Chapter One
Picking the Route 1830-1860
August 13, 1859, was a hot day in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The settlement was on
the western boundary of the state, just across the Missouri River from the
Nebraska village of Omaha. A politician from the neighboring state of Illinois,
Abraham Lincoln, went to Concert Hall to make a speech. It attracted a big crowd
because of Lincoln's prominence after the previous year's Lincoln-Douglas
debates and the keen interest in the following year's presidential election.
Lincoln was a full-time politician and a candidate for the Republican nomination
for president. The local editor called Lincoln's speech — never recorded — one
that "set forth the true principles of the Republican party."
In the audience was Grenville Mellen Dodge, a twenty-eight-year-old railroad
engineer. The next day he joined a group of citizens who had gathered on the big
porch of the Pacific House, a hotel, to hear Lincoln answer questions. When
Lincoln had finished and the crowd dispersed, W.H.M. Pusey, with whom the
speaker was staying, recognized young Dodge. He pointed out Dodge to Lin ... read full excerpt from Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869 ebook
