Identifier: ournewwestrecord01bowl (find matches)
Title: Our new West. Records of travel between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean. Over the plains--over the mountains--through the great interior basin--over the Sierra Nevadas--to and up and down the Pacific coast. With details of the wonderful natural scenery, agriculture, mines , business, social life, progress, and prospects ... including a full description of the Pacific railroad; and of the life of the Mormons, Indians, and Chinese. With map, portraits, and twelve full page illustrations
Year: 1869 (1860s)
Authors: Bowles, Samuel, 1826-1878
Subjects:
Publisher: Hartford, Ct., Hartford publishing co. New York, J.D. Dennison (etc., etc.)
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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of long rides overunvarying prairies with music and song. Omaha, in 1865, a feeble rival of Atchison, Leaven-worth and Nebraska City in outfitting emigrant andmerchandise wagons for Colorado and Utah, and with-out a single mile of railroad within one hundred miles,has already become the greatest railroad center of theMissouri and Mississippi Valleys. It is the starting-point of the Pacific Kailroad, which stretches a com-pleted line of eighteen hundred miles west to thePacific Ocean; to the east are two or three com-pleted lines of five hundred miles across Iowa andIllinois to Chicago, and others are in progress; tothe south are open roads to St. Louis across Missouri;and to the north is a finished road to Sioux City, andfast stretching on to St. Paul. The three great Statesof the Mississippi Valley, Illinois, Iowa and Missouri,the garden and granary of the nation, and seat of itsmiddle empire, are slashed in all directions by rail-road lines, completed or rapidly constructing, meet-
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THE RAILROAD Olif THE PLAINS. 49 ino: as a western focus at Omaha and Council Bluffs,sister towns on either bank of the Missouri, and con-verging on the east into either Chicago or St. Louis.Their consequent development, in population andwealth, is perhaps the most wonderful illustration ofmodern American growth. It is within this area thatNew England is pouring the best of her emigration,and reproducing herself, in energy and industry andintelligence, on a broader, more generous and morenational basis. Council Bluffs, on the Iowa bank of the MissouriRiver, opened the year 1869 with eight thousand in-habitants, having erected thirteen hundred new build-ings in 1868, while Omaha, opposite, counted nearlydouble that number. In both cases the railroads cen-ter upon the bottom lands, but the beautiful bluffsback and above invite the living areas of the towns.Council Bluffs is almost hidden amid the folding circlesof its hills, and has the fascination of mysteries in thedistance; but Omaha

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