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| Eastbound grainer has left Ogallala, Nebraska, on its way to North Platte. |
Ogallala, Nebraska, hugs the north bank of the South Platte River in southwestern Nebraska, a few miles east of the state's panhandle. Union Pacific's Overland Route separates the town from the water. Interstate 80 runs east-west on the far side of the river, surrounded by the ubiquitous truck stops, motels and eateries that line America's major roads like football fans seeking autographs.
A few miles west of town, the river turns southwest, and European-American migrants traveling west from about 1840 to 1860 would ford the shallow water and deep sand and climb the bluffs at what came to be called "California Hill." As many as half a million emigrants passed through what later became Keith County, Nebraska, and this corridor from Fort Kearney, Nebraska, to Fort Laramie, Wyoming, was called the California Trail.
Travelers west embarked from several different locations along the Missouri River, and these various braids all came together in the valley of the Platte River.
Western Nebraska is dry and treeless, not particularly hospitable to travelers in wagons drawn by oxen and horses. The Platte River Valley, however, is green and tree-covered, providing water and fire wood and other necessities of life.
In the 21st century, we group the California Trail with the Oregon Trail and the Mormon Pioneer Trail. The California Trail was the youngest, because settlers did not seek the Golden State until the discovery of gold, when all hell broke loose.
All three routes followed the same rivers and valleys between the Platte River and southwestern Wyoming, where the Mormon Pioneer Trail turned southwest at South Pass, while the California and Oregon Trails continued northwest together for another 100 miles before diverging near present-day Soda Springs, Idaho.
The images in this article were all taken within about a 65 mile radius of California Hill -- roughly from the west side of North Platte to Potter (133 miles total) where the Union Pacific closely follows the route of the 19th century wagons.
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| https://www.yellowmaps.com/map/nebraska-reference-map-500.htm |
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| https://adamsprintablemap.net/printable-map-of-the-oregon-trail/ |
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| Auto racks in the valley of the South Platte River -- just west of Ogallala. |
Near Soda Springs, the California Trail turned southwest toward what is now the City of Rocks National Reserve, then crossed into Nevada Territory, following Goose Creek up the hill to its source and entering the Great Basin. Migrants then proceeded along Thousand Springs Creek down to the Humboldt River, then continued west to Humboldt Sink, where the shallow waters sank into the sand -- a classic example of a river that does not reach the sea. (Another example is the Mojave River that flows north out of the San Gabriel Mountains to disappear into the California desert.) Near today's town of Imlay, Nevada, the trail branched in multiple directions, all terminating at what the migrants hoped were magnificent veins of gold.
The first migrants to journey west and actually arrive in California were the Bidwell-Bartleson party in 1841 -- 69 people who followed the Platte River through Nebraska and on to Soda Springs, where some continued to Oregon and others turned southwest. Those headed for California almost discovered the Great Salt Lake. -- years before the Mormons arrived.
The Stephen-Townsend-Murphy party of 1844 tried to cross the Sierra Nevada in the cold months and was snared by a blizzard that dumped enough snow to cover some of the wagons in drifts. Amazingly and heroically, the migrants abandoned their wagons at Donner Lake, climbed to the summit, then hiked down the western grade without fatality. When the snow eventually melted, they climbed back up the mountain to retrieve their wagons and provisions, again without fatality.
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| In the valley of the South Platte River. |
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| This westbound freight has climbed out of the river valley and is following a shallow grade onto the High Plains of the Nebraska Panhandle. |
In the summer of 1846, emigrants late in the season -- snow can start in the Sierras in October -- decided to try the trail across the mountains that John Fremont had discovered and publicized the year before. Included in the group was the Donner-Reed party, made infamous by cannibalism when caught in a blizzard near the top of the mountains -- a location now called Donner Pass.
Some of the migrants cooked and ate the bodies of others already dead. In one case, two Miwok guides were murdered and eaten.
