Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/394

284 "Washington, October 15, 1864.

J. Gaston, Esq.,

Sir: I have just received a letter from you of June 30th. I think I sent you a copy of my bill before the adjournment. If your Oregon company is organized, it had better be named in the bill before it passes. I will consult with Mr. McBride. Your obt. servant,

C. Cole."

Mr. McBride referred to was the Oregon member of congress. The name of the then Oregon company was never inserted in the bill, which passed congress and became a law on July 25, 1866, and granted twenty alternate sections of public land per mile of the railroad which has been constructed thereunder from Portland to the California line.

It is necessary to thus particularly trace the original connected and successive steps in projecting and carrying out a great public work, to show that the Jackson County people were entitled to the credit of giving it birth; and to show how the wisdom of the original location of the line was vindicated by the actual construction of the road. In seeking the best line for a railway between two distant points, all other inducements being equal, the line of location, like all other forward movements of human effort, will proceed along the line of the least resistance. Two facts determined the location of this Oregon and California railroad. First, the line of least resistance. The physical features of the region to be developed offered a series of beautiful valleys, rich in all the resources to support a railroad, and so located as to form nearly the shortest line between the termini of the road, and through which it could be constructed centrally through the greatest length of these valleys, and at the lowest cost, and serving the majority of population and interests. Second, here on this line had settled the population of the two states, and made the then existing development of their resources, and upon which the road must rely for its support.

It was not the only available, or the only line proposed, as many persons might now think. The line of the first transcontinental road had been projected to San Francisco when the first steps to secure this Oregon and California line were taken, and connection with the transcontinental line was one of the moving factors to induce action for a connection with Oregon. But the Oregonians were not unanimous as to the best route. Mr. B. J. Pengra, the surveyor-general of Oregon, and a very able and enterprising man, and the successful promoter of the Oregon Central Military Wagon Road, with a land grant running from Eugene to the southeast corner of the state, together with a large following of wealthy and influential men, was actively advocating a line for an Oregon railroad connection with the Central Pacific road, called the "Humboldt route," which should run from the city of Portland to Eugene City, thence southeast by the middle fork of the Willamette river and over the Cascade mountains where the Natron branch of the Southern Pacific is now (1910) being constructed across the Cascade mountains to Klamath falls near Diamond Peak; and thence by Klamath marsh and lake on to Winnemucca on the Central Pacific Railroad in the state of Nevada. And had Pengra been supported by as much political influence as southern Oregon was able to command, he might possibly have defeated the location through the Umpqua and Rogue River valleys and secured the land grant to the line of his wagon road.

We pass now from the history of the location of the line to the administration of the land grant. The Oregon legislature met in September, 1866, six weeks after congress granted the lands in aid of the road. It was decided to