and questionable methods were used, but he will not visit upon the managers of this work unqualified condemnation, as so many have done.

   The first rail of the Union Pacific, and so the first railway track in Nebraska, was laid at the Omaha end of the line July 10, 1865; and on the 22d of September the Republican reports that ten miles of track had been laid and that it was going down at the rate of a mile a day. There were on hand, also eighty miles of iron, four locomotives, thirty platform cars, four or five box freight cars, several passenger cars, spikes, switches, etc., "received from below." The construction of machine shops and other buildings at Omaha had been begun. This may be regarded as

AMES MONUMENT

the modest first equipment of the then greatest railway enterprise of the whole world. Bridge timber already framed for the first 100 miles -- between Omaha and the Loup Fork -- was on the ground. The grade was to be finished to Columbus in thirty days after the date last named. On the 6th of January, 1866, the three commissioners appointed by the President of the United States, according to the act of Congress, examined and accepted the first forty miles of road. According to the contemporary newspaper account the passenger car used by the commissioners on their trip of investigation was constructed in Omaha and was named the "Major-General Sherman." The commissioners were Colonel J. H. Simpson, president of the board. Major-General Samuel R. Curtis, and Major William White.
   Notwithstanding that, on account of his erratic temperament, George Francis Train was kept in the background by the promoters and capitalists of the enterprise, yet his remarkable ingenuity, alertness, and activity commanded recognition; and on this occasion General Curtis is reported as saying in reply to a compliment to himself that Train deserved more consideration than he did. The Herald notes that, in a recent speech in Boston, Train boasted that his friends had subscribed enough to control the company, and at an annual meeting, with his proxies, he had erased the flames of fourteen of the biggest men in the country from the directory.
   According to a general and perhaps beneficent rule of compensation, men of unusually strong qualities or characteristics are apt to be endowed with corresponding weaknesses, and common among them is vanity. Not infrequently the cynically practical captain of industry loves and is influenced by flattery and cajolery, and according to Dr. George L. Miller's estimate and treatment of Thomas C. Durant he was not an exception to this rule. While the Republican and citizens of Omaha feared treachery on Durant's part, and openly protested and inveighed against his devious ways, the Herald did not falter in its expressions of faith that all things, including Durant, would work together for the good of Omaha; but in season and out of season it fortified it's faith by cajolery of the imperious arbiter of Omaha's fortunes. On the 20th of October, 1865, the Herald calls on everybody to assist "the first of living railroad men" and the "Great Manager" in getting ties for "the Great Road," and says that "fifteen mills are already at work in this section."
   On the 15th of June, 1866, the Herald stated that one and three-quarter miles of track were laid on the 9th inst., breaking the record, and it thereupon anoints Durant as "the Napoleon of railways."
   On the 13th of July, 1866, the Herald notes that the "Railway King" has a freight boat, Elkhorn, built in Pittsburgh at a cost of $52,000 for the use of the Union Pacific company, which had brought the first two barges -- Hero and Heroine -- that ever navigated the

Missouri, laden with 3,600 bushels of coal and goo bars of railroad iron. The barges were 25 feet beam and 125 feet long, and each could carry 200 tons in two feet of water. "The friends of the Missouri river", the Herald says, "should be grateful to Durant for having vindicated these mighty waters against the slanders of their traducers."
   The location of the Union Pacific bridge was fixed by the President (1) because there is a rock bottom at that point from the Nebraska to the Iowa side of the river; (2) the channel has not changed there since the time of the first settlement; (3) the company wanted the extensive river front for its business with steamboats.
   Early in the spring of 1867 the Omaha city council appointed Oliver P. Hurford, Algernon S. Paddock, Augustus Kountze, Ezra Millard, and Francis Smith to go to New York and pledge $100,000 to the company towards securing the bridge at Omaha.
   In 1863 citizens of Omaha sought to settle -- or re-settle in their own favor -- the terminus question by giving right of way through the city, 500 acres of land along the river front for the company's shops, depots, and other buildings, and a gift of about 700 acres of outlying land, in consideration of an agreement by the company to fix the terminus at Omaha. The consideration recited in the deeds to these lands made by many citizens was as follows. "In consideration of the location of the eastern terminus of the Union Pacific railroad at Omaha City, Nebraska, within IA miles of Farnam street in said city, thence running west from said point towards the Platte valley."
   From this time until the formal settlement of the terminus question by the Supreme Court of the United States, in 1876, there was constant perturbation and fear on the part of the people of Omaha, and a chronic state of intrigue and bickering among themselves as well as between themselves and the company. Bitter recollections of the animosities and recriminations of that period still survive, and they will linger only to be buried in the graves of those who entertained them. It does not seem that there was ground for reasonable doubt of the intention of the act of 1862; for its very unreasonableness was consistent with that Iowa influence which, as we have seen, from the first had exploited Nebraska affairs in the interest of Council Bluffs, and less directly of the whole state, and this act is perfectly explicable in the light of preceding manipulation. Nebraska was still politically and commercially insignificant, and in this sense "without God and without hope in the world"; while Iowa had a strong representation in Congress, formidable material progress to her credit, and was lined up surely and safely on the side of the dominant party. The only uncertainty lay in the Supreme Court's wide discretion of "construction" and its facility in exercising it -- or as Mr. James Bryce, with at least a tincture of irony, puts it, the "breadth of view" which characterizes that body. It was not at all likely that the court would unsettle this vested interest of