In mid-December, the most able-bodied headed west on foot to seek assistance, but the first relief party did not arrive until the middle of February 1847. Of the 87 members of the party, 48 survived.
A member of the relief party wrote:
A more revolting or appalling spectacle I never witnessed. The remains here, by order of Gen. Kearny collected and buried under the superintendence of Major Swords. They were interred in a pit which had been dug in the centre of one of the cabins for a cache. These melancholy duties to the dead being performed, the cabins, by order of Major Swords, were fired, and with every thing surrounded them connected with this horrid and melancholy tragedy, were consumed. The body of George Donner was found at his camp, about eight or ten miles distant, wrapped in a sheet. He was buried by a party of men detailed for that purpose.
George R. Stewart, Ordeal by Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party (1936; 2nd revised edition 1960; reprinted 1992) pp. 276–277.
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| Headed west on the High Plains along the Overland Route. |
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| Meeting on the High Plains. |
Many immigrants kept diaries while crossing the West, and these records, often understated, give at least some idea of the hardships endured. Peter Burnett made the journey to Oregon in 1843 and described the experience in some detail, including a discussion for his motivation in leaving Missouri:
I was also largely indebted to my old partners in the mercantile business. I had sold all my property, had lived in a plain style, had worked hard, and paid all I could spare each year; and still the amount of my indebtedness seemed to be reduced very little. . . . Putting all these considerations together, I determined, with the consent of my old partners, to move to Oregon. . . . I saw no reasonable probability of ever being able to pay my debts. . . .They [his partners] all most willingly gave their consent, and said to me, "Take what may be necessary for the trip, leave us what you can spare, and pay us the balance when you can do so. . . . I left my house in Weston on the 8th day of May, 1843, with two ox wagons, and one small two-horse wagon, four yoke of oxen, two mules, and a fair supply of provisions; and arrived at the rendezvous, some twelve miles west of Independence, and just beyond the line of the State, on the 17th of May. http://www.oregonpioneers.com/1843trip.htm
In 1847, Elizabeth Smith and her family crossed the Platte River Valley. She wrote in her diary:
June 27 Made fifteen miles. Killed four buffaloes. At the least calculation we saw three thousand buffaloes to-day. A buffalo rolls and gallops like a horse.
June 29 This morning eight of our largest and best work oxen were missing, besides two yoke of Welch's, three yoke of Adam Polk's, and about thirty-nine head belonging to the company – all work oxen, right out of our company. Here we are, thousands of miles from any inhabitants, and thus deprived of teams – an appalling situation. We had only one yoke left. We hunted in every direction without success.
July 1 To-day when our hunters came in they brought one dead man; he had shot himself accidentally. He left a wife and six small children. The distress of his wife I cannot describe. He was an excellent man and very much missed. His name was Smith Dunlap, from Chicago, Ill. The hunters found no cattle. http://www.theragens.com/fifty_years/fifty_years_in_oregon_18-19.htm
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| Eastbound stacks near Potter, Nebraska, at Point of Rocks. |
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| Eastbound approaching North Platte. |
On December 5, 1848, President James K. Polk told Congress in his State of the Union address that gold had been discovered in California, setting in motion a panic, stampede and madness that profoundly changed the nation in ways that no one could have possibly imagined. Polk's speech, coming three years after the United States acquired California through the Mexican-American War and Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, described the gold deposits as “remarkable,” supporting his desire for unlimited westward expansion. Polk stated:
Reluctant to credit the reports in general circulation as to the quantity of gold, the officer commanding our forces in California visited the mineral district in July last for the purpose of obtaining accurate information on the subject. His report to the War Department of the result of his examination and the facts obtained on the spot is herewith laid before Congress. When he visited the country there were about 4,000 persons engaged in collecting gold. There is every reason to believe that the number of persons so employed has since been augmented. The explorations already made warrant the belief that the supply is very large and that gold is found at various places in an extensive district of country. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/fourth-annual-message-6
For Native Americans, the discovery of gold in California was a cataclysm. Earthquakes, tidal waves and famine would not have been worse. Within a few months of Polk's speech, the catastrophic and communicable disease "gold fever" had infected thousands of Easterners who embarked to California with measles, small pox, mumps, diphtheria, tuberculosis, cholera, guns, knives, cannons, arrogance, greed and complete lack of understanding of the American West and the skills necessary for survival in it.
