In a national way, the South struggling against the North prevented the early location of a Pacific railway. Locally, every village on the Mississippi from the Lakes to the Gulf hoped to become the terminus and had advocates throughout its section of the country. The list of claimants is a catalogue of Mississippi Valley towns. New Orleans, Vicksburg, Memphis, Cairo, St. Louis, Chicago, and Duluth were all entered in the competition. By 1860 the idea had received general acceptance; no one in the future need urge its adoption, but the greatest part of the work remained to be done.

Born during the thirties, the idea of a Pacific railway was of uncertain origin and parentage. Just so soon as there was a railroad anywhere, it was inevitable that some enterprising visionary should project one in imagination to the extremity of the continent. The railway speculation, with which the East was seething during the administrations of Andrew Jackson, was boiling over in the young West, so that the group of men advocating a railway to connect the oceans were but the product of their time. Greatest among these enthusiasts was Asa Whitney, a New York merchant interested in the China trade and eager to win the commerce of the Orient for the United States. Others had declared such a road to be possible before he presented his memorial to Congress in 1845, but none had staked so much upon the idea. He abandoned the business, conducted a private survey in Wisconsin and Iowa, and was at last convinced that "the time is not far distant when Oregon will become ... a separate nation" unless communication should "unite them to us." He petitioned Congress in January, 1845, for a franchise and a grant of land, that the national road might be accomplished; and for many years he agitated persistently for his project.

The annexation of Oregon and the Southwest, coming in the years immediately after the commencement of Whitney's advocacy, gave new point to arguments for the railway and introduced the sectional element. So long as Oregon constituted the whole American frontage on the Pacific it was idle to debate railway routes south of South Pass. This was the only known, practicable route, and it was the course recommended by all the projectors, down to Whitney. But with California won, the other trails by El Paso and Santa FÉ came into consideration and at once tempted the South to make the railway tributary to its own interests.

Chief among the politicians who fell in with the growing railway movement was Senator Benton, who tried to place himself at its head. "The man is alive, full grown, and is listening to what I say (without believing it perhaps)," he declared in October, 1844, "who will yet see the Asiatic commerce traversing the North Pacific Ocean—entering the Oregon River—climbing the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains—issuing from its gorges—and spreading its fertilizing streams over our wide-extended Union!" After this date there was no subject closer to his interest than the railway, and his advocacy was constant. His last word in the Senate was concerning it. In 1849 he carried off its feet the St. Louis railroad convention with his eloquent appeal for a central route: "Let us make the iron road, and make it from sea to sea—States and individuals making it east of the Mississippi, the nation making it west. Let us ... rise above everything sectional, personal, local. Let us ... build the great road ... which shall be adorned with ... the colossal statue of the great Columbus—whose design it accomplishes, hewn from a granite mass of a peak of the Rocky Mountains, overlooking the road ... pointing with outstretched arm to the western horizon and saying to the flying passengers, 'There is the East, there is India.'"

By 1850 it was common knowledge that a railroad could be built along the Platte route, and it was believed that the mountains could be penetrated in several other places, but the process of surveying with reference to a particular railway had not yet been begun. It is possible and perhaps instructive to make a rough grouping, in two classes divided by the year 1842, of the explorations before 1853. So late as FrÉmont's day it was not generally known whether a great river entered the Pacific between the Columbia and the Colorado. Prior to 1842 the explorations are to be regarded as "incidents" and "adventures" in more or less unknown countries. The narratives were popular rather than scientific, representing the experiences of parties surveying boundary lines or locating wagon roads, of troops marching to remote posts or chastising Indians, of missionaries and casual explorers. In the aggregate they had contributed a large mass of detailed but unorganized information concerning the country where the continental railway must run. But Lieutenant FrÉmont, in 1842, commenced the effort by the United States to acquire accurate and comprehensive knowledge of the West. In 1842, 1843, and 1845 FrÉmont conducted the three Rocky Mountain expeditions which established him for life as a popular hero. The map, drawn by Charles Preuss for his second expedition, confined itself in strict scientific fashion to the facts actually observed, and in skill of execution was perhaps the best map made before 1853. The individual expeditions which in the later forties filled in the details of portions of the FrÉmont map are too numerous for mention. At least twenty-five occurred before 1853, all serving to extend both general and particular knowledge of the West. To these was added a great mass of popular books, prepared by emigrants and travellers. By 1853 there was good, unscientific knowledge of nearly all the West, and accurate information concerning some portions of it. The railroad enthusiasts could tell the general direction in which the roads must run, but no road could well be located without a more comprehensive survey than had yet been made.

