high. Highest of all and
greatest mountain peak in the United States outside of Alaska is Mt.
Whitney, 14,529 feet high. These mountains which the Overland Route
crosses on its way to the Pacific have the greatest coniferous forests
on earth. Among its peaks nestle the largest and most numerous of
mountain lakes. Between its walls are unsurpassed mountain chasms. Its
streams, unexcelled in beauty, possess the greatest potential power of
all the waters of American mountains.

The Sierra Nevada is crossed by the Overland Route along a scenic
pathway associated with much of interest in history and tradition. Here
were the greatest obstacles in the way of the pioneer railroad builders.
Nature seemed here to have rallied her forces for a final stand. Here
Theodore Judah, the pioneer pathfinder of the railway, found his most
difficult work. The climb up the mountain side is up the canyon of the
beautiful Truckee River, a famous trout stream, a journey lined with
beautiful forests of pine and mountain walls.

[Illustration: A STREET IN CARSON CITY, NEVADA, WHERE FAMOUS FOOTPRINTS
AND FOSSIL REMAINS OF PREHISTORIC MONSTERS HAVE BEEN FOUND]

At Boca, Prosser Creek and Iceland, the “chief crop” is ice; at
Floriston, paper; at Truckee, lumber and box stock; and at Lake Tahoe, a
very good time. Boca is junction with the Boca & Loyalton road, a forty
mile line northward through Sierra and Plumas Valleys—noted for its
forests, beautiful little valleys, and lakes. Truckee is a lumbering and
railroad town of two thousand people, Thence, a distance of 14 miles
farther up the river, runs the Lake Tahoe Railway to the shore of Lake
Tahoe.

[Illustration: VIRGINIA CITY, NEVADA, AS IN THE DAYS OF THE COMSTOCK
LODE. STILL FURNISHES RICH YIELDS OF PRECIOUS MINERALS]

Lake Tahoe, largest of the world’s mountain lakes, is 23 miles long by
13 miles broad, 6,220 feet above sea-level, and over 2,000 feet deep. It
is a body of the purest, clearest, and most wonderfully tinted water
imaginable, held in a mountain rimmed cup with its edge crested with
ever present snow, sparkling as a jewel. Between snow line and the lake
are beautiful pine forests, in which, half hidden, are such famous
resorts as Tahoe Tavern, McKinney’s, Tallac, Glenbrook, Brockway, and
Tahoe City. The summer climate with great abundance of sunshiny days,
the invigorating pine-scented atmosphere, and the cool nights and
delightful days, alone make of Tahoe and its neighboring Sierra
lakes—Fallen Leaf, Cascade, and others—an unsurpassed summer place. But
when are added the forests, the scenery of the Snowy Range, the fishing
and hunting, and the out of door sports, the first place among mountain
lake resorts must be given to this region. A swift and well fitted
steamer circles the lake every summer day from Tahoe Tavern.

The trout of Tahoe, the Truckee river, and neighboring lakes and
streams, make good the claim that no place excels this region for the
fisherman. Usually they run from three to six pounds in weight, but
specimens weighing over thirty pounds have been taken.

Such out of door joys as boating, horseback riding, mountain climbing,
and hunting, can be enjoyed under the most favorable conditions.
Excursions up Freel’s Peak, and Mt. Tallac, and to Glen Alpine, are very
much worth while. Of the hotel accommodations, it is, perhaps, enough to
say, that one may be comfortable in a tent or a cabin, or enjoy hotel
service unexcelled at any summer resort in America.

[Illustration: THE OVERLAND LIMITED AT FLORISTON CLOSE TO THE CALIFORNIA
LINE, THE PORTAL TO A RIDE THROUGH SCENES OF GREAT BEAUTY]

West of Truckee on the Overland Route, we pass Webber, Donner, and
Independence Lakes. The unfortunate Donner party camped by the lake of
that name, snowed in, in the winter of 1846-47, losing 43 of its 83
members before relief came in February. Of these mountain glacial lakes,
cups of clear water, there are some six thousand in the region between
Truckee and the Tule river to the south.