Courtesy of Alfred Darlow, advertising agent Union Pacific railroad.

EARLY RIVER SCENE, OMAHA

Iowa, though Justice Bradley, in a short, crisp dissent, did insist that the whole Missouri river was "the western boundary of Iowa," and that therefore, in law as well as in fact, Omaha was the eastern terminus. His conclusion was as follows:

    The Missouri river is, by common acceptance, the western boundary of Iowa; and the fair construction of the charter of the Union Pacific railroad company, which adopts that boundary as its eastern terminus, is, that the road was to extend from the Missouri river westwardly. The subsequent express authority to construct a bridge across the river, in my judgment, confirms this view of the subject; and as a mandamus is a severe remedy, I think it ought not to be granted in this case.

   This suit was begun in the name of Samuel E. Hall and John W. Morse, citizens of Council Bluffs, who asked for a mandamus

to compel the Union Pacific company to operate its bridge across the Missouri at Omaha as a part of its railroad, by continuous trains, and at a mileage tariff on freight and passengers. Until the time of the decision of the suit the company had operated the bridge line as a distinct system and with separate trains. The case was decided on appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, February 28, 1876. The opinion of the majority of the court is in part as follows:

   But we do not discover that the United States government or its officers ever acted upon the theory that the eastern terminus of the road was on the western shore of the river. The officers of the company asserted it for a time, it is true, but not in their practical intercourse with the national government. Indeed, it never became a practical question until the bridge was erected; and from that time to the present the government has asserted that the true terminus of the road was fixed on the Iowa shore . . . . True, it (the bridge) is not opposite section 10; but the company has taken up its road from that section, and it now comes to the river where the bridge is actually constructed. Having abandoned their road so far as it extended above that point; having commenced their bridge where it is; having applied to Congress for power to mortgage it and for special power to levy tolls and charges for the use of it; and having obtained those powers, they are not at liberty now to assert that they have located it in the wrong place. There is nothing either in the act of 1862 or 1864 or in that of February 24, 1871, which empowers them to build more than one bridge over the Missouri river for the Iowa branch; and the latter act contains an implied recognition of the right under the former acts to build their bridge on its present location. There is no intimation in it of a distinct franchise. It grants no power to build a bridge.
   The Council Bluffs interests insisted on the strict, technical letter of the law. President Lincoln in his orders of November 17, 1863, and March 7, 1864, fixed the initial point of the road "on the western boundary of the state of Iowa, east of and opposite to the east line of section 10 in township 15 north, of range 13 cast of the 6th principal meridian, in the territory of Nebraska." To meet this insistence on the apparently plain letter of the law Mr. Poppleton's brief on behalf of the company was necessarily specious, but it was a masterpiece of its kind. It presented a formidable array of illustrations of the truth of his contention that the officers and engineers of the company, as well as representatives of the government, had from the first treated Omaha as the initial point of the railroad. While the argument was so complete that it seemed to omit nothing that was relevant and useful to the company's cause, yet it was not burdened with an irrelevant contention or a superfluous sentence. It is true that the act of 1862 "required" the company to construct its line as described, while the act of 1864 merely "authorized" it to construct a bridge. It is true, as Mr. Poppleton most forcibly and plausibly contended, that in adjusting the subsidies for the road, mileage was counted from Omaha as the initial point; that President Lincoln in his animal message of December 7, 1864, announced that, "The route of the main line of the road has been definitely located for 100 miles westward from the initial point at Omaha city, Nebraska"; and that the provision of the charter, that if the road should not be completed so as to form a continuous line from the Missouri river to the California coast by the 1st of July, 1876, the whole property should be forfeited to the United States, did not contemplate that the beginning of the road was at Council Bluffs, or that the forfeiture might have been enforced upon such an assumption. But while this argument furnished plausible ground for the court to decide against the strict letter of the original law, if it had deemed it expedient so to do, yet it did not prove that the system of ferry boats which was operated between the technical end of the railroad line and the Iowa shore was not constructively a part of the Union Pacific railway, or that when the company chose to, and did build its bridge in continuation of the first defacto end of its line, that the bridge would not legally and logically become a part of the line and be regarded as the delayed completion of it to the technical initial point.
   During these years of controversy there was intrigue in plenty on both sides. Assuming that the bridge was to be built at Omaha and

