The interesting story of the inception and consummation of the dreams of the "Transcontinental" rail-builders who gave this wonderful system to the great west, can best be distinguished in the words of one who played a leading part in the scenes of those days.

Ox the P. I'. Trail

Major-General Grenville M. Dodge, chief engineer of the Union Pacific railway from 1866 to 1870, the period of its most active construction, has narrated the story of "How we built the Union Pacific Railway" in such form that it consumes forty printed pages, so that the portion of it quoted hereafter will form but a small part of his narrative :

"In 1836 the first public meeting to con sider the project of a Pacific railway was called by John Plumbe, a civil engineer of Dubuque, Iowa. Interest in a Pacific rail way increased from thi~ time. The explora-

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

tions of Fremont in 1842 and 1846 brought the attention of Congress, and A. C. Whitney was zealous and efficient in the cause from 1840 to 1850. The first practical measure was Senator Salmon P. Chase's bill, making an appropriation for the explorations of different routes for a Pacific railway in 1853. Numerous bills were introduced in Congress between 1852 and 1860, granting subsidies and lands, and some of them appropriating as large a sum as $96,000,000 for the construction of the road. One of these bills passed one of the houses of Congress.

"The route was made by the buffalo, next used by the Indians, then by the fur traders, next by the Mormons, and then by the overland immigration to California and Oregon. It was known as the Great Platte Valley Route. On this trail, or close to it, was built the Union and Central Pacific railroads to California, and the Oregon Short Line branch of the Union Pacific to Oregon.