The weekly pioneer and Democrat. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. Territory) 1855-1865, 1864-01-15

miles, comprising all the heavy and very
expensive work between the Mississippi
and Minnesota rivers. and is graded for
thirty miles farther. The iron is said to
have been purchased and preparations
| made to complete the road to Rochester,
distance of forty-nine miles from WinOna,
by the 4th of July, 1864.
The Minneapolis and Cedar Valley rail-
road has been graded from Mendoza to
North6eld. An expensive bridge across
the Minnesota is in process of construction.
Ties, iron and rolling stock are reported
to have been purchased, sufficient to equip
the road from Minneapolis to its junction
with the Winona and St. Peter road at
Owatonna, and it is confidently expected
that the road will be ready for business
from Minneapolis to Faribault by next
autumn. Arrangements have also been
made which insure the building at the
same time of a branch from Mendoza to
St. Paul
| If these enterprises continue to be pro-
secuted with the vigor which has marked
their recent progress, the expectation may
be reasonably INDUCED, that by the middle
of next year the cars will be running con-
tinuOusly from st Cloud, at the outpost of
our northwestern settlements, through the
heart of the State to Winona, distance
of nearly two hundred and thirty miles,
and supplying reliable and much needed
means Of communication with eastern
markets.
The main line of the St. Paul and Pa
citic railroad from Minneapolis westward
is as yet unimproved. The remaining
land-grant lines continue in the condition
in which over three years ago they passed
by foreclosure into the hands of the State
At the last session, the Legislature
passed an act making valuable grant of
swamp lands to aid the St. Paul and Pa
ciic Company in building a branch of
their road from St. Paul to Winona, along
the Mississippi River. The company has
accepted the grant on the conditions nam
ed, has caused the route to be surveyed,
and hopes are entertained that its con-
struction will commence next spring.
The Lake Superior e. Mississippi Rail-
road Company, to which the State made a
similar conditional donation of swamp
lands, has recently received an additional
inducement to prosecute the work on this
road in the pledge of a bouus of $3.50, 900
by the city of St. Paul, upon the compile
ton of the road, within five years, from
st. Paul to the head of Lake Superior. An
ordinance of the City Council to that effect
has been ratified by a popular vote, and
row only awaits the sanction of the Legis-
lature to give it validity.
Leaving the last mentioned road out of
view, and excepting the Winona & St. Pc
ter road, all our great projected land grant
lines, five in number, traversing the State
in as many different directions, with an
aggregate length when completed of over
1000 miles, and resting on land grants
amounting to nearly 4, 900, 900 acres, have
common centre of conveyance near
where the Minnesota joins its current to
that of the Mississippi. making it the focus
of seven great interior transit lines. /
venture to direct your attention to this
prominent feature of our railroad system,
because it seems to me that sufficient con-
sideration has not been given to the fact,
that single railroad 14O miles long from
this focal point (the particular locality is
of little importance,) to Lake Superior,
would furnish an outlet for our whole sys-
TEN of natural and artificial eommunica-
tions upon lake navigation, at a distance
and cost of transit much less, for three
quarters of our agricultural area, than by
the routes terminating on Lake Michigan.
| The immense advantage of such an outlet
would be felt to the farthest extremities of
our railroad system, through the whole
circle of trade and industry, reducing the
noe% of ;,,,porfo1 oo,,,pooC;t;oo ro;c;pn ba
value of our grain and other products to
the standard of Illinois, and virtually pla-
cling Minnesota upon the same commercial
ground with that State, as respects the
cost of transportation from and to the At
lantic seaboard. 1t would, besides, form
powerful inducement to the early con-
struction of the Minnesota Valley Railroad,
the main commercial value of which de-
pends upou connection with Lake Supe-
rior. But its relations to the great plan
of Pacific communications marked out by
Congress, and now in rapid progress OF
construction, give this subject new i'm
portance. By the 18th Section of an act
of Congress, entitled can Act to aid in
the cOnstructis n of Railroad and Tele-
graph line from the Missouri River to the
Pacific Ocean, and to secure to tn Gov
ernment the use of the same for Postal,
Military and other purposes, it is provid-
ed that whenever railroad shall be built
through Minnesota or Iowa 10 Sioux City,
the Union Pacific Railroad Company are
authorized and required to construct a
branch line from their road, to connect
Herewith. The building of railroad
from Lake Superior to The Mississippi, and
us continuation through the Minnesota
valley to Sioux City, would fulfill the con-
oitlon precedent, and give the i'm cense
commerce which is destined to flow over
iand between the two oceans, a path to
snip navigation hundred and thirty miles
shorter than by any possible route to Lake