was to be a part of the Union Pacific line, as the court subsequently decided, and inasmuch as the company had recognized Omaha as the terminus and had accepted her bonus for the concession, as we have seen, the troubled city had plausible grounds for her contention, but nothing more. It was at most an open question, but the company had evidently pledged its faith to Omaha -- if indeed it may be assumed that it had ever possessed anything of that sort to pledge. Two important documents show the attitude of Omaha towards the bridge question in 1868. The first is an ultimatum of the committee of citizens who were sent to New York to negotiate with the company. Dr. George L. Miller declined to act as a member of this committee. He insisted that the citizens had not kept faith with the road and were attempting to impose upon it an unjust condition subsequent to the original agreement. But at the urgent request of members of the committee he went to New York and pleaded, no doubt effectually, with Durant and others to come to a settlement and save the bridge -- which meant the terminus of the road -- to Omaha.
    The second document is the deed of land for depot grounds, right of way, etc., as agreed
   

Engraving from a copyrighted photograph furnished by Mr. Alfred Darlow, advertising agent Union Pacific railroad.

PRIVATE CAR OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN

upon in the settlement of 1868, the consideration of which is significant.
   After they had won the contest the Omaha victors expressed a belief that their cause had been in great danger and acknowledged the effectiveness of the opposing forces. "When we say that for a long time, the contest on [the] bridge swung between Bellevue and Childs' Mill, and that Omaha was counted out, his [Henry T. Clarke's] people and ours may better appreciate the not altogether hopeless struggle in which he at last confessed a surrender."
   The amendatory Union Pacific act of July 2, 1864, granted to the Burlington & Missouri River railroad company, a corporation organized under the laws of the state of Iowa, right of way 200 feet wide and ten alternate sections of land per mile on each side of a line of railroad "from the point where it strikes the Missouri river, south of the mouth of the Platte river, to some point not further west than the 100th meridian of west longitude, so as to connect, by the most practicable route, with the main trunk of the Union Pacific railroad, or that part of it which runs from Omaha to the said 100th meridian of west longitude."

GRENVILLE A DODGE

Major-general U. S. army, member of Congress, and construction engineer Union Pacific railroad

   When the Union Pacific company adopted the Mud creek or ox-bow route a sharp controversy, in the form of appeals to the secretary of the interior, arose between President John A. Dix of the Union Pacific and President J. W. Brooks of the Burlington & Missouri company, the latter contending that "the proposed alteration in the route of that road (the Union Pacific) brings it almost down to the line adopted by the Burlington & Missouri River R. R. Co." President Dix insisted that the change referred to "is all within the first 17 1/2 miles of the old line west from Omaha. At that distance the old and new lines unite, and the maximum deflection of the new line from the old within that distance is only 5 1/2 miles. As the line of the Burlington & Missouri River railroad is understood to run south of the mouth of the Platte,, a distance of eighteen miles from Omaha, the apprehended invasion of the territory, for which that road proposes to furnish railroad facilities, is altogether imaginary." But on the 9th of September, 1865, to quiet the matter, President Dix announced that the Union Pacific company "will waive all claim to any land to which the Burlington & Missouri railroad company is now entitled under existing acts of Congress, so far as such claim may arise from the proposed change of line. That I may not be misunderstood, I put the proposition in another form of words: that the Union Pacific railroad company will not claim any lands, by reason of the change

ENGINE NO. 1 ON THE UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD

of line, to which the other company is now entitled."
   On the other hand there was strong popular opposition, led by J. Sterling Morton and Dr. George L. Miller, editor of the Omaha Herald, to the manner in which the Burlington company proposed to locate its lands. This controversy is explained by the protest of the Nebraska City News, which contains notice of the reversal by 0. H. Browning, secretary of the interior, of the decision of his predecessor, James Harlan, that the company might select its lands from all odd sections, thus withdrawing them from market. By the new ruling the company was required to confine the selections to a limit of twenty miles on either side of its line. The News expresses the opinion that this new decision will probably involve the location of a new initial point on the Missouri river, and "because the Union Pacific railroad reaches twelve miles south of Plattsmouth (the present initial point of the Burlington) and therefore leaves no land on the north side of the present line of location, westward, to be selected by the Burlington Co. and none within twelve miles south thereof." The Omaha Herald indulges in strong congratulations over the event, as follows:

