The Alaska citizen., 1914-06-08

| sion, which is about ready to begin | laying out the line of the new gov ernment railroad, is contained in the | following dispatch recently printed | in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: WASHINGTON - Dragged sud denly from their work-one from the forests of Northern California and the other from the Panama canal zone-two men who were selected to plan Uncle Sam's s35.O00.O00 Alaskan railroad system sat down together recently to begin work.
 Still a little breathless, they lost no time. They are men all their lives accustomed to grabbing new and intricate problems and solving them. One young, eager. gingersome; the other wrinkled. but enthusiastic as youth, the two typified the tra ditions of their profession. They were not long getting acquainted, The one is First Lieutenant Mears, First cavalry, U. s. A. and the other William C. Edes. One was chief engineer of the new Panama rail way, the other chief engineer of the Northwestern Pacific railway, of Cali fornia.
 In bare and rugless room in the department of the interior they es- to be transferred for brief period to Seattle and thence to Alaska
 Built Many Railroads.
 MT. Edes has spent nearly forty years in locating and building rail roads in inaccessible places. Born in Massachusetts in 1856, he was graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1875 He immediately went West and joined surveying party of the Southern Pa cific railway in Arizona. Until 1881 he remained in that employ on loca- tion and construction work in the widest parts of California and the Southwest. Following stay in the East of three years, he returned to the same kind of work in the same area for the Southern Pacific, re- maining until 1896.
 Famous as an Engineer.
 He acquired fame as a locating engineer, a man who could plan road in rugged country. finding the easiest grades, the shortest mileage, the best results, a high-class spec ialist in his profession.
 When, some fourteen years ago, the San Francisco & San Joaquin railroad was projected to furnish competition in transportation, he was the company's chief assistant en- gineer in the locating and construc- tion and in general charge of the field work.
 Then he went back to the South ern Pacific and located for that company what is known as the coast line, from San Luis Obispo to FL wood.
 Finally Called East.
 When the Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe were jockeying to get into the northern coast country of California, MT. Edes did the locating work for the Southern. Eventually the two companies joined forces in the Northwestern Pacific railroad to carry on the "Donohoe broad gauge" road from it's northern term mus into the mountains of Hum boldt county, and MT. Edes was made chief engineer of the road He occupied that position when called to Washington.
 For all his commission in the cavalry, Lieut.. Mears also has had his share of pioneering. Born in the army at Fort Omaha, Neb,, in 1878, his youth was spent on the frontier with the Fourth infantry, of which his father. Frederick Mears, was lieutenant colonel. In 1892 Col. Mears, who was we'll known through out the Northwest, died while serv- ing as commanding officer at Fort Spokane.
 Works for Railroad.
 Young Mears was educated at Shattuck military school, Faribault, Minn, and was graduated in 1897. At once he went to work as rod man on the Park Rapids & Leech Lake railroad, a branch of the Great Northern Presently he had won advancement to the position of lev eler, and was employed on the Coon creek cutoff. Chief Engineer John F. Stevens got to know him and to realize his abilities. Young Mears advanced fast.
 Presently James J. Hill wanted to run some feeder lines into East ern British Columbia northward from his main line in Idaho. On two of these, that in Whitney valley and the Bedlington & Nelson, young