Explorations in Dacota Country, 1855
You can read the Pacific Railroad Surveys as the federal government trying to draw a railroad across the West before it knew the ground. From 1853 to 1855 surveyors, scientists and artists crossed at least 400,000 square miles, and the War Department published the results from 1855 to 1860 with maps, color plates of scenery and inhabitants, and long reports on geology, climate, plants, animals and Native peoples.
If you collect or teach early Western maps, these reports give you the routes Congress compared, the names on the parties, and the reason Dakota later entered the map as an organized territory on the northern line.
Why did Congress pay for a Western survey?
By the 1830s railroads had grown fast in the East, while water travel still carried most long-distance movement. Settlers had pushed west from the late 1700s, and steam power made a continental railroad look possible. From the 1840s, government-sponsored expeditions looked for railroad passes, but cities, states and rival companies each pushed their own terminus, so no consensus route emerged.
You see that deadlock in the language of the time. Brigham Young, President of the LDS Church, wrote that his people never went through canyons or over dividing ridges without asking where rails could be laid. The page notes that even the least expensive proposed routes would equal the federal budget for one year, and that lobbyists tried to shape the choice because social, political and economic consequences were clear. On August 16, 1856, Mr. Denver of the House Select Committee on the Pacific Railroad and Telegraph reported that the necessity for railroad and telegraph lines between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts was conceded by everyone.
Who ordered the work and what did the order say?
On March 3, 1853, Congress appropriated 150,000 dollars and authorized Secretary of War Jefferson Davis to ascertain the most practical and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. Davis ordered Brevet Captain George B. McClellan and the Corps of Topographical Engineers, the Army division charged to discover, open up and make accessible the West, to carry out the task.
A map of routes for a railroad to the Pacific was compiled to accompany the report. The published volumes were later described as probably the most important single contemporary source of knowledge on Western geography and history, a judgment the page links to the many color plates of fauna, flora, scenery and inhabitants. An illustration of Fort Massachusetts in Colorado, made during the surveys, shows the mix of military record and pictured country that you find throughout the set.
What did the northern party cross?
The Northern Pacific survey ran between the 47th parallel north and the 49th parallel north from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Puget Sound. It was led by Isaac Stevens, newly appointed governor of Washington Territory. With him were Captain George B. McClellan with Lt. Sylvester Mowry operating out of the Columbia Barracks from the west, and Lt. Rufus Saxton with Lt. Richard Arnold operating out of St. Marysville from the east.
You can place this line against later Dakota history. Dakota Territory was created on March 2, 1861, from Nebraska and unorganized lands, and at first it included much of present-day Montana and Wyoming plus all of present-day North Dakota and South Dakota and a small part of present-day Nebraska. If you study landmark plates explained alongside the survey sheets, the northern route helps you understand why control of the Missouri River traffic and the later Northern Pacific Railroad mattered so much to settlement and to county formation after 1872.
Which lines ran through the center and the south?
The Central Pacific survey ran between the 37th parallel north and the 39th parallel north from St. Louis, Missouri, to San Francisco, California. Lt. John W. Gunnison led it until his death at the hands of the Utes in Utah, when Lt. Edward Griffin Beckwith took command. Frederick W. von Egloffstein, George Stoneman and Lt. Gouverneur K. Warren also took part. The full Pacific Railroad Surveys overview names the officers, party by party, which helps you match signatures and initials on separate route sheets.
There were two Southern Pacific surveys. One followed the 35th parallel north from Oklahoma to Los Angeles, California, a line similar to the western part of the later Santa Fe Railroad and to Interstate 40, and it was led by Lt. Amiel W. Whipple. The southernmost survey crossed Texas to San Diego, California, along the Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoach trail, where the Southern Pacific Railroad later completed the second transcontinental railway in 1881. It was led by Lt. John Parke and John Pope. A fifth survey ran along the Pacific coast from San Diego to Seattle, Washington, conducted by Lt. Robert S. Williamson and Parke.