The agitation of the Pacific railway idea was founded almost exclusively upon general and inaccurate knowledge of the West. The exact location of the line was naturally left for the professional civil engineer, its popular advocate contented himself with general principles. Frequently these were sufficient, yet, as in the case of Benton, misinformation led to the waste of strength upon routes unquestionably bad. But there was slight danger of the United States being led into an unwise route, since in the diversity of routes suggested there was deadlock. Until after 1850, in proportion as the idea was received with unanimity, the routes were fought with increasing bitterness. Whitney was shelved in 1852 when the choice of routes had become more important than the method of construction.

In 1852–1853 Congress worked upon one of the many bills to construct the much-desired railway to the Pacific. It was discovered that an absolute majority in favor of the work existed, but the enemies of the measure, virulent in proportion as they were in the minority, were able to sow well-fertilized dissent. They admitted and gloried in the intrigue which enabled them to command through the time-honored method of division. They defeated the road in this Congress. But when the army appropriation bill came along in February, 1853, Senator Gwin asked for an amendment for a survey. He doubted the wisdom of a survey, since, "if any route is reported to this body as the best, those that may be rejected will always go against the one selected." But he admitted himself to be as a drowning man who "will catch at straws," and begged that $150,000 be allowed to the President for a survey of the best routes from the Mississippi to the Pacific, the survey to be conducted by the Corps of Topographical Engineers of the regular army. To a non-committal measure like this the opposition could make slight resistance. The Senate, by a vote of 31 to 16, added this amendment to the army appropriation bill, while the House concurred in nearly the same proportion. The first positive official act towards the construction of the road was here taken.

Under the orders of Jefferson Davis, Secretary of War, well-organized exploring parties took to the field in the spring of 1853. Farthest north, Isaac I. Stevens, bound for his post as first governor of Washington territory, conducted a line of survey to the Pacific between the parallels of 47° and 49°, north latitude. South of the Stevens survey, four other lines were worked out. Near the parallels of 41° and 42°, the old South Pass route was again examined. FrÉmont's favorite line, between 38° and 39°, received consideration. A thirty-fifth parallel route was examined in great detail, while on this and another along the thirty-second parallel the most friendly attentions of the War Department were lavished. The second and third routes had few important friends. Governor Stevens, because he was a first-rate fighter, secured full space for the survey in his charge. But the thirty-second and thirty-fifth parallel routes were those which were expected to make good.

Governor Stevens left Washington on May 9, 1853, for St. Louis, where he made arrangements with the American Fur Company to transport a large part of his supplies by river to Fort Union. From St. Louis he ascended the Mississippi by steamer to St. Paul, near which city Camp Pierce, his first organized camp, had been established. Here he issued his instructions and worked into shape his party,—to say nothing of his 172 half-broken mules. "Not a single full team of broken animals could be selected, and well broken riding animals were essential, for most of the gentlemen of the scientific corps were unaccustomed to riding." One of the engineers dislocated a shoulder before he conquered his steed.

The party assigned to Governor Stevens's command was recruited with reference to the varied demands of a general exploring and scientific reconnaissance. Besides enlisted men and laborers, it included engineers, a topographer, an artist, a surgeon and naturalist, an astronomer, a meteorologist, and a geologist. Its two large volumes of report include elaborate illustrations and appendices on botany and seven different varieties of zoÖlogy in addition to the geographical details required for the railway.

The expedition, in its various branches, attacked the northernmost route simultaneously in several places. Governor Stevens led the eastern division from St. Paul. A small body of his men, with much of the supplies, were sent up the Missouri in the American Fur Company's boat to Fort Union, there to make local observations and await the arrival of the governor. United there the party continued overland to Fort Benton and the mountains. Six years later than this it would have been possible to ascend by boat all the way to Fort Benton, but as yet no steamer had gone much above Fort Union. From the Pacific end the second main division operated. Governor Stevens secured the recall of Captain George B. McClellan from duty in Texas, and his detail in command of a corps which was to proceed to the mouth of the Columbia River and start an eastward survey. In advance of McClellan, Lieutenant Saxton was to hurry on to erect a supply depot in the Bitter Root Valley, and then to cross the divide and make a junction with the main party.