The summit of the Sierra is reached twelve miles west of Truckee, 7018
feet above the sea-level. Along this part of the journey the track is
protected by snow-sheds, but the sides of the sheds are latticed and
there are many intervening stretches of clear track, so the scenery is
not lost.

The ride down the western wall of the Sierras is one of entrancing
interest. At the summit during the winter of 1907 were many feet of
snow. Ravines were filled with it, snow-sheds covered with it, and trees
made snow mounds by it; and yet scarce three hours’ ride away, roses
brightened porches and roofs, the scent of orange blossoms filled the
air, early peaches and almonds bloomed in the orchards, the fields were
vividly green with foot high grain, and the hills aflame with wild
poppies. It is this transition from snowy winter to blooming spring that
is perhaps the most delightful experience of the westbound traveler
during the colder months over the Overland Route as the train glides
swiftly from the summit to the sea.

[Illustration: THE TRUCKEE RIVER IS ONE OF THE MOST GENEROUS AND MOST
EASILY FISHED OF TROUT STREAMS]

[Illustration: LAKE TAHOE, TWENTY-THREE MILES LONG, THIRTEEN WIDE,
SURROUNDED BY SNOW CLAD MOUNTAINS, SET AS THE MAIN JEWEL OF A PENDANT OF
GLEAMING LAKES, HAS NO PEER IN ALL AMERICA]

[Illustration: CAVE ROCK, LAKE TAHOE, WHERE THE BIG TROUT LOVE TO LIE IN
THE SHADY DEPTHS]

At Cape Horn the road follows a shelf hewn around the face of the
mountain; sheerly below, 1200 feet, is the American river in its winding
canyon, while above the mountain wall rises to the clouds.

From Cape Horn the Sacramento Valley, fair and fruitful, is spread below
as a great relief map of orchards, villages and cities, and winding
rivers and green slopes. Past Emigrant Gap, Cowles, Dutch Flat and Gold
Run—historic names—these mark the center of the greatest excitement
America ever knew over placer mines. Colfax has interest partly in
golden fruit and partly in gold. Twenty miles away, and reached by the
Nevada county Narrow Gauge, are the thriving cities of Grass Valley and
Nevada City, once great mining camps, and yet owning much mineral
importance. They are now among California’s most important cities with
prospects of advancement still bright before them.

[Illustration: TAHOE TAVERN—MOST MODERN OF HOSTELRIES IN EQUIPMENT, IS
DESIGNED IN HARMONY WITH ITS SURROUNDINGS OF PINEY WOODS AND WILD FLOWER
GARDENS]

All down this slope of the Sierra, past beautiful Auburn, a modern town,
and yet with a touch of ancient days, half hidden in foliage and
flowers, with orange and peach blossoms, are natural sanitariums where
people suffering from asthma and other throat and lung troubles are
surprising their home doctors continually by getting well. From Auburn,
Newcastle (center of the great Placer County fruit belt) Penryn and
neighboring stations, are shipped each year thousands of cars of green
fruit, principally peaches, to the Eastern markets. No other section of
the west ships so many cars of fresh peaches to market and its fame as
an orange growing section is growing rapidly.

[Illustration: THE PAVILION AT TALLAC, ANOTHER POPULAR LAKE RESORT]

The Overland Route joins the Road of a Thousand Wonders (between
Portland, Oregon, and Los Angeles) at Roseville, a great railway center
to be, with fifty-seven miles of yards, round-houses of sixty-four
stalls, machine and car shops, club house, icing plant and hospital.
From Roseville to Sacramento the nineteen mile journey is made past
horse ranches (a notable one at Ben Ali), and great dairy farms.

Sacramento, the capital city of California, is a manufacturing and
wholesale center, with an ever increasing and diversified trade
extending up to central Oregon on the North, and to central Nevada on
the East. Its post office receipts, school attendance, and directory
returns, indicate the city has a population of practically 50,000. The
railway shops of the Southern Pacific cover twenty acres, and employ
3,000 people. The rich tributary country about Sacramento amounts to
600,000 acres in area. Its bank capital and resources are greater than
in many cities of over a hundred thousand people.

