Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1884-1886, 1886-03-18
SIX MORE GREAT RAIL
WAY LINES.
What the People of This City
May Confidently Look
Forward to.
The Metropolis Of the Missouri Bottom:
Forgotten-Chicago and ST. Louis
But Co-Equals in the Grand Flu
ture of the West.

as dependents rather than causes. The
greatest men of history have nearly ell
sprung from unexpected sources or obscure
lots So the greatest cities often grow up
and flourish in unexpected and ill-seemin g
localities, and in defiance Of all conceived
prerequisites. There is al underlined infu-
ence running through the laws of trade and
commerce, or of supply and demand, that
heeds not swanps or precipices when it
comes TO planting city. Chicago was
founded in swamp whose depths have
never been fathomed, when but at little
distance magnificent rolling grounds lay
neglected. San Francisco vas built upon
sand hills when right in the same sheltered
bay were as firm grounds as were ever
formed. Kansas City is being built mid
deep ravines and precipitous declivities when
near at hand great broad valleys stretch
away. Pittsburg, Galveston, and many
other cities come under one or the other OF
these heads.
These facts are ins.anced not SO much as a
parallel, bu. more as an answer 10 the daily
recurring exclamation of strangers Of How
Wichita grows! Whist can be the secret of
such wonderful business and such gen.
cral prosperity"
But are there no visible causes, no plain
reasons for Wichita's past success, her
present prosperity and for her future posi-
bilities, upon which SO many confidently
count! Let US, for brief space look at the
matter.
Notwithstanding the seeming fact that all
great commercial points are planted or
founded without reference 10 local surround
ings, it is not go, in reality, but the adverse
is the truth. All the cities named by US
and many Others Of our own continent were
distinctively pointed out and fixed as con-
gregating points before civilization in either
instance stepped in to take sway and com
mand. This was the case with Wichita also.
Here, at the confluence Of the waters of the
Great and Little Arkansas rivers the
nornadic wanderers of the vast plains were
wont TO meet for council; here, afterwards
came the trader to barter with the peripatetic
children of the desert; here the very first on
and, here, midst one of the grandes,
and richest valleys and finest agricultural
countries known to man was Wichita laid
out and named. Therefore it seems to us
no wonder that this city from the very first
should have maintained the same ascendency
that tie natural point did for the Indians
and frontiersmen before civilization began
Its work with the compass, the pillow and the
locomotive. And so il has seemed to eight
out of every ten who have here cast their
lots. The surroundings had but to be seen
and partially understood, when faith AND
conviction scattered all doubts as to th5
future. The men who stuck the first stakes
here were ssnguine of city, just as san
guineas those who followed in the after time
when much had been demonstrated. 1t wa:
only last week that Il director Of the Sants
Fe railway system said TO us that he snC
another gentleman, now prominent
banker of Kansas, came down here wher
the town was laid out, and that the convic-
ton was then strongly felt and expressed by
both, that if Kansas ever built any cite:
one of the most prominent would be here
That the EAGLE has always so felt anG
talked everybody knows. These facts ard
beliefs are in and of themselves sufficien;
explanation of all that Wichita as city has
yet attained.
But the supplemental forces that are now
being msrshalled will far outstrip, in po-
tency, all that has gone before in making q
city here-a city to which the entire state OF
Kansas will yet look with pride Added to
our original advantages. especially to that
of being the natural center of an almost
boundless country of richest soils, the intlu-
ences of a wonderfully rapid developing
civilization, at time when navigable
streams no longer count or figure in COM
merce or progression, are pushing our city
on TO grand destiny whose magnitude ten
years hence no man who knows is past and
present will even venture to guess at. The
great plains and valleys south and west of US
are being checkered with squares Of cult
waited farms and homs-plsts and dotted all
over with growing towns and flourishing
county seats, an empire in and of itself,
which will demand and sustain city larger
than Kansas City, St. Joe and Omaha COM
bined, twice over, within the next dozen
years. To keep pace with and to become
linked by traffic lines to the leading points
of all this vast territory is but question of
two or three or fire years at most.
These facts, and many more which we
have not room to recite, have been seen and
understood by the more comprehensive
minds which control the commerce of our
Chicagoes and St. Louises and their railwsy
lines; and. not only seen and understood,
but the fact has begun TO press upon them
that to psrtake of such prosperity, TO even
save to themselves that which should be
their equitable profits. they must become
part and n portion OF Wichita. And 50 is
explained the expeciant onward move Of n
csgo railways, whose representatives have
been present in this city almost daily for the
past month snd in consultation with this or
that interest
And this brings us to the fact that We first
started out TO make statement of, and thst
is, that Wichits has never yet experienced
anything like the boom and solid growth
which she viii experience within the next
two or three years to come,
and the first wave of which will
roll over our city the coming
season. The writer himself is cognizsnt of
the fact that the arrangements of no less
than six great railway lines have now or
foo, negotiations for building their roads to
Wiehits. These or whatever number Of
them reaches US within the next year or two,
will have settled for sll time the matter of
freights for our jobhers and manufacturers.
Thst any Of them will stop here is hardly
reasonable to suppose. The great field west
and southwest is too inviting. So, for those
fields on diferen; lines viii they push ont,
becoming feeders for Wichits TO the west,
and supplies from the east, until Kansas
City. down smong the rocks and hills Of the
unprogressiye Missouri bottoms. will have
been forgotten by our people, and s.. Louis
and Chicago only thought of snd co-ope-