No Route Chosen

To lead the surveys of the northern railroad route, Issac Stephens, territorial governor of Washington was appointed.  The Buffalo Trail route would be explored by Captain John William Gunnison, the western route by Lt. Amiel Whipple, and the Southern Trail by Lt. John Pope and John Parke.

Stevens was the first to reach the conclusion that the snows of the Cascade Mountains were totally impossible to build a railroad through.  "The extreme northern route to the minds of all who went over it seem impractically expensive.  A road might be built over the tops of the Himalayas but no reasonable man would undertake it."

The Buffalo Trail was also discounted.  The survey team was attached by Paiute Indians in Utah.  Seven men of the original survey team were killed and the Buffalo Trail was determined too dangerous to even attempt.

Whipple's survey team had better luck.  "The western route is not only practical but eminently advantageous."  Whipple however, made an enormous error in calculating the cost of construction by $75 million.  He later corrected his mistake, but by then it was too late.  The route had been discounted.

That left the Southern Trail.  Even with the Gadsen Purchase which added 30,000 acres to New Mexico and Arizona, no usable route through the Sierra Nevada could be found without going through Mexican territory.  The Southern Trail was still the recommended route submitted to Congress in 1855.   The rising division of sectionalism at the time made a majority vote impossible for one route over another.  A decade would pass before work could begin on a rail line, and then it would not follow any of those surveyed in the 1850s.

The first transcontinental railroad was actually the Panama Railroad running 48 miles across the Isthmus of Panama from Colon on the Atlantic to Panama City on the Pacific.  If delivered passengers and freight to the Pacific Mail Steamship Company for the trip to San Francisco.  During the first four years of operation, 1855-1859, it carried 200,000 passengers with a one-way ticked of $25, and earned a profit of $8 million.  (photo from http://www.dickholt.net/myroots/panamarailroad.html where you can learn more.)

Next time...Theodore Judah, Visionary
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Today in Pioneer History: "On March 5, 1614  Pocahontas, daughter of the chief of the Powhatan Indian confederacy, marries English tobacco planter John Rolfe in Jamestown, Virginia. The marriage ensured peace between the Jamestown settlers and the Powhatan Indians for several years.