Steel Rails - Part 3

(Cont. from last week)

Whitney,

Father of the N. P.

If Whitney’s plan had been adopted by congress (and it came very near passing that body in 1847), the line now known as the Northern Pacific railroad would have been the first transcontinental railroad to be completed, and it would have traversed Montana along a route almost exact to that followed today by that great railway system. Whitney traveled the “States” from Maine to Louisiana, undaunted by the many buffets he received from both within and without government circles, in the support of his bill. In his efforts to accomplish his purpose, he expended his entire fortune and was forced to retire from the scene, acknowledging for the time being that his project was a failure. For his propositions and his advocacy of them, Asa Whitney is entitled to be recognized as the father of the enterprise which has now, for than 45 years been an accomplished fact under the title of the Northern Pacific railroad.

The little esteem in which the statesmen of Asa Whitney’s day held the great intermountain region and that wonderful territory traversed by the Northern Pacific, the Great Northern and other northern transcontinental lines, as they pass through Montana, is shown in a report of a select committee of the national house of representatives on Pacific railroads and telegraph. After expressing grave doubt as to whether a railroad COULD be built across the continent “through those vast mountain region, whose aspiring summits present 12 feet of defying snow to the burning rays of the July sun,” the report continues:

“So rapid is the fall of snow, and so resistless do the winds sweep over these almost boundless plains, it is quite impossible to obtain a distant shelter. So, with a train of cars running up the plains from Iowa or Missouri to the foot of the Rocky mountains, a distance of some 800 miles, how, in a storm, is a shelter, or wood, or water or food to be gained? Arrested 800 miles from Iowa in November, how is a train of cars to be relieved before May? By what means could it be visited. In such a case, the sheltering skill would be useless. To talk of doing business in the winter season on a road through such a region, though every conductor was a Kit Carson, and every traveler a Fremont, would seem to be idle and preposterous.”

The Stevens Expedition

In 1853, 1854 and 1855, an expedition of officers, under leadership of General Isaac I. Stevens, then governor of Washington Territory, who had been commissioned by the United States government, made explorations of the country lying between the forty-seventh and forty-ninth parallels of latitude, to determine the practicability of a route for a railroad from the Great Lakes and the upper Mississippi valley to the waters of Puget Sound. The scope of the exploration included, among other data, the characteristics of the immediate regions, then very indefinitely known, or wholly unknown, as to their adaptability to agricultural pursuits, their water supplies, their mineral, timber and other resources, and their conditions in general for the maintenance of a civilized and progressive population. The official report of the expedition confirmed the truly national character of such an enterprise as the Northern Pacific, Great Northern, or Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul, of today.

This report brought prominently into view the northern route’s advantages in respect to distances as a highway of commerce and travel - its greater proximity to Asia, its shorter distance between the great water lines, and the fact that it was much the shortest and most direct route between Europe and Asia. It also established that by the Northern route were by far the easiest gradients, the last and fewest engineering difficulties, and that there existed an abundance of wood, water and materials of construction.

The Northern Pacific Authorized

In 1862, when the Union and Central Pacific railway companies were chartered, a very strong effort was made to obtain a charter for the Northern Pacific line. For the time being, it failed, but it was again revived in 1864, and by the Act of Congress approved July 2, 1864, a large body of corporators became a body corporate and politic, under the style of the Northern Pacific Railroad company, with power to build a railroad from Lake Superior to Puget Sound on the line of the forty-fifth parallel.

“Jeff” Davis Killed Northern Idea

It has not been generally written, and few people today know who it was that deprived Montana of the privilege of being upon the route of the first transcontinental railway route, despite the thorough report by Governor Isaac I. Stevens, after a conscientious survey and finding that it was the most practicable.

Jefferson Davis - the man who was to become president of the confederacy - was then secretary of war under President Pierce, and it was under his particular direction that three general surveying parties were started simultaneously from the east, one to follow the Missouri to a point near the head of navigation, thence to the Columbia river; a second to cross the great American desert through Utah and Nevada to San Francisco, and still another to proceed from Texas through New Mexico and Arizona to southern California.

The triumph of the Democratic party in November, 1852, had insured a more vigorous policy of exploration and settlement of the vast domain extending from the Mississippi to the Pacific, but the administration was naturally inclined to favor a southern route. Puget Sound and San Francisco, however, were regarded as natural depot points for transcontinental traffic. The central route, the one finally adopted for the first line, and the one that would lead most directly to San Francisco, was regarded dubiously even by the southern Democrats because of the vast sterile areas to be traversed. So, while the southern Democrats would have preferred a route farther south, many of them had come to the conclusion that the northern route (through Montana) was inevitable unless it could be shown that it was impracticable because of heavy snows in the mountain passes and general unfavorable weather conditions.

Governor Stevens submitted his first report of all the routes, on June 30, 1854. In this report, he met the stock objections to the northern route, setting forth the superiority of this route in soil, climate and easy grades, citing the absence of snow and the accessibility by inland river navigation.

Timid Mr. McClelland

An excuse for rejecting Governor Stevens’ report and recommendations, however, was found in the subsidiary report of Brevet Captain George B. McClelland, afterwards commander of the union armies in the Civil war. In the words of Stevens’ biographer, (his son), Captain McClelland in his exploration, “manifested the same dilatoriness in preparation and moving, the same timidity in action, the same magnifying of difficulties, that later marked and ruined his career as an army commander.”

McClelland was entrusted with the command of the surveying party that started from Vancouver and proceeded eastward over the mountains to meet the main party coming west. He took a decidedly unfavorable view of the country and of a railroad route across the Cascades. He declared that the Columbia river pass was the only one worth considering, and that there was no pass north of it except the Snoqualmie pass and give it as his firm and settle opinion that the snow in winter was from 20 to 25 feet deep in that pass.

Four railway lines now pass the very range that McClelland examined and that he reported as impossible. These are the main line of the Northern Pacific, by the pass just south of the Snoqualmie and north of the Nachess; the Great Northern by the pass at the head of the Wenatchee or Pisquouse river, of which stream McClelland declared: “it appears certain that there can be no pass at its head for a road;” a Northern Pacific line across the Couer d’Alene pass on Governor Stevens’ route to the vicinity of the Mission; and the Gilmore & Pittsburgh from Salmon, Idaho, across the mountains into Montana.
In his report to Congress, Secretary Jefferson Davis arbitrarily increased Stevens’ estimate of the cost of the construction along the northern route from $117,121,000 to $150,871,000, magnified the physical difficulties, condemned the agricultural resources, and declared that “the country west of the Rocky mountains to the Pacific slope may likewise be described a one of general sterility.” Regarding the Snoqualmie pass, he quoted McClelland and warmly complimented the latter on his “reconnaissance of great value.”

Union Pacific and Central Pacific

Thus it was that finally, in 1864 congress, having become convinced that a railroad to the Pacific coast was a military necessity, and that the undertaking could not be accomplished without governmental aid, amended the original charter which had been granted the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads; added inducements to capitalists and advised the central route to Sand Francisco.
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