[Illustration: THE STEAMER “TAHOE” DAILY CIRCLES THE SAPPHIRE WATERS OF
THE LAKE]

Here was born the Central Pacific Railroad. Theodore D. Judah had been
employed by a California company to build a road from Sacramento to
Folsom (forty miles), but his eyes were ever turning Sierraward. At last
he gained the attention of Stanford, Huntington, Hopkins, and the
Crockers, and succeeded in interesting them in the stupendous project of
building a railroad, which, in a hundred miles was to rise from about
sea-level to almost half a mile; then to drop 3300 feet and then
crossing ten ranges of mountains, was to find a way to meet the western
end of a road from the Missouri, by the waters of Great Salt Lake.

[Illustration: LAKE TAHOE’S SHORES ARE RICH IN SHELTERED COVES WHERE THE
TRANSPARENT WATERS REFLECT THE PINES]

[Illustration: MOUNT TALLAC, ONE OF THE SNOW CLAD PEAKS THAT GUARD LAKE
TAHOE: 9,785 FEET HIGH, IT IS EASILY ACCESSIBLE AND THE SCENES FROM ITS
SUMMIT ARE OF GREAT BEAUTY]

[Illustration: FROM THE SMALLER ATTENDANT LAKES DROP MANY BEAUTIFUL
FALLS, WELL WORTH VISITING]

[Illustration: DONNER LAKE. SCENE OF A WINTER TRAGEDY IN EARLY
CALIFORNIA DAYS]

It was done. The story of the doing cannot be told here. It is one of
volumes, and simply the names of the men whose daring and genius solved
its problems may be mentioned. It was a combination predestined,
irresistible, a union of men for whom opportunity needed to knock but
lightly, who saw the grandeur of the task before them and rose to its
inspiration. Each had his allotted place to which he seemed peculiarly
fitted and each, through the sheer love of the work and indomitable
purpose made perfect his part in this modern conquest of America. Judah,
the great engineer, saw the work through, and then, in a few months,
died—but fame is his. Senator A. A. Sargent framed the laws that made
the work possible. Senator Leland Stanford was the great political
executive who handled the road’s relations with the Government—a many
sided, brilliant man, and a mighty pioneer, in farming, fruit growing,
and stock raising, as well as railroad building. Charles Crocker was the
master mind in the field, and organizer of men and affairs, and withal,
much beloved by all who knew him. Judge Crocker, the road’s first
attorney, was of inestimable value to it, but so noiseless, modest and
retiring, that his relations with the line are almost forgotten. Mark
Hopkins was the trained man of business, who directed the office
affairs, carrying in his brain every detail of the enterprise, and
working upon it night and day. Collis P. Huntington, famous in every
line of work he undertook, outlived his associates, and became one of
the world’s greatest builders and financiers. To Mr. Huntington and to
Edward H. Harriman (whose financial genius and constructive ability have
contributed more in high class, modern railways to the advancement of
the West than any other man), the empire beyond the Missouri and the
Mississippi owes more than to any other two.

[Illustration: SHY DEER WATCH THE PASSING TRAINS FROM THE LEAFY COVERTS
OF THE CANYONS]

Sacramento has many places of interest; the capitol building and its
fine grounds, Sutter’s Fort, and the Crocker Art Gallery being among
them. The city has beautiful tree lined avenues, fine houses with flower
gardens, lawns, and citrus and deciduous fruit, good urban and suburban
electric line service, railways radiating in four directions, and three
more—two steam and one electric—under construction; altogether a modern,
charming city with such unusual out of doors attractions as only
California can give.