From Governor Stevens's reports it would seem that his survey was a triumphal progress. To his threefold capacities as commander, governor, and Indian superintendent, nature had added a magnifying eye and an unrestrained enthusiasm. No formal expedition had traversed his route since the day of Lewis and Clark. The Indians could still be impressed by the physical appearance of the whites. His vanity led him at each success or escape from accident to congratulate himself on the antecedent wisdom which had warded off the danger. But withal, his report was thorough and his party was loyal. The voyageurs whom he had engaged received his special praise. "They are thorough woodsmen and just the men for prairie life also, going into the water as pleasantly as a spaniel, and remaining there as long as needed."

Across the undulating fertile plains the party advanced from St. Paul with little difficulty. Its draught animals steadily improved in health and strength. The Indians were friendly and honest. "My father," said Old Crane of the Assiniboin, "our hearts are good; we are poor and have not much.... Our good father has told us about this road. I do not see how it will benefit us, and I fear my people will be driven from these plains before the white men." In fifty-five days Fort Union was reached. Here the American Fur Company maintained an extensive post in a stockade 250 feet square, and carried on a large trade with "the Assiniboines, the Gros Ventres, the Crows, and other migratory bands of Indians." At Fort Union, Alexander Culbertson, the agent, became the guide of the party, which proceeded west on August 10. From Fort Union it was nearly 400 miles to Fort Benton, which then stood on the left bank of the Missouri, some eighteen miles below the falls. The country, though less friendly than that east of the Missouri, offered little difficulty to the party, which covered the distance in three weeks. A week later, September 8, a party sent on from Fort Benton met Lieutenant Saxton coming east.

The chief problems of the Stevens survey lay west of Fort Benton, in the passes of the continental divide. Lieutenant Saxton had left Vancouver early in July, crossed the Cascades with difficulty, and started up the Columbia from the Dalles on July 18. He reached Fort Walla Walla on the 27th, and proceeded thence with a half-breed guide through the country of the Spokan and the Coeur d'Alene. Crossing the Snake, he broke his only mercurial barometer and was forced thereafter to rely on his aneroid. Deviating to the north, he crossed Lake Pend d'Oreille on August 10, and reached St. Mary's village, in the Bitter Root Valley, on August 28. St. Mary's village, among the Flatheads, had been established by the Jesuit fathers, and had advanced considerably, as Indian civilization went. Here Saxton erected his supply depot, from which he advanced with a smaller escort to join the main party. Always, even in the heart of the mountains, the country exceeded his expectations. "Nature seemed to have intended it for the great highway across the continent, and it appeared to offer but little obstruction to the passage of a railroad."

Acting on Saxton's advice, Governor Stevens reduced his party at Fort Benton, stored much of his government property there, and started west with a pack train, for the sake of greater speed. He moved on September 22, anxious lest snow should catch him in the mountains. At Fort Benton he left a detachment to make meteorological observations during the winter. Among the Flatheads he left another under Lieutenant Mullan. On October 7 he hurried on again from the Bitter Root Valley for Walla Walla. On the 19th he met McClellan's party, which had been spending a difficult season in the passes of the Cascade range. Because of overcautious advice which McClellan here gave him, and since his animals were tired out with the summer's hardships, he practically ended his survey for 1853 at this point. He pushed on down the Columbia to Olympia and his new territory.

The energy of Governor Stevens enabled him to make one of the first of the Pacific railway reports. His was the only survey from the Mississippi to the ocean under a single commander. Dated June 30, 1854, it occupies 651 pages of Volume I of the compiled reports. In 1859 he submitted his "narrative and final report" which the Senate ordered Secretary of War, John B. Floyd, to communicate to it in February of that year. This document is printed as supplement to Volume I, but really consists of two large volumes which are commonly bound together as Volume XII of the series. Like the other volumes of the reports, his are filled with lithographs and engravings of fauna, flora, and topography.