Initial wagon trains to California in 1849 were comprised almost exclusively of men. By about 1852, substantial numbers of women and children were headed to the Golden State, and by 1857, some wagon trains included only women and children.
Early on, Native Americans were helpful, often providing food and shelter to immigrants lost along the trail. In a year or two, the Natives began avoiding the wagon routes because of immigrant-upon-immigrant violence. White criminals, sometimes disguised as natives, attacked wagon trains, stole food and valuables, raped women and kidnapped children for ransom or sale into slavery. By the late 1850's, immigrants and natives were killing each other on sight.
When the first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, travel on the California Trail faded rapidly, though wagon traffic to Oregon and Southern California continued steady, pending expansion of the Western rail network. But that first transcontinental line, which seems almost an historical footnote in the 21st century, was no mean accomplishment.
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| The Katy heritage unit leads an eastbound manifest across Nebraska's High Plains where wagons once rolled. |
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| Westbound stacks at sunset. |
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| Westbound manifest in the valley of the South Platte. |
Prior to the War Between the States, Congress had authorized five surveys of potential routes west of the Mississippi River for construction of the first transcontinental railroad. Two routes originated in Arkansas and Texas, while the other three crossed what became Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota. Secession removed the two southern routes from Congressional consideration, but the debate over the remaining alternatives was fierce.
The Pacific Railroad Act of 1862, a wartime compromise, attempted to resolve the dispute by stipulating that a single line would be constructed from California east to Fort Kearny, Nebraska, about 180 miles from Omaha via the Platte River. (It was generally agreed that the Platte River provided the best route west of the Mississippi.) At Fort Kearny, the single Pacific line would split into four separate branches running to the biggest of the small population centers along the Mississippi, allowing all major claimants an eastern terminus on the new railroad. The act also formed the Union Pacific Company, responsible for the “Iowa Branch” through Omaha and Council Bluffs, while state-chartered railroad companies would be responsible for the other three lines.
Congress granted the Union Pacific a 200-foot right-of-way, plus, for 10 miles along the track, additional lands 10 miles wide on each side -- a rectangle 10 miles by 20. Every section 20 miles wide and ten miles long would be followed by ten miles along the track owned by the government. Thus, in every 200 miles of track, the UP would own 10 sections 20 miles wide bisected by an equal ten sections owned by the government. Of course, the land had originally be the province of various Native American tribes shunted off to what became Oklahoma.
The Union Pacific Company was incorporated October 1863, but the ongoing hostilities and the railroad's inability to sell bonds scared away most capital. The government was financing the war by selling bonds at favorable rates, and investors generally preferred a potential return from Uncle Sam to the purchase of stock in a railroad company with no assets and a requirement to construct tracks to four different locations along the Mississippi River.
The company lobbied Congress and President Lincoln for a new railroad act more attractive to subscribers, and on November 17, 1863, Lincoln signed an executive order placing the new railroad's terminus at a single point on the Iowa-Nebraska border near Council Bluffs, effectively overruling Congress's stipulation of four termini. (Your author is unaware that anyone objected to this unconstitutional usurpation by the Executive.) The railroad then chose a bluff slightly south of the small Omaha plateau to connect with Council Bluffs by a high fill on the Iowa side.
On July 3, 1864, President Lincoln signed the second Pacific Railroad Act, doubling the size of the land grants, giving the Union Pacific mineral rights and allowing the railroad to sell its own bonds. Thereafter, Thomas Durant (Union Pacific Vice-President) formed Credit Mobilier of America to allow secretive transfers of construction funds to himself and UP Directors.