[Illustration: NEAR NEWCASTLE THE WILDER SCENERY GIVES PLACE TO PEACEFUL
ORCHARDS]

Among public works is the handsome Government building, in which are the
post office, land office, weather bureau, and other Government offices.
In yards the magnolia blooms and the broad leaves of the plantain and
banana arrest the eye. Palms are plentiful and with variety; orange and
lemon trees are numerous. Camellias bloom in profusion.

The journey from Sacramento to San Francisco may be made over the ninety
mile direct route via Benicia or the longer way through Stockton. The
Benicia Route is through deciduous fruit sections, of which Davis and
Elmira are business centers and junctions respectively for lines through
the west side of the Sacramento Valley and up the beautiful Capay
Valley. The Overland Route from Elmira follows along the marshes of
upper Suisun Bay, where tens of thousands of wild ducks and wild geese
find a home.

At Suisun, a branch line leads to the Napa and Sonoma Valleys, famous
these forty years past for fruits and wine and rural loveliness. Suisun
has many fruit establishments. Beyond, fifteen miles, is Benicia, with
its Government post and arsenal.

[Illustration: UP AT SUMMIT THE DOMAIN OF KING SNOW, BEAUTIFUL TO LOOK
AT THOUGH FRIGID IN WELCOME, IS SWIFTLY LEFT BEHIND]

Thence the great double ferryboat, the Solano, swallows the train, and
moves across the picturesque Carquinez straits, a mile wide, to Port
Costa. This is the largest ferryboat in the world, and perhaps the only
double one. Its two paddle wheels may be made to revolve in opposite
directions, turning the boat around almost in its own length. As one
crosses, to the left lies Suisun Bay, to the right, San Pablo Bay. The
ferry unloads its trains at Port Costa, place of mammoth grain
warehouses with capacity for more than 350,000 tons. Thirty deep-sea
ships may unload here at one time.

[Illustration: THE TRAIN DROPS QUICKLY FROM THE REGION OF PINES AND
FROST INTO A FAIRYLAND OF PALMS AND FLOWERS]

A few miles beyond Port Costa is Vallejo Junction; thence the ferry boat
El Capitan carries passengers the intervening four miles to Vallejo, and
to Mare Island Navy Yard. From the train you may catch a glimpse of the
warships at anchor, of the wooded island where Uncle Sam has three
thousand employees, and of Vallejo, upon its hills facing it, a lively
city of 12,000 people.

The great tower opposite Vallejo Junction carries across the straits the
transmission wires of the electric companies that gather the weight of
falling water in the Sierra Nevada and deliver it to San Francisco and
the bay counties to move street cars, light cities, and keep the wheels
of industry whirring.

Along this water front from between Vallejo Junction and Oakland are
great manufactories. Here are the Selby Smelting works where something
better than alchemy brings gold from rough rock; here (at a safe
distance) are powder works and soap factories, steel and wire works,
sugar refining works, syrup, oil and borax refineries, canneries and
tanneries and various wood working establishments.

Past Richmond, a manufacturing city, and Berkeley, a beautiful residence
city of 40,000 people, the Overland Route leads to Oakland.

Berkeley is built upon the slopes of hills to a height of six hundred
feet. It is the seat of the University of California, and the location
of the State Asylum for the Blind, the Deaf, and the Dumb. The
University grounds are beautiful and under the Bernard plans, involving
an ultimate expenditure of $50,000,000, the buildings will have no
second place in American architecture.

[Illustration: BEAUTIFUL BLUE CANYON, SEEN FROM THE TRAIN. THE GORGE
LIES TREMULOUS BEHIND A VEIL OF SAPPHIRE DISTANCE, A PLACE OF LEGENDS.]

[Illustration: AT CAPE HORN THE ROAD RUNS CLOSE TO THE CLIFF]

The city is growing very rapidly and in the high average of its home
places is not excelled anywhere. The new tourist resort, the Claremont
Hotel, may be seen from the train.

