The record-union. [volume] (Sacramento, Calif.) 1891-1903, 1899-12-08
NOT BUILT ALIKE.
Reasons Why the West Has Ita
Own Characteristics.


Perhaps no saner explanation of the
genius of the West has been made than
that offered by Arthur 1. Street in
"Ainslee's Magazine" which reads:
Merely spotted and stained with
habitation is the country across the
Missouri, and more particularly that
beyond the eastern line Of Colorado.
Nearly one million two hundred thou
sand square miles-a third Of the total
area of the union-with only four mill
ior population out of the grand Amer
lean census of seventy-seven millions.
Surely geology has done it's work in the
Rockies and beyond. If there is hreezi-
ness that blows from scattered centers
to scattered centers, it is but logical.
If the politicians will assume tasks and
experiments, and presume occasionally
upon an abnormal capacity against the
world as when solid West votes for
silver, it is to be expected. The people
are used to long reaches and big move
ments and nervy undertakings. They
have. to be in order to get things done
at all. The closely knit power of the
East is supplanted in the West by an
expansive grasp and faith. 1t is long
range adhesiveness, with the elements
of inspiration and mutual trust and
confidence in it. 1t is chivalrous ana
noble, because it is founded upon hon
est aspiration and broad fratsrnal SYM
pathy. 1t takes victory with elation
and swallows defeat with determination
to have no more of it.
Interesting as the land itself, even
interesting as the monstrous canyons
through which the Rio Grande Railway
has constructed it's marvels OF eng1-
neering skill to afford pleasure to tie
sightseer, are the marks which popula-
lions have left upon the surface. Many
of them stand like the ruined cities or
ancient nations less venerable only De-
cause less ancient, but equally fruitful
in suggestions Of history, equally preg-
nant with memories that concern men.
Beginning with the border of British
Columbia and running continuously
southwark to the Rio Grande, these
landmarks remain. Deserted forts and
trading stations they are in the far
north, where the Hudson Bay Company
made fortunes in furs long before
American agriculturists or miners
stepped out Of their Eastern homes. De-
caying haciendas and adobe villages
and towns that seem old even by name,
as Tucson, in Arizona, are on the far
southern border. The huge cavities and
indentations which the placer hose
washed in the foothills of California re-
semble abandoned acropoles, or some
times inspire one with the belief that
some giant prehistoric race has left
it's work of reconstructing the earth's
surface unfinished. In latter years the
people have gone back over most of the
landmarks in Colorado and rehahitated
them; but about such places as Ko-
komo, at the head of one of the So
called parks, where once the overland
and the gold-seeking trains crossed the
mountains, there is an ineffable atmos-
phere of dreariness and desertion The
toll to reach the point-even the toll
for the railroads. SO great that the
instincts of admiration assume proper
tions of amazement and wonder at the
pluck Of the pioneers and their brazen
hardwood in venturing into such lofty
wildernesses in order that genera lions
to follow them might be richer and that
the destiny Of the nation might be pur-
sued.
1.-The mountains that lie eastward of
the Great Salt Lake, and through which
the Union Pacific twined it's way. first
among the transcontinental railroads,
are marked in places unnumbered with
the signs of sturdy thrift and humble
religious obedience, where the Mormors
worked out their incomes in building
the railroad for which the leaders of
the church had taken the contracts Of
construction.
"Some day the people of the West
xrys11 %J,.~ -
to history these remnants and relicts
Of the places in which once they hoped
to thrive, and from these points as be-
ginnings the future historian will pro-
coed to analyze the character of the
sections Of the nation in which they
lie."