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| Westbound manifest in the flat valley of the South Platte. |
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| Westbound manifest just west of Julesburg, Colorado, where UP's line to the Pacific leaves the valley of the South Platte River. In Julesburg, the railroad's line to Denver splits and follows the South Platte southwest to the foot on the Rocky Mountains, while the line to the Pacific follows Lodgepole Creek northwest. |
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| Union Pacific 7267 (AC44CW) pulls a heavy manifest single-handedly through the river valley. |
Railroad promoters of the 19th century quickly discovered that more money could be made in the construction of railroads than in the operation. A new line might never make a penny, might go in and out of bankruptcy repeatedly, but construction costs would be paid in full if the promoters could sell enough bonds. In the 19th century, sale of construction bonds was almost as easy as falling out of bed, particularly to Germans and Englishmen. If the government was subsidizing construction, as in the case of the Union Pacific, then the government sold the bonds. After passage of the second Pacific Railroad Act, sale of government railroad bonds flourished. (For a detailed discussion of how a related scam worked for the Northern Pacific, see https://www.waltersrail.com/2023/04/powder-river-basin-part-two-union.html.)
Credit Mobilier of America, based on the influential French bank of the same name but not connected, ran a fraudulent scheme from 1864-1867 in which executives of Union Pacific swindled the U.S. government out of about $44 million, overcharging for railroad construction costs. The government raised the money, UP executives inflated costs, and the government paid.
How did the government allow itself to be cheated? UP executives, led by Thomas Durant, were Crédit Mobilier investors and worked with U.S. Representative Oakes Ames, a Republican from Massachusetts, to sell bargain shares to, and also to bribe, several congressmen, including then Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax, who was elected vice president with Ulysses S. Grant in 1868. In return for pay-offs and stock options, federal officials offered no oversight of the company and approved subsidies significantly greater than actual construction costs.
Acting on a tip from a disgruntled investor who had been denied stock by Ames, the New York Sun published an expose September 4,1872, naming the congressmen involved, claiming that the government had granted Credit Mobilier $72 million in construction contracts when only $53 million was spent.
Fraud in railroad construction was not limited to the Union Pacific, as federal officials well knew. Trying and convicting members of Congress for the Credit Mobilier scandal would inevitably lead to further trials, further convictions, and the entire house of cards would have collapsed. Consequently, as is usually the case with government corruption, nothing significant was done. Ames was publicly censured for using political influence for personal financial gain, but kept all the money and his seat in Congress. All the others, including Representative James A. Garfield, elected president in 1880, were absolved.
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| Eastbound. The bluffs surrounding the river valley can be seen beyond the lead unit. California Hill was one such bluff. |
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| Another eastbound. |
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| A mid-train unit on one of Union Pacific's 10,000 feet stack trains. |
Construction on the Union Pacific commenced at Omaha in December 1863. By the end of 1864 a scant 20 miles had been graded, and no track had been laid. The slow pace was caused by the hilly terrain west of Omaha and Papillion Creek. Originally, the railroad determined to journey more or less due west from town through the hills, requiring a major construction effort for 19th century technology. After much internal dispute, the railroad decided to build south from Omaha on a huge oxbow to bypass the hills, as shown below in red on the USGS Map of 1898. The Burlington and Missouri Pacific both wound through the hills on difficult grades. Union Pacific's “Lane Cutoff,” completed in 1908 across the Papillion Valley, softened the grades with construction equipment not available in 1864.
The first rails west from Omaha were laid on July 10, 1865, immediately after the end of the war, giving some idea of how little the Union was inconvenienced by the conflict. The South, by contrast, did not begin to recover for many years. 
The 1864 legislation required that the first 100 miles of track be completed by June 27, 1866, but because of shortages of ties, workers and cash (since significant funds were diverted to the Credit Mobilier conspirators), only about 100 miles of right-of-way were graded by November 18, 1865, with only 28 miles of track laid. To speed the process, Union Pacific began installing untreated cottonwood ties, believing that the new line would be connected with an established railroad building west through Iowa in three to four years, when through traffic would begin rolling and the untreated wood could be replaced. By January 1866, when winter stopped construction, another 40 miles of track were in place.
