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
The OVERLAND ROUTE
Union Pacific & Southern Pacific between Omaha & San Francisco
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
THE BUFFALO—CORONADO’S HUMP BACKED OXEN—PASSED WHEN THE WAGON TRAIL GAVE WAY TO THE RAILROAD
The memory of the Overland Trail will not soon passaway. Traces of it are left here and there in the West,but the winds and rain and the erosion of civilizationhave nearly rubbed it out. Yet in its time it was thegreatest wagon way. All in all, from the Council Bluffscrossing 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 thecountry it was to traverse. One legend indicates that Coronado visitedthe land of the “humpbacked oxen” in the sixteenth century; a tale oflike uncertainty credits Baron La Honton with a visit to Great Salt Lakein the century following. The Franciscan friars, Escalante and Dominguez,saw Utah Lake in 1776, and carried home strange stories of a sea of saltfarther north.
The Lewis and Clark expedition to the mouth of the Columbia, startingfrom 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. Thirteenyears later, a most adventurous spirit, a daring hunter and pioneer, JimBridger, began his picturesque career in the West. Caring for no neighborsin the wilderness, at home in the high mountains, on the treeless plains orin the desert, this fearless and intelligent man sent out much accurateinformation