e mail-bag slung
over his shoulder, rode a horse twenty-four miles to the next station,
where a fresh pony was ready. Hardly waiting to eat or sleep, the
rider galloped on again. Five dollars was often charged at that time
to bring the letter railroads carry now for two cents.

So you will see that a railroad to join California to the Eastern
states was a great necessity and had often been talked of. Several
ways to bring the iron horse puffing across the plains and up the
mountains with his long train of cars had been laid out on paper. The
emigrants had found that the best highway from the Missouri River
to California was to keep along the Platte River in Nebraska to Fort
Laramie and the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains, then by Salt Lake,
and along the Humboldt and Truckee rivers, crossing the Sierras
at Donner Pass. Other roads were talked of, and Senator Benton of
Missouri favored a nearly straight line between St. Louis and San
Francisco. Some one, in objecting to this, said that only engineers
could lay out a railroad, and such men did not believe a straight line
possible. The senator answered: "There are engineers who never learned
in school the shortest and straightest way to go, and those are the
buffalo, deer, bear, and antelope, the wild animals who always find
the right path to the lowest passes in the mountains, to rich pastures
and salt springs, and to the shallow fords in the rivers. The Indians
follow the buffalo's path, and so does the white man for game
to shoot. Then the white man builds a wagon-road and at last his
railroad, on the trail the buffalo first laid out."

For two or three years surveyors and explorers tried to find the
easiest way to build this great overland road. Several railroad acts
or bills were passed by Congress, and the California Legislature gave
the United States the right of way for a road to join the two oceans.

The first railway in the state was opened in '56 from Sacramento to
Folsom, a distance of twenty-two miles. This was built by T.D.
Judah, an engineer who had thought and studied a great deal about the
overland road so much needed to bring mail and passengers quickly from
East to West.

A railroad convention, made up of men from the Pacific states and
territories, was held in San Francisco in '59, with General John
Bidwell, a pathfinder of early days, as the chairman. Here Mr. Judah
gave such a clear and full account of the central way he had
planned, that the c