Oakland, third city of the State, has a population of 175,000. The
cluster of cities of which it is the center—Berkeley, Alameda,
Fruitvale, Elmhurst, and others—has a population of 240,000. Oakland’s
bay water front extends fifteen miles and its estuary is being made into
a great ship harbor, along which many industries are growing. The city
is becoming a place of skyscrapers. It is a city, too, of homes; on the
Piedmont hills and around Lake Merritt are beautiful drives with all the
life of the country in the heart of the town.

[Illustration: AMERICAN RIVER GLEAMS LIKE A RIBBON OF SILVER FAR FAR
BELOW THE MOVING TRAIN]

Leaving Oakland, 16th Street, the Overland Route through the city skirts
the bay shore and at the long “made” ground of Oakland Pier the rail
journey ends.

[Illustration: THE SACRAMENTO, ONE OF CALIFORNIA’S TWO NAVIGABLE RIVERS.
THE TORPEDO FLOTILLA OF THE GREAT AMERICAN FLEET CAME TO SACRAMENTO UP
THE RIVER, IN 1908]

Another route from Sacramento to San Francisco is along the foothill
country of the Sierra, southward past Lodi and its great grape and peach
lands to Stockton. Stockton, at the head of the bay navigation, is a
prosperous city of 25,000 people with great natural resources near; gas,
coal, electric power, and a million acres of as fat and fertile lands as
may be found out of doors. Its manufactures are many and important,
including flour and woolen mills, harvesters and other agricultural
implements, mining machinery, street cars and railway cars, pottery and
briquettes. It is in the heart of a great dairy section.

Westward from Stockton there is a choice of two routes; to the north
along the bay shore through Lathrop and Tracy past Byron Hot Springs,
under the brow of Mount Diablo and thence through Martinez to Port
Costa; or westward and then northward through the vine and fruit valleys
surrounding Pleasanton, Livermore, Haywards, and the series of towns
that ends in Oakland.

[Illustration: SUTTER’S FORT, SACRAMENTO, STILL STANDS IN GOOD REPAIR, A
MUTE HISTORIAN OF THE DAYS OF INDIAN RAIDS, THE OVERLAND COACH AND THE
PONY EXPRESS]

Through the broad passageways of commodious ferryboats the last link,
the water link, in the transcontinental chain is forged. Every twenty
minutes the best ferry service in the world moves boats from each
terminal between Oakland Pier and San Francisco. In crossing San
Francisco Bay, to the left is noted Alameda Mole, with the Southern
Pacific suburban trains and ferries. To the right, and almost ahead, is
Yerba Buena Island (Goat Island), occupied by the Government naval
training school, while fronting us are the picturesque hills and long
waterfront, mast forested, of San Francisco.

Beyond Yerba Buena to the right is the bold rocky islet, Alcatraz (the
Government prison); farther, Angel Island, a military post, and yet
beyond the blue forest clad hills of Marin with Mount Tamalpais rising
above them.

San Francisco, the new San Francisco, is not to be described in detail
in this book. The story of it today with all the great progress made
within the last two years would nevertheless be ancient and inadequate
history within six months. The rebuilding of the entire business section
of a great city in so short a time and the rehabilitation of its
municipal utilities, is a marvel beyond description.

[Illustration: THE PATHS THAT LEAD DIRECTLY TO CALIFORNIA’S CAPITOL AT
SACRAMENTO ARE PLEASANT ONES, SHADED BY THE SEMI-TROPIC GROWTHS OF THE
CAMELLIA CITY]

The San Francisco of today is a greater San Francisco than ever before.
Imports have increased, trade expanded and new industries established
since the fire. The traffic of the railroads is greater than in the days
of the old San Francisco. The Southern Pacific is spending millions in
new terminal facilities and has completed a new water-grade route up the
San Francisco peninsula into the heart of the city at an expense of
millions more. By the construction of a bridge at Dumbarton Point across
the southern arm of San Francisco bay in 1908 the city has to all
intents and purposes, from a traffic standpoint, been placed upon the
mainland.