The forty-second parallel route was surveyed by Lieutenant E.G. Beckwith, of the third artillery, in the summer of 1854. East of Fort Bridger, the War Department felt it unnecessary to make a special survey, since FrÉmont had traversed and described the country several times and Stansbury had surveyed it carefully as recently as 1849–1850. At the beginning of his campaign Beckwith was at Salt Lake. During April he visited the Green River Valley and Fort Bridger, proving by his surveys the entire practicability of railway construction here. In May he skirted the south end of Great Salt Lake and passed along the Humboldt to the Sacramento Valley. He had no important adventures and was impressed most by the squalor of the digger Indians, whose grass-covered, beehive-shaped "wick-ey-ups" were frequently seen. As his band approached the Indians would fearfully cache their belongings in the undergrowth. In the morning "it was indeed a novel and ludicrous sight of wretchedness to see them approach their bush and attempt, slyly (for they still tried to conceal from me what they were about), to repossess themselves of their treasures, one bringing out a piece of old buckskin, a couple of feet square, smoked, greasy, and torn; another a half dozen rabbit-skins in an equally filthy condition, sewed together, which he would swing over his shoulders by a string—his only blanket or clothing; while a third brought out a blue string, which he girded about him and walked away in full dress—one of the lords of the soil." It needed no special emphasis in Beckwith's report to prove that a railway could follow this middle route, since thousands of emigrants had a personal knowledge of its conditions.

Beckwith, who started his forty-second parallel survey from Salt Lake City, had reached that point as one of the officers in Gunnison's unfortunate party. Captain J.W. Gunnison had followed Governor Stevens into St. Louis in 1853. His field of exploration, the route of 38°-39°, was by no means new to him since he had been to Utah with Stansbury in 1849 and 1850, and had already written one of the best books upon the Mormon settlement. He carried his party up the Missouri to a fitting-out camp just below the mouth of the Kansas River, five miles from Westport. Like other commanders he spent much time at the start in "breaking in wild mules," with which he advanced in rain and mud on June 23. For more than two weeks his party moved in parallel columns along the Santa FÉ road and the Smoky Hill fork of the Kansas. Near Walnut creek on the Santa FÉ road they united, and soon were following the Arkansas River towards the mountains. At Fort Atkinson they found a horde of the plains Indians waiting for Major Fitzpatrick to make a treaty with them. Always their observations were taken with regularity. One day Captain Gunnison spent in vain efforts to secure specimens of the elusive prairie dog. On August 1, when they were ready to leave the Arkansas and plunge southwest into the Sangre de Cristo range, they were gratified "by a clear and beautiful view of the Spanish Peaks."

This thirty-ninth parallel route, which had been a favorite with FrÉmont, crossed the divide near the head of the Rio Grande. Its grades, which were difficult and steep at best, followed the Huerfano Valley and Cochetopa Pass. Across the pass, Gunnison began his descent of the arid alkali valley of the Uncompahgre,—a valley to-day about to blossom as the rose because of the irrigation canal and tunnel bringing to it the waters of the neighboring Gunnison River. With heavy labor, intense heat, and weakening teams, Gunnison struggled on through September and October towards Salt Lake in Utah territory. Near Sevier Lake he lost his life. Before daybreak, on October 26, he and a small detachment of men were surprised by a band of young Paiute. When the rest of his party hurried up to the rescue, they found his body "pierced with fifteen arrows," and seven of his men lying dead around him. Beckwith, who succeeded to the command, led the remainder of the party to Salt Lake City, where public opinion was ready to charge the Mormons with the murder. Beckwith believed this to be entirely false, and made use of the friendly assistance of Brigham Young, who persuaded the chiefs of the tribe to return the instruments and records which had been stolen from the party.

The route surveyed by Captain Gunnison passed around the northern end of the ravine of the Colorado River, which almost completely separates the Southwest from the United States. Farther south, within the United States, were only two available points at which railways could cross the caÑon, at Fort Yuma and near the Mojave River. Towards these crossings the thirty-fifth and thirty-second parallel surveys were directed.

Second only to Governor Stevens's in its extent was the exploration conducted by Lieutenant A.W. Whipple from Fort Smith on the Arkansas to Los Angeles along the thirty-fifth parallel. Like that of Governor Stevens this route was not the channel of any regular traffic, although later it was to have some share in the organized overland commerce. Here also was found a line that contained only two or three serious obstacles to be overcome. Whipple's instructions planned for him to begin his observations at the Mississippi, but he believed that the navigable Arkansas River and the railways already projected in that state made it needless to commence farther east than Fort Smith, on the edge of the Indian Country. He began his survey on July 14, 1853. His westward march was for two months up the right bank of the Canadian River, as it traversed the Choctaw and Chickasaw reserves, to the hundredth meridian, where it emerged from the panhandle of Texas, and across the panhandle into New Mexico. After crossing the upper waters of the Rio Pecos he reached the Rio Grande at Albuquerque, where his party tarried for a month or more, working over their observations, making local explorations, and sending back to Washington an account of their proceedings thus far. Towards the middle of November they started on toward the Colorado Chiquita and the Bill Williams Fork, through "a region over which no white man is supposed to have passed." The severest difficulties of the trip were found near the valley of the Colorado River, which was entered at the junction of the Bill Williams Fork and followed north for several days. A crossing here was made near the supposed mouth of the Mojave River at a place where porphyritic and trap dykes, outcropping, gave rise to the name of the Needles. The river was crossed February 27, 1854, three weeks before the party reached Los Angeles.