Things speeded up with the spring thaw, as more construction funds and workers became available, and as work reached the board-level Platte River Valley, which appeared to have been created by God with a railroad in mind. By June 4, 1866, the 100-mile mark was reached slightly west of Duncan, Nebraska, and by the legislative June 27 deadline, another 153 miles had been completed to Grand Island. The 1866 construction season closed in late December with the railroad's reaching the junction of the North and South Platte Rivers at present day North Platte, Nebraska (305 railroad miles from Omaha).
Construction through the river valley operated in the constant shadow of raids conducted by the Native Americans displaced by the railroad. Grenville M. Dodge, UP's Chief Engineer, described the hostilities:
Our Indian troubles commenced in 1864 and lasted until the tracks joined at Promontory. We lost most of our men and stock while building from Fort Kearney to Bitter Creek. At that time every mile of road had to be surveyed, graded, tied, and bridged under military protection. . . . I remember one occasion when they swooped down on a grading outfit in sight of the temporary fort of the military some 5 miles away, and right in sight of the end of the track. The government commission to examine that section of the completed road had just arrived, and the commissioners witnessed the fight. The graders had their arms stacked on the cut. The Indians leaped from the ravines, and, springing upon the workmen before they could reach their arms, cut loose the stock and caused a panic. . . . We did not fail to benefit from this experience, for, on returning to the East the commission dwelt earnestly on the necessity of our being protected. https://archive.org/details/howwebuiltunionp0000dodg_w0m7/page/n19/mode/2up
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| Westbound. |
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| Mid-trains at dusk. |
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| On the High Plains in the valley of Lodgepole Creek. |
Dodge was a man of many talents. During the Civil War, he served as Ulysses S. Grant's intelligence chief in the Western Theater. After the war, he commanded troops against Native Americans and directed the construction of the Union Pacific, performing both as railroad construction proceeded west. While returning east after confronting Native Americans, he fortuitously discovered the answer to one of the UP's most vexing problems.
West of North Platte, the railroad faced a reckoning. The wagon routes through the river valley branched at California Hill. One route continued southwest, following the South Platte River to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, which in 1866, were considered impenetrable by rail west of Denver. The other continued northwest into Wyoming to South Pass, a mild crossing of the mountains, little more than moderate hills at that location, but considerably north of the optimum path to California.
As he was returning east, Dodge and a small group explored various routes crossing the mountains.
About noon, in the valley of a tributary of Crow Creek, we discovered Indians, who, at the same time, discovered us. . . . We dismounted and started down the ridge, holding the Indians at bay, when they came too near, with our Winchesters. It was nearly night when the troops saw our smoke signals of danger and came to our relief; and in going to the train we followed this ridge out until I discovered it led down to the plains without a break. I then said to my guide that if we saved our scalps I believed we had found the crossing . . . and over this ridge, between Lone Tree and Crow Creeks, the wonderful line over the mountains was built. https://archive.org/details/howwebuiltunionp0000dodg_w0m7/page/16/mode/2up
Dodge had discovered what geologist call the "Gangplank," where the High Plains west of Cheyenne rise upward like a flat ramp, almost as perfect for railroad construction as the Platte River Valley. Dodge named the formation "Sherman Hill," after his commanding officer William Tecumseh Sherman. The grade topped out at approximately 8,200 feet and was subject to harsh winter weather, including heavy snows and wind-driven drifts sometimes taller than a locomotive. However, the route was far superior to any attempt to cross the mountains at Denver.
To reach the Gangplank, the Union Pacific did not climb California Hill. The wagons climbed the hill because the trail was on the south side of the river, and they needed to turn northwest. That location on the South Platte was easiest to ford.