[Illustration: THERE IS NO FINER DUCK SHOOTING THAN ON THE SUISUN
MARSHES. CANVASBACK, MALLARD, TEAL, OR SPRIG, ALL UNFAILINGLY AWAIT THE
BAG OF THE STRAIGHT SHOOTER]

The business section of San Francisco, practically entirely recreated in
two years, is in itself a marvel; no other city in the world possesses
such an area of absolutely new business blocks with their equipments
consequently modern in every respect, from elevator service to methods
of lighting and heating. Nothing is out of date; all is new and the work
has been on so large a scale as to justify the gathering of the very
best ideas in construction at the command of the best architects of the
world.

Notably is the hotel service of the city superior through this
reconstruction. Scores of fine hotels have been built within the two
years and many more are under way. The opportunity to embody every
comfort and convenience, and the rivalry among the hotels to secure the
best, have resulted in a series of up-to-date homes for wayfarers
probably never equaled, for never elsewhere have circumstances been such
as to permit the complete modernization of a great business city within
two years.

Among the great hotels of San Francisco the Fairmont on Nob Hill is
architecturally the most commanding feature of the city and of
unsurpassed service. The Hotel St. Francis conducted on the same high
plane of hospitality is noted for the excellence of its service and is
in the heart of the down town business section, facing Union Square. It
is one-half larger than before the new era. The new Palace Hotel will be
opened in the fall of 1909 on the old site and is a magnificent
structure. San Francisco has now in its hotels and apartment houses
accommodations for 25,000 visitors.

San Francisco is the busiest of cities and among its features most of
interest to visitors is the construction under way. Many of the new
buildings are remarkable for their beauty, a great deal of marble having
been used.

[Illustration: THE SOLANO, THAT TAKES UP SO EASILY THE SECTIONS OF THE
“OVERLAND,” IS THE LARGEST FERRY STEAMER IN THE WORLD]

This cosmopolitan metropolis at the gateway to the Orient possesses now
as it always has during the past thirty years, that fascinating variety
in its life which has made it a place of great attraction for people
from all over the earth. Hither come ships of all the seven seas with
the flags of all the maritime nations flying over them; here, too, come
the peoples of every land from far Cathay to Alaska, from Siberia to the
Isles of Greece. Every nation favors California with immigration and
every nationality of importance is represented by a colony in San
Francisco of which the customs and manners help make up the cosmopolitan
life of the ever growing city.

The great out-of-door attractions, such as Mount Tamalpais, lifting its
volcanic crest 2596 feet above the city, the great Golden Gate Park with
its animal and plant life drawn from all quarters of the globe, the Seal
Rocks and Sutro Heights, Museum and Baths, the beautiful military
reservation of the Presidio commanding the Golden Gate, the islands of
the bay and the wooded Mann shores, the Muir woods, the old Mission
Dolores built more than a century ago, and the neighboring valleys
within short excursion distance laden with fruit and flowers; all these
and many other attractions help make San Francisco a lodestone for the
pleasure seeker.

The main line of The Overland Route ends at San Francisco where the
great liners of the Pacific Mail, Toyo Kisen Kaisha and other steamship
companies take up the work of transporting travelers by sea trails made
pleasant by the sunshine and blue, placid waters of the mid-Pacific, to
the islands of the South Seas and the great countries of the Orient.

[Illustration: THE OVERLAND LIMITED ENTERING THE YARDS OF THE OAKLAND
STATION]

[Illustration: OAKLAND IS A CITY OF BEAUTIFUL HOMES, MANY OF THEM
CLUSTERING AROUND THE SHORES OF LAKE MERRITT]

Nearly four thousand miles of lines northward to Portland, Oregon, and
southward to Los Angeles and beyond, carry Overland Route passengers to
all important cities of California and Oregon. Indeed, the end of the
transcontinental trip is at the open door to wonderland. North and south
are the attractions of mountains, shore and valley; the greatest of
coniferous forests, our highest mountain peaks outside of Alaska, the
deepest and wildest of mountain canyons, the oldest and greatest of
giant trees, the largest and most beautiful of mountain lakes; the long
beaches with wooded uplands and mountains beyond marked here and there
with resorts, flower embowered, delightful winter and summer; the
semi-tropic fruit orchards of a sunshiny country surpassing in extent
and variety those of any other section; altogether a wonderland not to
be matched in all the world.