   It will be remembered that Harlan decided the clause tinder which that land-grabbing corporation has been for years engaged in absorbing millions of acres of the choicest land in Nebraska, restricting them to selec-

tions within twenty miles of the line, to mean that they could select without regard to limits. Under this construction the company has been engaged for more than a year in a systematic effort to absorb the choicest land in all sections of the territory . . . Mr. Browning is entitled to the hearty thanks of the people of Nebraska for his action: To Hon. J. Sterling Morton, who first called the attention of the Secretary of the Interior to this important subject, and subsequently pressed it before him for decision, and advocated the rights of the people in the News, and to Mr. 0. F. Davis, acting register of the land office, who has sustained his views and denounced the land robbers, the public thanks are due. We understand Mr. Browning has caused orders to be sent to the land offices in Nebraska to stop these withdrawals of the land, and to open them to the homestead and preemption benefits. We presume this will include orders to cancel the reservations heretofore made, and thus will be restored to our people millions of acres of the best lands the sun ever shone upon.
   The secretary granted the company a rehearing, but on the 25th of January, 1865, he affirmed his former decision as follows: "The order then made for a restoration to market of the lands lying beyond the limit of twenty miles of the line of said road and withdrawn with reference to the claim of said company, will, if not executed, be carried at once into effect."
   The route out of Omaha being now finally determined, the work of construction was ear-

THE FIRST UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD BRIDGE ACROSS THE MISSOURI RIVER AT OMAHA

nestly begun. Only about one and one-half miles of road had been graded previous to July, 1865, but before January 1, 1866, the line was completed fifty miles westward. From this time the work of construction progressed rapidly; 250 miles of track were laid in 1866, and during the season of 1867, 240 miles were added. Fort Sanders was passed May 8, 1868, and the following day the track was completed to Laramie. Promontory Point, Utah, was reached just one year later, and on May 10, 1869, a junction was made with the Central Pacific railroad at a point 1,085.8 miles West of Omaha, and 690 miles east of Sacramento. The greatest trouble with Indians was experienced in western Nebraska, but they continued to harass surveying parties and tracklayers in Wyoming as well, although United States troops were constantly on guard.
   The first permanent bridge across the Missouri river, at Omaha was commenced in March 1868, and completed four years later, at a cost of $1,750,000. In 1877 this bridge was partially destroyed by a cyclone, and in 1886-1887 was entirely rebuilt and enlarged.
   A regular train service was established early in 1866, and trains were running to Bridgers Pass by October, 1868. The first conductor on the Union Pacific was Grove Watson, deceased, and the second, Augustus A. Egbert. The first station at Omaha as built near the present site of the smelting

works, and B. T. C. Morgan was appointed agent, January 1, 1865.
   By September, 1867, the great highway had become progressive enough to announce that "on and after next Sunday" all trains, passenger and freight, would run on Sundays the same as week days. On the 20th of May, 1868, it was announced through the Herald that passenger fare had been reduced from ten cents to seven and one-half cents a mile. By this change the fare to Cheyenne, which had been $51.50 became $38.50.
   Among the earliest local officials of the Union Pacific railroad after its formal inauguration were: Webster Snyder, general superintendent, soon followed by Samuel B. Reed, and later by C. G. Hammond; H. M. Hoxie, assistant superintendent; J. H. Congdon, general manager; S. H. H. Clark, general freight agent; Thomas L. Kimball, general passenger and ticket agent; T. E. Sickles, chief engineer; and William Huff, master mechanic. The latter was succeeded by Robert McConnell, April 1, 1867.

PASSENGER TARIFF OF UNION PACIFIC R R.¹JULY 16,1866.

DISTANCE FROM OMAHA	OMAHA
12 1/4	$1 25	PAPILLION
28 3/4	2 85	$ 1 65	ELKHORN
46 1/2	4 65	3 40	$ 1 75	FREMONT
61 1/4	6 15	4 90	3 25	$ 1 50	NORTH BEND
75 1/2	7 55	6 35	4 65	2 90	$ 1 45	SHELL CRE'K
91 1/4	9 15	7 90	6 25	4 50	3 00	$1 55	COLUMBUS
109	10 90	9 70	8 00	6 25	4 80	3 35	$1 80	SILVER CR'K
131 1/3	13 10	11 95	10 25	8 50	7 00	5 60	4 00	$2 25	LONE TREE
153 1/2	15 35	14 15	12 45	10 70	9 20	7 80	6 20	4 45	$2 20	GRAND ISLN'D
171 1/2	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	WOOD RIVER
190	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	KEARNEY

OMAHA, July 16, 1866. SAM'L. B. REED,
General Superintendent.