The railroad was on the north side of the river and did not need to cross. Instead, it followed the South Platte River to present-day Julesburg, Colorado, then turned northwest, following Lodgepole Creek into the Nebraska Panhandle where it rejoined the California and Oregon trails, still following the creek all the way to the Wyoming border, where the creek turned north around Cheyenne. The railroad continued west down Archer Hill into town and soon reached the Gangplank.
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| Westbound approaching Julesburg, Colorado. |
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| Westbound in the South Platte River Valley. |
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| Eastbound stacks following Lodgepole Creek to Julesburg. |
The winter of 1866-67 was among the worst of the 19th century, an era known for fierce weather. The summer of 1886 was historically dry, with numerous prairie fires. Lakes and farm ponds vanished. Birds began flying south earlier than usual; cattle grew thicker coats. In Nebraska, snow began falling in November, and with it came unimagined cold killing man and beast. On February 5, 1887, 3.7 inches of snow fell in downtown San Francisco, the heaviest ever recorded in a city that doesn't freeze.
When it finally warmed, melting ice on rivers and creeks washed out sections of recently laid track. East of Grand Island, melt water destroyed a half-mile on a steep embankment, requiring a rebuild of the entire section. Numerous other catastrophes slowed construction to a crawl.
As progress faltered, North Platte became the holding pen for supplies, railroad workers, gamblers, wagon travelers and saloons -- literally hundreds of saloons. Locals began calling the place "Hell on Wheels," a designation that workers applied to the wagons (not associated with the railroad) that followed every end-of-track settlement as construction moved west.
Unloading tents from wagons each night, the human parasites following construction set up saloons, gambling dens and bordellos, and the workers, mostly Irish immigrants, many of whom had fought in the recent war, were preyed upon without mercy. As a construction camp moved down the line a few miles each day, every man faced a daily struggle to stay alive. Unlike the Chinese on the Central Pacific, workers on the Union Pacific did not organize. Every man had to look out for himself.
There were no laws and no law enforcement. Every payday, each man had to protect his own money, and he had nowhere to protect his earnings other than his pockets. There were no banks. Most men thus either slept in their pants or placed their money in a bag used as a pillow.
Even so, robbery was as constant as body odor among the workers -- who almost never bathed. A diary kept by one, Arthur Ferguson, noted:
Quite a number of bullets whistled over my head. This evening, or afternoon, rather, a man was shot through the head and robbed of quite a sum of money." [John J. Williams, A Great and Shining Road: The Epic Story of the Transcontinental Railroad, New York: Time Books, 1988, p. 233.]
The traveling tents perfected a simple strategy: get a man drunk, then steal his money. Whiskey sold for fifty to seventy-five cents a shot, ten times the price in Omaha and about twenty-five percent of a man's daily pay. Yet business boomed.
It could almost be said that the Union Pacific was built on whiskey and whiskey watered the weed-choked gardens of prostitution, gambling, and general mayhem and depravity. [Williams, p. 126.]
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| An eastbound manifest leaving Julesburg. |
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| Westbound stacks. |
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| Westbound in the river valley. |
By June 24, 1867, crews had laid 374 miles of track along the north bank of the South Platte and crossed into Colorado Territory, ending at Julesburg and the confluence of Lodgepole Creek. Named for Jules Beni, Julesburg was originally a station on the Pony Express route from Missouri to California. Beni was the station manager and suspected of masterminding the many stagecoach robberies occurring on his watch.
The stagecoach company eventually replaced Beni with one Jack Slade. Beni ambushed Slade with a shotgun, leaving Slade for dead in the dusty main street of the small settlement. Slade miraculously recovered. Beni was arrested for the assault but released when he promised the judge to leave town and never return -- the essence of frontier justice.
But Beni did return. Slade captured him, tied him to a fence post, shot him through the head and cut off his ears. More frontier justice.
On January 7, 1865, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota warriors attacked Julesburg, defeating about 60 soldiers and 50 armed civilians. In the following weeks the Natives raided up and down the South Platte River. On February 2 they returned to Julesburg and burned down all the buildings.