    “_Lo! here sit we by the sun-down seas_
  _And the White Sierra. The sweet sea-breeze_
  _Is about us here; and a sky so fair_
  _Is bending above, so cloudless, blue,_
  _That you gaze and you gaze and you dream, and you_
  _See God and the portals of heaven there._

    “O seas in a land! O lakes of mine!
  By the love I bear and the songs I bring
  Be glad with me! lift your waves and sing
  A song in the reeds that surround your isles!—
  A song of joy for this sun that smiles,
  For this land I love and this age and sign;
  For the peace that is and the perils pass’d;
  For the hope that is and the rest at last!

                                  * * *

    “A rush of rivers and a brush of trees,
  A breath blown far from the Mexican seas,
  And over the great heart-vein of earth!
  .... By the South-Sun-land of the Cherokee,
  By the scalp-lock-lodge of the tall Pawnee,
  And up La Platte. What a weary dearth
  Of the homes of men! What a wild delight
  Of space! Of room! What a sense of seas,
  Where the seas are not! What a salt like breeze!
  What dust and taste of quick alkali!
  .... Then hills! green, brown, then black like night,
  All fierce and defiant against the sky!

    “At last! at last! O steed new-born,
  Born strong of the will of the strong New World,
  We shoot to the summit, with the shafts of morn,
  On the mount of Thunder, where clouds are curl’d,
  Below in a splendor of the sun-clad seas.
  A kiss of welcome on the warm west breeze
  Blows up with a smell of the fragrant pine,
  And a faint, sweet fragrance from the far-off seas
  Comes in through the gates of the great South Pass,
  And thrills the soul like a flow of wine.
  The hare leaps low in the storm-bent grass,
  The mountain ram from his cliff looks back,
  The brown deer hies to the tamarack.

                                  * * *

[Illustration: THE GOLDEN GATE, IN AND OUT OF WHICH PASSES DAILY MANY A
WEALTHY ARGOSY]

    “On, on, o’er the summit; and onward again,
  And down like the sea-dove the billow enshrouds,
  And down like the swallow that dips to the sea,
  We dart and we dash and we quiver and we
  Are blowing to heaven white billows of clouds.

                                  * * *

    “The Humboldt desert and the alkaline land,
  And the seas of sage and of arid sand
  That stretch away till the strain’d eye carries
  The soul where the infinite spaces fill,
  Are far in the rear, and the fierce Sierras
  Are under our feet, and the hearts beat high
  And the blood comes quick; but the lips are still
  With awe and wonder, and all the will
  Is bow’d with a grandeur that frets the sky.

    “A flash of lakes through the fragrant trees,
  A song of birds and a sound of bees
  Above in the boughs of the sugar-pine.
  The pick-axe stroke in the placer mine,
  The boom of blasts in the gold-ribbed hills,
  The grizzly’s growl in the gorge below
  Are dying away, and the sound of rills
  From the far-off shimmering crest of snow,
  The laurel green and the ivied oak,
  A yellow stream and a cabin’s smoke,
  The brown bent hills and the shepherd’s call,
  The hills of vine and of fruits, and all
  The sweets of Eden are here, and we
  Look out and afar to a limitless sea.

[Illustration: THE FERRY BUILDING, THE MARKET STREET (SAN FRANCISCO)
STATION OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC AND THE WESTERN TERMINAL OF THE OVERLAND
ROUTE]

    “We have lived an age in a half-moon-wane!
  We have seen a world! We have chased the sun
  From sea to sea; but the task is done.
  We here descend to the great white main—
  To the King of Seas, with its temples bare
  And a tropic breath on the brow and hair.”
                                                      —_Joaquin Miller._




                          Transcriber’s Notes


--Retained publication information from the printed exemplar (this eBook
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--Silently corrected several typos.

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