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Re: According to the Ceremony in Ogden Who's who??? Casement and Strobridge...
Author: BOB2
Date: 05-09-2019 - 11:26
Abraham Lincoln, and the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862, establishing a very specific route, very favorable to those interests, giving the corporation they established a whole lot of publicly owned land to mortgage, develop, or sell, and what would be, in today's dollars, as a percent of the GDP, tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer direct payments, probably helped just a wee bit, too.
Council Bluffs was the furthest west Lincoln ever went, to meet with the folks who wanted the "franchise" to build the route from Omaha west, across the River, on the "northern" route to CA.
The RR survey presented to Congress in 1855 showed that both of the "southern" routes, the "southern pacific" route, and the route paralleling the "national road" from the end of the Santa Fe trail, on to Needles, and Tehachipi, to San Francisco, were considered to be better routes.
No one in Congress could agree on a route, Southern States wanted the lowest snow free "southern pacific", border states wanted the Santa Fe trail route, the north preferred the Central alignment via the Oregon trail to Oregon.
After Judah figured out a way to do it (the CP was not part of the 1855 RR routes recommended, like parts of the Rockies, those who surveyed those routes felt it was impossible to cross the central or southern Sierra passes with a RR), a pro-Pacific Railroad candidate named Lincoln was elected President, the opposition in Congress to the "northern" route seceded, and the Civil War intervened, CA would now become the western terminus.
Lincoln purportedly told the folks in Council Bluffs that he would come back and take the train to California himself, when it was done... He didn't make it back...
Yes, when it comes to the financing, including the theft graft and corruption associated with the UP and the Credit Mobilier, Dodge and Durant probably did more and do deserve more "credit"... Remember, the Big Four had the good sense to let all of the CP's (likely equally questionable) construction contract records "burn" in a fire that mysteriously broke out, as the Credit Mobilier scandal was breaking in Congress.
In terms of construction of the UP my vote goes to General John Casement, though. And, for the construction of Judah's CP route, it is James Strobridge, who was able to make Judah's route, up the ridges, and not the River Valley's, using extensive tunneling, over the Sierra's, work. And, by far Stobridge had the more difficult task.
Council Bluffs was the furthest west Lincoln ever went, to meet with the folks who wanted the "franchise" to build the route from Omaha west, across the River, on the "northern" route to CA.
The RR survey presented to Congress in 1855 showed that both of the "southern" routes, the "southern pacific" route, and the route paralleling the "national road" from the end of the Santa Fe trail, on to Needles, and Tehachipi, to San Francisco, were considered to be better routes.
No one in Congress could agree on a route, Southern States wanted the lowest snow free "southern pacific", border states wanted the Santa Fe trail route, the north preferred the Central alignment via the Oregon trail to Oregon.
After Judah figured out a way to do it (the CP was not part of the 1855 RR routes recommended, like parts of the Rockies, those who surveyed those routes felt it was impossible to cross the central or southern Sierra passes with a RR), a pro-Pacific Railroad candidate named Lincoln was elected President, the opposition in Congress to the "northern" route seceded, and the Civil War intervened, CA would now become the western terminus.
Lincoln purportedly told the folks in Council Bluffs that he would come back and take the train to California himself, when it was done... He didn't make it back...
Yes, when it comes to the financing, including the theft graft and corruption associated with the UP and the Credit Mobilier, Dodge and Durant probably did more and do deserve more "credit"... Remember, the Big Four had the good sense to let all of the CP's (likely equally questionable) construction contract records "burn" in a fire that mysteriously broke out, as the Credit Mobilier scandal was breaking in Congress.
In terms of construction of the UP my vote goes to General John Casement, though. And, for the construction of Judah's CP route, it is James Strobridge, who was able to make Judah's route, up the ridges, and not the River Valley's, using extensive tunneling, over the Sierra's, work. And, by far Stobridge had the more difficult task.