When the railroad reached Julesburg about 2.5 years later, the population swelled from 40 to about 4,000, and Hell on Wheels followed. Construction proceeded northwest along Lodgepole Creek back into the Nebraska panhandle (Colorado trackage totaled about 9 miles) and continued to the next Hell on Wheels at Sidney, Nebraska, then 57 more miles to the Wyoming border and on to Cheyenne and then across Sherman Hill.
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| Eastbound at dusk. |
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| This westbound has just left Julesburg and is back in Nebraska. |
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| This westbound is approaching Julesburg from the east. |
After the Transcontinental Railroad was completed on May 10, 1869, the Union Pacific began the twin difficult tasks of running trains and making money. Portions of the line already needed repairs, especially in Nebraska, where the oldest untreated cottonwood ties required replacement.
Passenger service began immediately, yet traffic from east of the Missouri River was minuscule because the Union Pacific had not yet constructed a bridge. Passengers and freight crossed the river by ferry, almost as slow as swimming across.
Work began on UP’s Missouri River bridge in 1868. The structure rested on 11 paired iron piers sunk into the sand to bedrock. A high wood trestle and earthen fill raised the Iowa approach to the level of the bluffs on the Nebraska side.
Construction halted in 1870 when funds ran out. In 1871, Congress passed legislation allowing the railroad to complete the bridge with funds derived from the sale of government bonds, and the bridge opened in 1872.
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| Union Pacific's first bridge across the Missouri River. https://johnmarvigbridges.org/Omaha%20Rail%20Bridge.html |
Once the bridge opened, traffic increased exponentially. To keep pace, a new, double-track bridge opened in the fall of 1887 -- 1,750 feet long, with four trusses on stone masonry piers and three deck spans at each end. This new bridge allowed traffic to increase even further. By the early 20th century, six different railroads used the structure, with about 300 trains crossing every 24 hours. The origiinal bridge was destroyed.
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| Second bridge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Up-omaha.jpg |
The second bridge also quickly became obsolete, and a third bridge was opened in the early 20th century and is still in use today. The second bridge was also destroyed.
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| Third bridge. https://www.cardcow.com/32141/union-pacific-bridge-over-missouri-river-omaha-nebraska/ |
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| Westbound grain passing Big Springs, Nebraska. |
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| This train is turning northwest in the valley of Lodgepole Creek. |
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| Mid-train on a two-mile long manifest. |
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| Westbound containers at dusk. |
Today (November 2025) the Union Pacific, from the completion of the first Missouri River bridge, is 153 years old. The first wagons reached California 184 years ago. To Americans, at least some of us, this seems a long time, but consider:
Ramesses the Great was the third pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt and lived from approximately 1303 BC – 1213 BC, about 3,300 years ago. The Younger Memnon is one of two colossal granite statues of the pharaoh from his mortuary temple in Thebes. Over the thousands of year, the upper torso and head were separated from the legs and feet. The head itself is over eight feet tall and currently resides in the British Museum. The original statute was one of a pair that flanked the mortuary's doorway. The head of the other statue is still found at the temple.
In the Christmas season 1817-18, Percy Shelley and and his friend Horace Smith challenged each other to compose a sonnet based upon a passage from the writings of the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus in Bibliotheca historica, which described a massive Egyptian statue and quoted its inscription: "King of Kings Ozymandias am I. If any want to know how great I am and where I lie, let him outdo me in my work."
Ozymandias was the Greek name for the pharaoh.
Smith's effort is generally unknown today except to a small group of scholars who work in windowless basements, struggling in vain to maintain the memory of 19th century English poetry. Shelley's poem has gained more notoriety over the years, though it, too, is likely unknown to all but a handful.
If any want to know how great was the work of the Union Pacific, let him read Shelley:
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
To see my other posts, go to waltersrail.com.
To see my photographs on Flickr, go to https://www.flickr.com/photos/jpwalters/.gg
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