Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-01-30
!. The change of climate.

l. The change of climate.
Inc bringing under cultivation c
millions upon millions of acres of plain,
/ land, making homes for the numerous in,
migrants to the country.
3. The development of vast mineral belt
that now supply the world with gold, sill
yer and copper.
4. The development of immense QUAINT
ties of cosl, anthracite and bituminous
that are already supplying the population
| and industries between the Missouri rive
and the Pacific.
5. The discovering, yearly, of immens
beds OF all kinds of ore that go into the iron
tin, earthen and other industries. Their,
seems to be no metal fiat the Rocky noun
| taiDs cannot furnish tie ore to produce
3. Ihe empire that the roads have mad,
possible will, in the near future. exceed il
| occupied territory, population, wealth anc
savings all those of the country east of ths
MISSOURI river as measured to-day
FINANCIAL AND COMMERCIAL RESULTS.
In the last two years the financial stride,
have been remarkable. The Government,
Is daily adding to its treasury more thar
all the interest upon all the sums it has ex.
pended IN developing it, and does not vet
know what 1t has acquired; nor does il
comprehend in any degree what it will in
years to come pay into our treasury. II
has already built up four great commercial
centers, each controlling territory 500 miles
in diameter-ore on the Missouri river,
one in Colorado, one in Salt Lake basin
and one on the Pacific coast; and three
more are in their infancy-one on the Rio
Grande, one in Montana and another in
oregon. The banking capital and deposits
In the centers illustrate their progress They
Qm0nnf
dollars to-day.
On the completion of the road, at the re-
quest OF the Board of Directors. we made
an estimate of the earnings for five and ten
years after completion. BY claiming the
overland trade of all the British islands,
OF China and Japan, and taking that of the
entire Pacific coast we estimated the entire
earnings in FIVE years at $4,000 per mile.
we gave 80 per cent. OF this to through
traffic, and 20 per cent to local. Within
ten years the local development brought
the earnings UP to $4,000 per mile, and to-
day the through traffic is not 5 per cent. of
its gross earnings. In 1887 the Union
Pacific system earned a grand total of
SIS, 557 1855; the Central and Southern Pa
cific, S37 $3.50, 1852; the Atchison, Topeka
and Santa Fe, $1S,461, 366; the Northern
Pacific $12, 7S9, AL, and the Texas Pacific,
Sc, 100000.
Nearly one-half as much more was
earned by local roads that developed por-
ton of each State and Territory, but were
not part of the continental system. The
trade, traffic and development of that vast
empire, not yet thirty-five years old, has
passed beyond all figures, and we
simply look upon it as two great CONNER
cial zones following that other great empire,
between the lakes and the Missouri river,
whose development has been the admira-
ton and wonder of the world.
THE GREAT CLIMATIC RESULTS.
The building of the Pacific roads has
changed the climate between the Missouri
river and the Sierra Nevada. In the ex-
IRENE west it is not felt so much as be-
tween the Missouri river and the Rocky
mountains. Before settlement had de-
veloped it, the country west of the Missouri
river could raise very little of the main
crops, except by irrigation. From April
until September no rain fell. The SHOWS
of the mountains furnished the streams
with water and the bunch-gras with suffi-
cient dampness to sustain it until July
when it become cured and was the food
that sustained all animal life on the plains,
summer and winter.
l have seen herds of buffalo, hundreds of
thousands in number, living off bunch
grass that they obtained by paving
through two feet of snow on the level 1t
was this feature that induced the stocking
OF immense ranches with cattle Buffalo
never changed the character of the grass
but herds of cattle did, so that now, on the
ranges, very little of the bunch or buffalo
grass remains.
Since the building of these roads, it is
calculated that the rain belt moves west
ward at the rate of eight miles per year.
1t has now certainly reached the plains of
Colorado, and for two years the pioneers of
that high and dry state have raised crops
without irrigation, right up to the foot of
the mountains s.
Salt Lake since 1858 has risen nineteen
feet, submerging whole farms along its
border and threatening the level desert
west of it. 1t has been a gradual but per-
manent rise, and comes from the additional
moisture falling during the year-rain and
snow. Professor Agassiz, in 1867, after a
visit to Colorado, predicted that this in
crease of moisture would come by the dis
turbance of the electrical currents, caused
by the building of the Pacific railroads and
settlement of the country.
THE PACIFIC ROAD BUILDERS.
The Union Pacific and the Central Pa
ciic were fortunate in selecting class of
young men for their work. some of them
hardened by five years experience in the
war, whose whole soul and interest were
in it. They commenced first in the ex-
ploring and engineering parties, and finally
landed as chiefs in some part of the work.
On the Union Pacific were Dey, Reed,
Hurd, Blickensderfer, Morris Mccartney,
Eddy, House, Hudnut, Maxwell. Brown,
Appleton, Clark, Hoxey, Snyder the Case
ments, and many others under them. Some
of them laid down their lives in the work
all reached fame in after years ami we're
builders and operators on all the great
trans continental lines, including the Ca
madam Pacific
On the Central Pac'fi were Judah, Mont
ague, Clements, Ives, Gray, Towne and
others that / cannot name. Some Of these
men have met five times in making the
connections that completed the great trans
continental lines. | found some of the
men who made the first connection at
Promontory again at Sierra Blanca, at the
joining of the Texas Pacific and Southern
Pacific, and still again a; Emery's Gap the
present year, 10 connecting New Orleans
and the gulf with Denver. On the Atchi-
son and Topeka and on the Northern, as
well as on the Canadian Pacitic, some of
the men took part in laying the connecting
rails
The men who made possible this work,
who threw their fortunes, their health,
their regulations into it, will one day stand
in civil life like onr great leaders in the
war Monuments to their enterprise dot
the country between the Missouri river and
the Rocky Mountains, between the Pacific
and the Wahsatch They were the men
who had made possible a population, with
in the next twenty wears. between the
Missouri river and the Pacific coast, of fifty
millions of people. They have been IL
beled, abused vilified, and, in some cases,
| barkrupted and driven to their graves
but their works stand. and their monu-
| ments will yet come--the Ameses, Dillon,
Duff Durant, Atkins Dexter, Baker, Dix,
Brooks, Stanford. Huntington, Hopkins
| and Crocker.
THE BUILDING WAS PATRIOTIC WORK.
] do not state this alone on my own
knowledge, but l appeal 10 the most en-
| thusiastic, the most helpful of all the Gen.
erals in this great enterprise. One who
knew these people, who saw them. who
| watched them at their work, will tell you
| that they should deserve the same praise
| for their acts in civil life, as he and his fol
lowers did for their victories in the war
The two were insepsrable, and the las
could not have been but for the first
| Many have supposed that they engaged in
1 it for purely mercenary motives-fol
| the money they could make ont of it