The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1899-11-22
ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE.
By WILLIAM RITTENHnUSE.

By WILLIAM RITTENIloCSE.
Which of us does not remember tho
celebrated drop of water which, fall
ing on the very summit of the great
continental divide, can take it's choice
Of going either to the Atlantic or the
Pacific Ocean. aud which has served
to point an obvious moral evel
since the geography of America has
been known? The Great Divide is
not mere figure of speech, either
but very imposing reality, as all the
transcontinental railroads have found
and it's interest is not at all confined
to its watersbedding qualities. The
story of the advance of the railroads
across it's crest is one Of the romances
of history, aud would require volume
to do Injustice.
It was in 1871 that Asa Whitney, a
New York merchant, first began to
dream Of making road across the
American Divide. He had been in
China few years before, and became
convinced that the trade Of China,
India, and Japan could all be gained
for the United States by transcon-
tinental line. He proposed to con-
gress to build, at his own expense, a
railway from Lake Superior to Puget
Sound if he were granted strip of
land sixty miles wide all along the
route For twenty years he stroye to
push his plan, but the government
considered it a fantastic dream, and
Whitney died, poor and disappointed.
Not until 1864 was bill finally pass
ed, through President Lincoln S inau-
ence, which authorized the building
of the Union and Central Pacific Rail
roads. The Central was to lay its
rails eastward from the Golden Gate,
and the Union to commence at
the Missouri and advance westward.
Wherever the rails met, between the
river and coast, they were to join.
AS there was heavy subsidy, how
ever, granted for every mile Of road
forty. eight thousand dollars a mile
across the Rockies, for example
each road was anxious to outstrip the
other, and the garders, working like
ants, passed each other, and still kept
on until two hundred parallel miles
Of roadbed (but without rally we're
finished. The track layers, of course,
had to stop as soon as they met, which
was at Promontory, Utah, where, on
May 10. 1869, the last tie was laid.
It was made Of highly polished Cali
fornia laurel, bearing silver plate
with the names of the officers and
directors Of each company: and the
rails fastened with four spikes, two
Of gold, from California and Idaho,
and two Of silver from Nevada and
Montana.
The original idea of a line across
the continent was that of trade with
the East, as has been said. For
many years, indeed, it never entered
men minds that the land between
the Missouri and the Sierras was
worth anything at all. It was con-
sidered a barren, rainless desert, fit
only for the buffalo and the Indian.
Money invested in the Great Amer
lean Desert will never come back
was the phrase of one cautious capi-
talist Yet nowadays exactly ninety
five per cent Of the earnings of these.
roads comes from local traffic, and only
FIVE from that through trade from
which Whitney hoped so much. 1t
is even an actual fact, that with
the advent Of, the railroad upon the
western plateaus the climate has be-
come milder, the cold less destructive,
and the rainfall greater, for the
planting of trees and ploughing of
fields everywhere has broken the
force of the wind and increased tie
evaporation.
All this, of course, has not been
done without infinite toll and sacri-
fee. Many "pathfndcrs'' Of the
engineering force lie in forgotten
graves along each mighty track across
the continent. The [ndian, painted,
feathered, and treacherous, has hung
about the camps of the surveyors, the
garders, and the track layers, as they
have followed each other steadily into
the wilderness, and has left bloody
record of massacre behind him.
Grasshoppers have clogged the wheels
and stopped the locomotives, and
snow has buried the crews to s'arye.
This problem of snow. indeed, has