RIGHT: Steam crews ready 844 and her short train for a westbound departure at 9:00 a.m. on June 30. A heavy fog is gradually clearing from North Platte. BELOW: The impressive Northern gets service at Columbus, Nebraska, during a thunderstorm.
parallel that had intrigued Lincoln and Dodge was not even considered in the official report that U.S. Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, sent to Congress in 1853. This was the same Jeff Davis who would later be- come President of the southern Confed- erate states.
Davis and southern Congressmen wanted the new railroad located below the Mason-Dixon line. The northern states wanted a line out of Kansas City or Minneapolis. Of the four routes con- sidered in Davis’ report, the best one might have been the route that started at my hometown of Fort Smith, Arkansas, and proceeded west along a line through Oklahoma, the Texas pan- handle on to Albuquerque, New Mexi- co, and then across central Arizona to California. The proposed rail line on the map looked much like that taken by Interstate 40 one hundred years later. This way west provided milder winter weather and a lower crossing of the Continental Divide. The Civil War got in the way when southern gunfire erupted at Fort Sumter, South Caroli- na, on April 12, 1861, starting this bit- ter conflict. Any plans for a southern transcontinental rail line evaporated. A silver lining of the Civil War was that with Southern Democrats out of the picture in Congress the Pacific Rail- road Act soon became reality. During this period, Lincoln also signed two other acts that played major roles in development of railroads and the American West. The Homestead Act of May 20, 1862 promised 160 acres to any man who would farm the land, live on it for five years and build a house. All across Nebraska and eastern Wyoming on 844’s journey back to Cheyenne, the results of this act could be seen. Many of the farms with corn and wheat fields flanking the UP Rail- road and US 30 were first cultivated under the Homestead Act. The law al- lowing homesteading of public lands lasted in the lower forty-eight states until abolishment by Congress in 1976. The second law enacted by Lincoln
and the Republicans that changed the West was the Morrill Act. This legisla- tion was signed into existence on July 2, 1862, and created land grant colleges for the new emerging western states. Just southeast of Fremont is Lincoln, Nebraska, named for the President. This city is the state capital and home to the University of Nebraska, one of the first schools created through the Morrill Act.
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