South of the route of Lieutenant Whipple, the thirty-second parallel survey was run to the Fort Yuma crossing of the Colorado River. No attempt was made in this case at a comprehensive survey under a single leader. Instead, the section from the Rio Grande at El Paso to the Red River at Preston, Texas, was run by John Pope, brevet captain in the topographical engineers, in the spring of 1854. Lieutenant J.G. Parke carried the line at the same time from the Pimas villages on the Gila to the Rio Grande. West of the Pimas villages to the Colorado, a reconnoissance made by Lieutenant-colonel Emory in 1847 was drawn upon. The lines in California were surveyed by yet a different party. Here again an easy route was discovered to exist. Within the states of California and Oregon various connecting lines were surveyed by parties under Lieutenant R.S. Williamson in 1855.

The evidence accumulated by the Pacific railway surveys began to pour in upon the War Department in the spring of 1854. Partial reports at first, elaborate and minute scientific articles following later, made up a series which by the close of the decade filled the twelve enormous volumes of the published papers. Rarely have efforts so great accomplished so little in the way of actual contribution to knowledge. The chief importance of the surveys was in proving by scientific observation what was already a commonplace among laymen—that the continent was traversable in many places, and that the incidental problems of railway construction were in finance rather than in engineering. The engineers stood ready to build the road any time and almost anywhere.

The Secretary of War submitted to Congress the first instalment of his report under the resolution of March 3, 1853, on February 27, 1855. As yet the labors of compilation and examination of the field manuscripts were by no means completed, but he was able to make general statements about the probability of success. At five points the continental divide had been crossed; over four of these railways were entirely practicable, although the shortest of the routes to San Francisco ran by the one pass, Cochetopa, where it would be unreasonable to construct a road.

From the routes surveyed, Secretary Davis recommended one as "the most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean." In all cases cost, speed of construction, and ease in operation needed to be ascertained and compared. The estimates guessed at by the parties in the field, and revised by the War Department, pointed to the southernmost as the most desirable route. To reach this conclusion it was necessary to accuse Governor Stevens of underestimating the cost of labor along his northern line; but the figures as taken were conclusive. On this thirty-second parallel route, declared the Secretary of War, "the progress of the work will be regulated chiefly by the speed with which cross-ties and rails can be delivered and laid.... The few difficult points ... would delay the work but an inconsiderable period.... The climate on this route is such as to cause less interruption to the work than on any other route. Not only is this the shortest and least costly route to the Pacific, but it is the shortest and cheapest route to San Francisco, the greatest commercial city on our western coast; while the aggregate length of railroad lines connecting it at its eastern terminus with the Atlantic and Gulf seaports is less than the aggregate connection with any other route."

The Pacific railway surveys had been ordered as the only step which Congress in its situation of deadlock could take. Senator Gwin had long ago told his fears that the advocates of the disappointed routes would unite to hinder the fortunate one. To the South, as to Jefferson Davis, Secretary of War, the thirty-second parallel route was satisfactory; but there was as little chance of building a railway as there had been in 1850. In days to come, discussion of railways might be founded upon facts rather than hopes and fears, but either unanimity or compromise was in a fairly remote future. The overland traffic, which was assuming great volume as the surveys progressed, had yet nearly fifteen years before the railway should drive it out of existence. And no railway could even be started before war had removed one of the contesting sections from the floor of Congress.

Yet in the years since Asa Whitney had begun his agitation the railways of the East had constantly expanded. The first bridge to cross the Mississippi was under construction when Davis reported in 1855. The Illinois Central was opened in 1856. When the Civil War began, the railway frontier had become coterminous with the agricultural frontier, and both were ready to span the gap which separated them from the Pacific.