Selections From The Splinters - Volume 14

THE SOUTHERN ROUTE TO THE PACIFIC

The South suffered much from the Civil War. Among the economic losses was that which came with the construction of the first transcontinental railway without reference to her interests; and one of the urgent demands of her statesmen during the dark days of reconstruction was a Pacific railway over the ãsouthern route.ä There can be little doubt that , but for the war, the first railway would have been on or near the thirty second parallel. In 1853 the Gadsden purchase was made largely to acquire that route, and by 1860, so a committee report of 1878 states, ãthis was the line which public opinion had settled as the one to be constructed.ä

No comprehensive history of the occupation of the southern route has been written, and it will be especially interesting to trace the development of the originally favored way, when peace and union brought the energies of the nation to bear upon it.

Perhaps it would be more minutely accurate to speak of the southern routes, for in the southern march to the Pacific there were two distinct lines taken. One of these was planned to extend along the thirty-fifth parallel; the other along the thirty second, the latter occupying in part the Gila river route as secured by the Gadsen purchase, the former following the Santa Fe trail and the valley of the Colorado. But both were focused on the passes of southern California, uniting in one line before reaching the coast; and as opposed to the ãnorthern route.ä Or the ãcentral routeä they formed the ãsouthern route.ä This is especially clear when the objective point, the Pacific, is considered, together with the barrier of the Rockies. When, however, one turns to the points of eastern connection, widely separated points like St. Louis and Memphis on the one hand and New Orleans on the other constitute the termini. The route is one; simply it is bifurcated, as is the central route at the west, with its Oregon Short Line.

In the exploitation of this southern route, three different railways came prominently before Congress and it will be necessary to perform the rather difficult task of keeping their courses distinct while at the same time weaving them together even as they were woven.

Portion of Page 3 Volume 14 Splinters transcribed in altered form for the web by Russell Crump

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