Fifty Years In The Northwest Part 84

MINNEAPOLIS, SAULT STE. MARIE & ATLANTIC.

The following memorial, introduced by the writer while a member of the state senate of 1877, is the first public mention or suggestion of this road as far as we are aware. It was adopted by the legislature, forwarded to Was.h.i.+ngton, read and duly referred to the committee on railroads:

STATE OF MINNESOTA.

NINETEENTH SESSION. S.F. NO. 36.

A MEMORIAL _Introduced by Mr. Folsom, Jan. 12, 1877._ TO CONGRESS FOR RIGHT OF WAY AND GRANT OF LAND FOR RAILROAD PURPOSES.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States in Congress a.s.sembled:_

Your memorialists, the legislature of the state of Minnesota, respectfully represent that the rapidly increasing settlements of the Northwest, the surplus agricultural products and material developments demand greater and cheaper facilities than now existing, and a more direct transit to the Atlantic seaboard and European ports, and eastern products transported to the Northwest.

That the saving in the distance to eastern markets of three hundred miles, by a railroad route from St. Paul and Minneapolis to Sault Ste.

Marie, will tend to more fully develop the great wheat growing region of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Dakota, and Montana. The surplus of wheat, which forms one of the most reliable exports from our government, in shortening the distance to European markets three hundred miles will give encouragement to this great source of wealth to our whole land, and deserves aid and protection.

That by reason of the facts set forth in this memorial, and many other considerations, the nearest transit makes cheap transportation and thereby develops the country and increases prosperity.

To further these objects, we ask Congress to donate land to aid, and the right of way through government land to build, a railroad from the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis to the falls of St. Marie's river.

Sept. 20, 1879, a large ma.s.s meeting was held at St. Croix Falls, the object being to consider the feasibility of the "Soo" route. Over five hundred persons were present, among them delegates from Minneapolis, St. Paul, Stillwater, and Superior City. The subject was discussed and resolutions pa.s.sed favoring the building of the road to Sault Ste.

Marie via the Dalles of St. Croix.

Not, however, till Sept. 12, 1883, were the articles of incorporation filed in Wisconsin and Minnesota by W. D. Washburn and others of Minneapolis, for the Minneapolis, Sault Ste. Marie & Atlantic Railroad Company.

The road was completed to the "Soo" in December, 1887. At that point it connects with a branch of the Canadian Pacific. The St. Marie river is to be crossed on a union bridge built by the roads centring at that point. It is now under construction, and will cost when completed over a million dollars. The length of the line is about 225 miles. The capital stock is $12,000,000, divided into 80,000 shares of common stock, and 40,000 shares preferred. The board of directors for the first year is composed of the following persons, all residents of Minneapolis: W. D. Washburn, president; H. T. Welles, John Martin, Thomas Lowry, George R. Newell, Anthony Kelly, M. Loring, Clinton Morrison, J. K. Sidle, W. W. Eastman, W. D. Hale, C. A. Pillsbury, and Chas. J. Martin.

The following comparison of distance will be of interest to the people of the Northwestern States:

MILES. MILES.

St. Paul to Chicago 411 Chicago to New York City 962 New York to Liverpool 3,040 ----- 4,413 St. Paul (via Sault) to Montreal 997 Montreal to Liverpool 2,790 ----- 3,787 ----- Difference in favor of Montreal route 626

CHICAGO, BURLINGTON & NORTHERN RAILROAD.

The Chicago, Burlington & Northern Company constructed a road from Chicago to Savannah, Illinois, and from that point up the Mississippi, along its east bank to St. Paul, crossing the St. Croix at Prescott.

The road from Savannah to St. Paul is two hundred and eighty-five miles in length, and was completed in 1886. The cost complete, including rolling stock, was $30,000 per mile. The road was built on a grade of nine and eight-tenths feet to the mile, and its curvature nowhere exceeds three degrees in one hundred feet. The St. Croix, Chippewa, Wisconsin, Platte, Grant, and Fever rivers are crossed by iron bridges.

MILEAGE OF ROADS CENTRING IN ST. PAUL AND MINNEAPOLIS IN 1887.

MILES.

Manitoba 3,200 Northern Pacific 2,200 Hastings & Dakota 344 Pacific division of the Minneapolis & St. Louis 223 Minneapolis & Pacific 230 Omaha, Western division 627 Milwaukee, River division 100 Milwaukee, Iowa division 100 Minneapolis & St. Louis 100 Burlington & Northern 100 Northwestern, Omaha section 176 Minnesota & Northwestern (now Chicago, St. Paul & Kansas City) 200 Wisconsin Central 100 Soo Ste. Marie 210 North Wisconsin 250 St. Paul & Duluth 216 ----- Total 8,476

CONGRESSIONAL APPROPRIATIONS FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE ST. CROIX RIVER.

As early as 1858, when the writer was a member of the Minnesota senate, he introduced a memorial to Congress for the improvement of the St. Croix river, and of the Mississippi at Beef Slough bar, below Lake Pepin. This was the first memorial presented on this subject.

