Pacific Railroad Surveys, 1853-1855 - American History, 1493-1945

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Brigham Young comments on the Pacific Railroad

29 June 1854

View the letter from Brigham Young to Thomas L. Kane on a legal case, slavery, a railroad and native Americans in the resource

Dated 29 June 1854, this document is a letter written by Brigham Young (a leader in the Latter Day Saint movement and a settler of the Western United States) to his “dear friend”, Colonel Thomas L. Kane. Young comments on several matters in this letter, including the United States government’s plans to develop a Transcontinental Railroad, which he describes as “a subject truly worthy of the enterprise of the nation” and “the best business Congress has met upon in our time.”

The expansion of the United States into the territory west of the Mississippi River throughout the early nineteenth-century called for improvements in transportation and communication links across the nation. In response, Congress passed the Pacific Railroad Survey bill in 1853 and set aside $150,000 for the purpose of finding the most practical and economical rail route from the east coast to the pacific. Beginning in 1853 and ending in 1855, the Pacific Railroad Surveys were carried out under the direction of the then Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis (1808-1889), and consisted of reports covering the northern, southern and middle-sections of the Trans-Mississippi west.

The expeditions included surveyors, scientists, and artists and resulted in an immense body of data covering at least 400,000 square miles on the American West. Published in 13 illustrated volumes between 1855 and 1860, the surveys provided detailed descriptions of western botany, ethnography, geology and zoology, and proved to be extremely valuable to the United States’ scientific community.

Although the Pacific Railroad Surveys did not immediately lead to the construction of a transcontinental rail route in the 1850s, the information gathered from the reports proved extremely invaluable in determining the best location for any future railroads. Congress passed several Pacific Railway Acts in the early 1860s, which eventually led to the construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad between 1863 and 1869. Stretching 1,907 miles, the railroad connected the Pacific coast at San Francisco Bay with the Eastern U.S. rail network at Council Bluffs, Iowa.

The West developed simultaneously with the building of the Western railroads, and in no other part of the United States was the importance of the railway more generally felt. During the 1840s, for instance, western settlers from the East coast typically endured a six to eight month journey in perilous conditions to reach their destination. With the opening of the First Transcontinental Railroad, the length of the journey from east to west was reduced to less than a week.

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