_The_ OVERLAND ROUTE to _The_ Road _of_ a Thousand Wonders _The_ ROUTE OF _The_ UNION PACIFIC _& The_ SOUTHERN PACIFIC FROM OMAHA TO SAN FRANCISCO A JOURNEY OF EIGHTEEN HUNDRED MILES WHERE ONCE _The_ BISON _& The_ INDIAN REIGNED Over the wagon trail of the hardy Pioneers runs the Overland Route as pictured in these pages; over vast plains, once prairie, now farmland; past the high outpost of the Rockies; across the surface of that strange inland sea, Great Salt Lake; over the crest of the high Sierra; through picturesque canyon and valley to the Golden Gate ISSUED BY THE UNION PACIFIC AND SOUTHERN PACIFIC PASSENGER DEPARTMENTS 1908 [Illustration: The OVERLAND ROUTE Union Pacific & Southern Pacific between Omaha & San Francisco] [Illustration: DEFENDING THE WORK TRAIN. THERE WAS AN INDIAN ARROW SHOT FOR EVERY SPIKE DRIVEN IN THE IRON TRAIL OF THE OVERLAND ROUTE. ENCOUNTERS WERE NUMEROUS AND OFTEN FATAL.] THE OVERLAND ROUTE [Illustration: THE BUFFALO—CORONADO’S HUMP BACKED OXEN—PASSED WHEN THE WAGON TRAIL GAVE WAY TO THE RAILROAD] [Illustration: Drop-cap illustrated “T”] The memory of the Overland Trail will not soon pass away. Traces of it are left here and there in the West, but the winds and rain and the erosion of civilization have nearly rubbed it out. Yet in its time it was the greatest wagon way. All in all, from the Council Bluffs crossing of the Missouri to the Golden Gate of the Pacific, it was two thousand miles long. Vague are legend and story, prior to the nineteenth century, of the country it was to traverse. One legend indicates that Coronado visited the land of the “humpbacked oxen” in the sixteenth century; a tale of like uncertainty credits Baron La Honton with a visit to Great Salt Lake in the century following. The Franciscan friars, Escalante and Dominguez, saw Utah Lake in 1776, and carried home strange stories of a sea of salt farther north. The Lewis and Clark expedition to the mouth of the Columbia, starting from St. Louis in 1804, is the beginning of the history of the Overland Trail. Soon after came the Astor party, which in 1811 founded Astoria. Thirteen years later, a most adventurous spirit, a daring hunter and pioneer, Jim Bridger, began his picturesque career in the West. Caring for no neighbors in the wilderness, at home in the high mountains, on the treeless plains or in the desert, this fearless and intelligent man sent out much accurate information and guided the Mormon “First Company” to its future home. In 1843 the Pathfinder, General John C. Fremont, began to spy out the military ways across the West, and the same year the Oregon pioneers took the first wagons westward to the Pacific.