Subsequent legislatures continued to memorialize Congress, but it was twenty years of continuous pleading before any attention was paid to the subject. In 1878 Thaddeus C. Pound, representing the St. Croix valley in Congress, secured the first appropriation. Mr. Pound also secured the first appropriation for the Mississippi reservoirs.

The following appropriations were made from time to time: 1878, $8,000; 1879, $10,000; 1880, $8,000; 1881, $10,000; 1882, $30,000; 1883, $7,500.

This money has been expended under the supervision of Maj. Farquier and Charles J. Allen of the United States engineering corps, with headquarters at St. Paul. The improvements carried out consisted in removing snags and all impediments in the channel or along sh.o.r.e, removing sandbars, thus deepening the channel, building wing dams, and riprapping the sh.o.r.es. The work has been well done, and the expenditure is a most judicious one.

INLAND NAVIGATION.

As the prosperity of a country depends, next to its natural resources, upon the avenues of communication with other countries, the people of the Northwest naturally took a great interest in the improvement of their waterways. The states lying along the Mississippi and its tributaries found by these streams an advantageous southern outlet for their produce. But much needed to be done in the direction of improving navigation by clearing away obstructions, deepening the channels, and affording facilities for crossing rapids. As the settlements extended toward the great lakes, it became evident that the prosperity of the country would be greatly enhanced by communication with the lakes. In the absence or scarcity of navigable streams this communication, if obtained, must be by the improvement of navigation of the upper portion of these streams having their source near the lakes and their connection by ca.n.a.ls with the lakes or their tributaries. By this means it was thought a better route to the Atlantic and to the Eastern States would be afforded for grain and other products than that afforded by the Mississippi. In the Minnesota state legislature of 1875 a bill was introduced making an appropriation of $10,000 for a survey of the route connecting the waters of Lake Superior with those of the St. Croix. This bill met with much opposition, but was finally pa.s.sed, the amount having been reduced by amendment to $3,000. Lucas R. Stannard and Robert B. Davis were appointed commissioners, and with the meagre amount did all that was possible to be done in surveying the route. As the author of the bill, I insert here, as a matter of history, and as a sufficient explanation of my own views and those of the friends of the measure, a synopsis of the arguments presented to the senate advocating the measure:

"The route from Duluth via the lakes and St. Lawrence, and the Atlantic to England, according to correct computation, is about six hundred miles shorter than the route via Chicago and New York. The northern route is being made feasible by the improvements made by the British government on the Welland ca.n.a.l and Lachine rapids, and by the improvements made by our own government on the St. Clair flats and the Sault Ste. Marie ca.n.a.l, by which a depth of water is obtained sufficient to float vessels drawing twenty feet. This route to Europe will be traversed in much less time than the New York route. Vessels will be constructed for this inland American trade, and starting from the west end of Lake Superior with a cargo of grain that two weeks before was waving in the sunlight on northwestern prairies, will pa.s.s direct to Europe without breaking of bulk or res.h.i.+pping, while the southern route requires res.h.i.+pments at Buffalo and New York. Figures can scarcely do justice to the vast business that will be transacted on this open route as the northern part of the United States and the adjacent British possessions are settled.

"The opening of this route will tend to create new treaty stipulations and unlooked for interpretations of the old with the Dominion government, and establish commercial confidence and secure trade not realized to-day. Cheap transportation is the demand of the age, and this route will afford to the hundreds of millions of bushels of wheat and the commerce of Central North America the desired outlet to the best markets of the world. To many these ideas may seem chimerical, but we believe that the progress of the country and the development of her commerce in the not distant future will justify them, and that predictions now regarded as fanciful will be fulfilled to the letter.

"Minnesota as a state is just in the age of development. She is rising to power and influence. Much depends upon our legislature, more than depended upon the legislature of New York when, actuated by good counsels it connected the waters of the Hudson with those of Lake Erie by the 'Clinton Ditch,' so called in derision by the enemies of the measure. But the wisdom of Dewitt Clinton, the originator of that famous waterway, advanced the settlement of the great West at least a quarter of a century.

"Minnesota in her location holds the key that will unlock the largest body of fresh water on the globe, and open to it one of the most fertile and extensive wheat growing districts on the continent, a country that will soon vie with the country around the Black sea in the quant.i.ty and quality of its grain production.

"Shall we stand idly by whilst our neighboring states are moving to secure cheaper communications with the seaboard states? Cheap transportation, the lever that moves the world, is claiming the favorable attention of Congress, and men and means have been provided to ascertain the most feasible routes on which to bestow her aid for the transferring of the surplus products of the country to the markets of the East.

"The reports made thus far by the national committee make no allusion to Minnesota's great gateway to the East by Lake Superior, nor to the improvement of the Sault Ste. Marie ca.n.a.l. The committee dwelt somewhat elaborately upon the project of connecting the Mississippi with the lakes by means of a ca.n.a.l between the waters of Wisconsin and Fox rivers, neither of them good navigable streams. No authorized survey has ever commended this as a cheap route. Only one plan can be adopted by which a thoroughfare can be made profitable to the government and to the Northwest over this route, and that is to construct a s.h.i.+p ca.n.a.l along the Wisconsin river from the portage to the mouth.

