At the recommendation of the chief engineer, Peter A. Dey, the eastern terminus was fixed "on the western boundary of the State of Iowa, opposite Omaha," an event so auspicious as to provoke a responsive demonstration from the enthusiastic inhabitants of the young city, who made the master-stroke of their celebration the actual breaking of the ground for the newly projected road. This occurred December 2, 1863, with the thermometer hovering close to the freezing point. The work of construction was pushed with all possible rapidity, but with the best expedition it was May 10, 1869, before the juncture of the two roads heading for one another from east and west was effected, in the presence of a distinguished body of spectators, by the driving of the golden spike at Promontory Point, girding the continent with bands of steel. According to all accounts the celebration at Omaha of the completion of the Union Pacific was on a scale commensurate with its importance to the commercial and industrial position of the city. If Engineer Dey was the central figure in the initial work, Thomas C. Durant, as First Vice-President and General Manager, had more to do with its successful completion than any other one man. While many names have since shown bright in the progress of this epoch-making enterprise, those of Dey and Durant must form the base-stones of the arch that has raised this great railroad to its eminence, and carried it through stress and storm. [Illustration RETURN OF THE FIRST NEBRASKA VOLUNTEERS, AUG. 30, 1899.] The prestige acquired by Omaha as a railway centre in those early days has been constantly maintained, until to-day the steel rails radiate in every direction, while three magnificent bridges span the Missouri where Brown's lonely ferry formerly transferred victims of the gold fever from one bank to the other. [Illustration THE PUBLIC LIBRARY, OMAHA.]