Dey, who had been a division engineer of the Rock Island and was chief engineer of the M. & M. in Iowa, I made the first survey across the state of Iowa, and the first reconnoissances and surveys on the Union Pacific for the purpose of determining where the one would end and the ether commence, on the Missouri river. I crossed the Missouri river in the fall of 1853 and made our explorations west of the Platte Yallev and up it far enough to determine that it would be the route of the Pacific road."

General Dodge speaks of the Platte Valley, "then the chief thoroughfare for all the Mormon, California, and Oregon overland immigration."

General Dodge's relation of the events occurring in the next few years had an importance upon the future of Kimball county that it is almost impossible to estimate, even as one looks back upon it from the viewpoint of fifty to fifty-five years later. For had be failed to locate the Union Pacific railroad where it eventually did run, much of the history of Kimball county would have been essentially different and the bulk of Kimball

county's history probably would have been much less.

"The times were such," he says, "that the work on the M. & M. railway was suspended for some years. Meanwhile I located at Council Bluffs, continuing the explorations under the directions of Messrs. Farnum and Durant and obtaining from voyagers, immigrants, and others all the information I could in regard to the country farther west. There was keen competition at that time for the control of the vast immigration crossing the plains, and Kansas City, Fort Leavenworth (then the government post), St. Joseph and Council Bluffs were points of concentration on the Missouri. The trails from all points converged in the Platte valley at or near old Fort Kearney, following its waters to the South Pass.