Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/770

714 the contest between Chicago and St. Louis as to which should secure the main Pacific line had been won by the former in the provision that the initial eastern point of the new line should be at a point on the 100th meridian, "between the south margin of the valley of

the Republican River and the north margin of the valley of the Platte River in the Territory of Nebraska," and the final bill of 1864 confirmed this location. The principal eastern terminus was given to Omaha in a provision that, of several branches provided for east of this point, the Iowa branch should be built to the initial point on the 100th meridian from "a point on the western boundary of the State of Iowa to be fixed by the President of the United States," and Abraham Lincoln fixed the point within the limits of the township in Iowa opposite the town of Omaha, in Nebraska, and afterwards "east of and opposite to the east line of Section 10." In the end the legal terminus was fixed by the Supreme Court of the United States on the Iowa side of the Missouri River, where west of Council Bluffs the traveller finds to-day what is known as the Transfer Station; though this is, in matter of fact, some distance south of Section 10.

General Grenville M. Dodge, who was chief engineer of the Union Pacific, and in charge of construction during 1866 and thereafter, still survives, a Nestor in the honorable company of American construction engineers, and his name will always be coupled with the work of putting the first railroad across the Rockies. His reminiscences throw a pretty side-light on this decision of Lincoln's concerning the eastern terminus. General Dodge in 1858 (assigning the date from recollection), after a summer of engineering reconnaissances west of the Missouri, camped with his party at Council Bluffs. Abraham Lincoln at that time was visiting the Bluffs. He heard of General Dodge's return and of his surveys, and sought him out. Sitting with the mountain engineer on the porch of the hotel, Lincoln held him for two hours or more, and drew from him the facts he had obtained, and his opinion as to the best route for a railroad across the continent and the possibility of building one.

In 1862, while in command of the District of Corinth, Mississippi, General Dodge was ordered by Grant to proceed to Washington to report to the President; Lincoln had remembered the talk of 1858 on the hotel porch of Council Bluffs. The question of the eastern terminus for the newly authorized railroad was then a national question. In General Dodge's