Page:A History of the Pacific Northwest.djvu/274



The northern survey was placed in charge of Major (afterwards General) Isaac Ingalls Stevens, who about this time was appointed governor of the newly created Territory of W^ashington. Colonel J. C. Fremont, Captain Stansbury and Lieutenant Beckwith surveyed the South Pass route. Captain Gunnison was given the south central route, while Captain John Pope, Lieutenant Parke, Major Emory and Lieutenant Williamson took the southern, which included surveys from the Colorado River to San Francisco Bay.

Three practicable routes revealed. The great work, whose results are embodied in a magnificent series of volumes, was completed in about two years. It showed the practicability of three routes, the northern, the southern and the one by South Pass, which thereafter was usually called the Central route. It rested with the Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, to determine which of the three feasible routes possessed the most marked advantages as to length, economy of construction, etc., and he very naturally decided in favour of the southern. "Not only," said Davis, " is this the shortest and least costly route to the Pacific, but it is the shortest and cheapest route to San Francisco, the greatest commercial city on our western coast."

The Union Pacific Company formed. A location contest now ensued in which Davis was charged by General Stevens with unfair discrimination against the northern route. Stevens advocated the construction of three lines of road, the Northern,