How did plants, animals and peoples enter a railroad file?
Leading naturalists rode with every party, often acting as surgeons as well. Dr. James G. Cooper served the western division and Dr. George Suckley the eastern division on the northern route. Botanist Frederick Creutzfeldt rode with the central route party and was killed alongside Captain Gunnison in Utah. Dr. Adolphus L. Heermann and Dr. Edward Hallowell rode with Parke on the southern route, Dr. Caleb B. R. Kennerly rode with Whipple, and Heermann rode with Williamson up the West Coast from Fort Yuma to San Francisco.
The rule was to collect everything, common and rare, including plants, mammals, fish, insects, birds, mollusks, snakes, lizards and turtles, for shipment east to the Smithsonian Institution and other centers. Geologist William P. Blake, with Parke, explained that it was as easy at the end to reject what was superfluous as it would be difficult to replace what was wanting. Heermann reported that his reptile cans leaked for want of alcohol and means to repair them, so most were lost except a few bottled specimens. Spencer Fullerton Baird, then Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, wrote sections of the report, arranged descriptions by Asa Gray, John L. LeConte, William Cooper, Charles Girard, William G. Binney, and John S. Newberry, and had artists engrave bird skins as lifelike hand-tinted plates.
Why did Congress wait years before building?
The surveys gave valuable route information but did not compel construction. The page points to three trends. The California Gold Rush and silver discovery in Nevada raised western population sharply. Secession removed southern members from the fight over a northern or central line during the Civil War. A new generation of railroad specialists gave Congress workable options with costs.
Railroad engineer Theodore Judah shaped the next step. On January 1, 1857, in Washington, D.C., he published A Practical Plan for Building the Pacific Railroad, calling for a detailed instrumental survey of one selected route rather than general reconnaissance of several. He lobbied in Washington in the winter of 1859 to 1860, surveyed at least three passes, found in the fall of 1860 a practical line from Sacramento to the Great Basin over Donner Pass, helped incorporate the Central Pacific Railroad in June 1861, and returned to Washington in October 1861 to press the Pacific Railway bill. His line followed much of the Stephens, Townsend, and Murphy Party route of 1844 and John C. Fremont's third expedition route of 1845 to 1846 through the Sierra crest, rather than the Madeline Pass route mapped in the surveys or the intermediate Beckwourth Pass, and it built on Simon G. Elliott's prior survey for a Donner Pass wagon toll road.
Where does Dakota country fit on this federal map?
Dakota became an organized, incorporated territory on March 2, 1861, with Yankton as capital until 1883 and Bismarck after. President Lincoln appointed William Jayne, his old friend and neighbor from Springfield, Illinois, as its first governor. A remote exclave called Lost Dakota remained until it joined Gallatin County, Montana Territory, in 1873, and land north of the Keya Paha River passed to Nebraska in 1882. The territory was not directly involved in the Civil War but raised troops after the Dakota War of 1862, while the Department of the Northwest sent expeditions in 1863, 1864, and 1865 and built forts to guard settlements and Missouri River traffic.
Population shows why maps of this period change so fast. The count, covering present-day North Dakota and South Dakota, rose from 4,837 in 1860 to 14,181 in 1870 and 158,724 in 1880, with the Dakota Boom dated from 1870 to 1880. In the 1880 Census, the south held 98,268 people against 36,909 in the north. Early commerce centered on furs moved by steamboat, then gold found in the Black Hills in 1874 drew settlers and set off the last Sioux War, cattle spread over open ranges to meet demand for meat, and wheat became the main cash crop before lower prices and drought hurt the territory in the 1880s. Settlers came from other western territories and from northern and western Europe, including large numbers of Norwegians, Germans, Swedes, and Canadians. On February 22, 1889, Cleveland signed the omnibus bill dividing the territory, and North Dakota and South Dakota entered the Union together on November 2, 1889. You can use the classroom guide to historic maps to compare the 1855 compiled railroad map with an 1886 Dakota map and trace how survey lines became county seats, rail stops, and state lines.