A Northern Pacific Railroad
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A NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD.
The Pacific Railroad project, notwithstanding the amount of discussion it underwent, had become a matter of comparative indifference not only in consequence of the lack of a feasible plan, but principally from the want of a motive sufficiently immediate and pressing for its construction. But at present a new element has come into action, in connection therewith, which bids fair to awaken a new interest in the subject. We allude to the gold discoveries at Frazer’s River and vicinity.
Emigration to the new auriferous region is even now going on at a rapid rate. At St. Paul, meetings have been held to organise an overland route, and doubtless before long numerous companies will cross the Continent to the “Golden shores of the Pacific,” by the head-waters of the Missouri and through the northern passes of the vast Rocky Mountain chain.
San Francisco may be found to be not the only eligible place for the terminus of a Pacific Railroad. The mouth of the Columbia affords a capital harbor, and there are many such in Oregon and the vicinity of Vancouver’s Island. The Missouri river is navigable to the Great Falls, seven hundred miles above the mouth of the Yellow Stone, which can easily be reached by steamboats in thirty days from St. Louis. From the Falls to the head of navigable water on the Columbia is but about two hundred miles. To open a military road across that short distance would require but a small expense and it will be easy for the reader to perceive the facilities it would afford to travellers along the route.
Along the course of the emigrants, settlements will spring up, which will naturally tend to the construction of a Northern road. Certainly the building of such a road will not be delayed one day longer than the interests of commerce, and the demands of Anglo Saxon enterprize call for. We shall see.