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Excerpt from Railroad Communication With the Pacific, With an Account of the Central Pacific Railroad of California: The Character of the Work, Its Progress, Resources Earnings and Future Prospects, and the Advantage of Its First Mortgage Bonds The first practical step towards building a railroad across the Continent, was the introduction of a bill into the United States Senate by Colonel Ben ton, in February, 1848, providing for the location and construction of a Cen tral National Road from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean - to be an iron railway where practicable - and providing for the application of the larger portion of the proceeds of sales of public lands to defray the expense. The terms of the proposal show that a very inadequate idea of the future greatness of the Far West was then entertained, but even this project received no active support. At that time there were no railroads west of the Missis sippi-none, in fact, had reached it from the east - and the Erie Railroad was not completed. In 1850, under the patronage of the State of Missouri, a company was organized, and a railroad projected from St. Louis along the south bank of the Missouri to the western boundary of the State. The work progressed but slowly after the State ceased to advance the moneyed aid, and, in 1855, had reached Jefferson City, the capital of the State, about mid. Way across it. In 1860, the outbreak of the War found it halted at Sedalia, about sixty-five miles from the Kansas line. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.