"If the government can be prevailed upon to open up this route no one will deny that it will be of incalculable benefit to the people of Wisconsin, and to those further up the valley of the Mississippi. Let its friends do all they can to push forward the great movement.

"To Minnesotians I would say, let Wisconsin have much of our aid. I trust it will not take thirty-five years of the future to open up what thirty-five years of the past has projected. Wisconsin alone and una.s.sisted ought to have accomplished this great work years ago, if the work could have been accomplished as cheaply as it has been represented.

"Let Minnesota look nearer home. The headwaters of the St. Croix are nearer to Lake Superior than those of any other navigable stream.

Large Mississippi boats, whenever occasion has demanded, have made their way to the Dalles of the St. Croix. The falls and rapids above this point for a distance of four miles have a fall of but seventy-four feet, an elevation that could be overcome by means of locks. By means of wing dams at Kettle River falls, and other improvements at no very great cost, the river could be made navigable to the mouth of the Namakagon. This river, though put down as a tributary, is in reality the main stream, and can be navigated to Namakagon lake, which is but thirty miles from Ashland, and can be connected by a ca.n.a.l with Chequamegon bay, or with White river, a distance of only a few miles.

"If we pa.s.s up the St. Croix from the mouth of the Namakagon river, we shall find no serious obstructions to navigation till we reach the great dam built by the lumbermen twenty miles below Upper Lake St.

Croix. The conformation here is of such a character that an inexhaustible supply of water can be held--more than three times what is held in the celebrated Summit lake in Ohio, which feeds the ca.n.a.l connecting the waters of the Ohio and Lake Erie. It is but a mile from the former lake to the source of Brule river, an affluent of Lake Superior, but as the waters of the Brule are rapid and the channel rocky, and its outlet is on a bleak and unhospitable stretch of lake sh.o.r.e, dest.i.tute of any harbor, we prefer the route from the Upper St.

Croix lake to the bay of Superior, a distance of about thirty miles, a route well supplied by reservoirs of water, and with no difficult or insurmountable hills to overcome.

"Hon. H. M. Rice, who was one of the commissioners to survey the St.

Marie's ca.n.a.l, p.r.o.nounces this the most feasible and direct route for our contemplated ca.n.a.l.

"Other routes have been proposed, as from the St. Croix to the Nemadji and St. Louis rivers, but of the feasibility of these I am not so definitely informed.

"Believing, gentlemen of the senate, that you are in full accord with me that this great Northwest demands not only state aid in developing our natural resources, but the a.s.sistance of the general government, I recommend the proper presentation of this subject before Congress by our senators and representatives until our prayers are granted for the improvement of the same."

In the session of the Minnesota legislature of 1876 I again introduced a memorial to Congress asking for an appropriation of $10,000 to make a government survey of the St. Croix and Lake Superior routes.

George R. Stuntz, the veteran explorer, surveyor and civil engineer, who accompanied the United States reservoir commission to the Upper St. Croix waters, and who had made previous scientific examinations for the purpose of forming a correct idea of the contour of the summit dividing the waters flowing north and south, and of the practicability of constructing reservoirs, and of the cost of connecting the Lake Superior and St. Croix waters, makes the following report, which is valuable for the reliable data given:

"There are evidences that in the glacial period this was the channel through which flowed a river of ice, and that subsequently for a long period a vast volume of water coursed through this channel from Lake Superior to and down the Mississippi. The valley is everywhere of great width in proportion to the present volume of water, showing evidences of currents of great velocity fifty feet above the high water marks of the present time. These ancient banks of the river are composed of heavy drift gravel and boulders bearing the marks of the glacial action and having their origin north of Lake Superior. This valley extends across the height of land in towns.h.i.+p 45, in range 11 west, and in the northern part of it the Brule river rises and flows north into Lake Superior.

"At the copper range in towns.h.i.+p 48, range 10 west, section 23, a ledge of trap rock stands in the valley. In the eddy of this rock and extending to the southward or up the present stream is a well defined moraine of large boulders and gravel showing that the glacial river ran south. To the north of this point the Brule river makes a straight cut to the lake through sandy red clay deposits peculiar to that region.

"In this ancient valley the lowest point on the summit at the headwaters of these two streams is about 460 feet above Lake Superior [Lake St. Croix, at Stillwater, is 117 feet higher than Lake Superior]

and 346 feet above Lake St. Croix. Upper Lake St. Croix is 12 feet below this summit. The St. Croix river one mile above the mouth of Moose river is 25 feet below this summit. The St. Croix river discharges 15.360 cubic feet of water per minute at the mouth of Moose creek. The Brule river discharges about 5.805 cubic feet of water per minute in the north part of towns.h.i.+p 46, range 10. The distance from Taylor's Falls to Lake Superior by the valley of the St. Croix and the valley of the Brule river is nearly 150 miles.