Arizona republican., 1909-12-19
ENGINEERING OVER
 SIXTY YEARS AGO

The days when civil engineering brought one in contact with most un- civil individuals and locating a western railroad was as dangerous as tobacco raising in the night riders country is now are brought vividly before the reader of General Granville M. Dodge's "reminiscences in a recent number or the Engineering News. General Dodge was engaged in surveying the first railway across Iowa in the days before the Civil war; he also made recon naissances up the valley of the Platte for the Union Pacific His remark about the location of that line that, while detailed surveys had not been made. it had been determined by the buffalo, the Indian. the fur trader, the telegraph. the pony express and the stage" shows. by the way. both the keenness of his observation and his freedom from professional arrogance and conceit.
 As division commander in the Civil war General Dodge had a wide field for the exercise of his engineering skill. He built up an engineering or ganization which performed wonders in the way of railway destruction and reconstruction. His pioneer corps of l50e men was divided into squads, each in command of a civil or mechan- idaI engineer In 1864 this organiza- tion constructed double-track trestle bridge over the Chattahoochee river 710 feet long and fourteen feet wide in three days. using the timbers of the cotton mills of Roswell. Ga. for the trestles. When the war was over Gen eral Dodge returned to the Union Pa cific
 It is commonplace comment upon the Civil war that it greatly assisted in the opening of the west The places occupied by the volunteers in civil life were filled after their departure to the war, and on their return they found themselves superfluous and moved on." But the direct value of the military organization of the early sixties to the civil life of the succeed ing years has been too little empha- sized. General Dodge expresses it CO., gently: The organization for the con struction of the Union Pacific railway was purely upon military basis. Nearly every man working upon it had been in the Civil war; the heads of most of the engineering parties and all of the construction forces were of ficers in the Civil war. The chief of the track laying force, General Case ment, had been a division commander in the Civil war, and at any moment could call into the field d thousand men well officered. ready to meet any crisis or any emergency. There was no law Tn the country. and no court We laid out the towns, officered them and kept the peace''
 The danger from hostile Indians during the period of construction of the line was extreme: as General Dodge puts it, "every mile had to be run within range of the musket." and the young engineer carried transit on one, shoulder and a rifle on the other" Many of the best men engaged in the work lost their lives by the bullets of the savages. Notwithstanding the ab- sence of maps and the great difficult ties against which the engineers con- tended the line. according to such au- thorities as General Warren of the United States engineers. and Chief En- gir1eer Berry of the Rock Island sys- tenn, was very well located Mir. Har- rinian. with the best engineers of the present day and unlimited millions at his command, was able to shorten it but thirty, miles-St- Louis Republic.