“ On every side is unrolled a pastoral panorama as splendid as any in the world. To view it, when the headers and binders are at work in the golden fields interspersed with stretches of green growing corn, is to grasp the greatness of agricultural Nebraska.
From Omaha westward to the first glimpse of the white summits of the Rockies, the way is through visions of country loveliness. As the Limited ascends on its journey westward and rises above the corn levels nearer the Missouri, meadows join the grain fields. Stacks of hay are deployed over the plains as are soldiers on a battlefield. ”

“ Goldfield, but recently a desert, is a city of ten thousand people with good hotels, banks, daily papers, water, electric and gas plants, railroad, telegraph and telephone service, and indeed all the utilities of a modern city. Tonopah is of like history with somewhat smaller population. Here are all the cosmopolitan and adventurous spirits that are lured by gold, making these camps on the human side picturesque beyond measure. Marvelous are the stories, the true ones perhaps most so of all. ”

“ With the arrival of the first train of one hundred and twenty-one wagons began far western agriculture. The new comers put their hands to the plow the clay of their coming and began the first irrigation canal built by the white race in America. And while redeeming the 23 wilderness and making the deserts blossom, they built a city with such careful planning of streets and open places, of statues and public buildings, such attractions of tree and vine, of home and temple, of park and boulevard, that it has become a place of great interest to all travelers, even though world-wide weary. ”

“ The homes of farmers are impressive with evidence of a prosperous and proper pride. The fences are straight and symmetrical, the houses all well painted; there are great red barns to remind you of Pennsylvania, and active windmills tower over all as landmarks. The scene is given life by high grade cattle, sleek horses, and flocks of well kept sheep. Above is bent over the landscape a sky of clear blue, where troop the vagrant clouds amid its arches, and all is permeated with air pure and sweet beyond description. Such is Nebraska. ”

“ Nevada is in great part the bed of an ancient ocean ribbed with lean mountains. Multitudes of travelers have noted that the rain, driven in from the Pacific, falls heavily in the valleys of California and up the western slopes of the Sierra, and on the summit of the mountains creates a deep blanket of snow, but to thirsty Nevada gives little save the snow fed rivers that flow down the mountain sides. ”

“ The business section of San Francisco, practically entirely recreated in two years, is in itself a marvel; no other city in the world possesses such an area of absolutely new business blocks with their equipments consequently modern in every respect, from elevator service to methods of lighting and heating. Nothing is out of date; all is new and the work has been on so large a scale as to justify the gathering of the very best ideas in construction at the command of the best architects of the world.
Notably is the hotel service of the city superior through this reconstruction. ”

“ The Sierra Nevada is crossed by the Overland Route along a scenic pathway associated with much of interest in history and tradition. Here were the greatest obstacles in the way of the pioneer railroad builders. Nature seemed here to have rallied her forces for a final stand. Here Theodore Judah, the pioneer pathfinder of the railway, found his most difficult work. The climb up the mountain side is up the canyon of the beautiful Truckee River, a famous trout stream, a journey lined with beautiful forests of pine and mountain walls. ”

“ At almost every step of the journey through the canyons are new and exquisite pictures, rock-framed, or strange monuments of stone. Immense rocks, perched on the verges of precipices, seem to threaten a fall into the abyss. ”

“ No craft ply upon their surface, and nothing lives within them save a queer shrimp, a third of an inch long, and small flies before their wing stage; and but for the gulls, herons, and pelicans that came to the lake some time in the misty past, there would be no show of life upon its broad expanse. These same birds fly twenty miles for fresh water and food.
Over this strange sea, with no counterpart on the continent, the travelers of the world now pass. East and west the scenes of the two most majestic ranges of America spread before their eyes ”

“ Perhaps no other range of mountains in the world has attractions so great or of such variety. The Sierra Nevada, the Snowy Range, or, as John Muir has more aptly termed it, the Range of Light, has many main ridges extending from 6,000 to 12,000 feet above sea level, with guardian peaks over 14,000 feet high. Highest of all and greatest mountain peak in the United States outside of Alaska is Mt. Whitney, 14,529 feet high. These mountains which the Overland Route crosses on its way to the Pacific have the greatest coniferous forests on earth. ”

“ When the glaciers in the infinite past were set in flow, grinding rocks to make soil from which food could be raised for races of men not then in existence save in the mind of God, Nevada and Utah were not left valueless. ”

“ Every nation favors California with immigration and every nationality of importance is represented by a colony in San Francisco of which the customs and manners help make up the cosmopolitan life of the ever growing city. ”

“ IRRIGATION AT LOVELOCK AND MANY OTHER PLACES IN NEVADA IS RAPIDLY SHOWING THAT NOT ALL ITS WEALTH LIES IN MINES
Reno, the most important and substantial Nevada cities, is 18,000 people and growing rapidly. To it the Virginia and Truckee Railroad brings business from the south, while the Nevada-California-Oregon Railway connects it with Northern California, Plumas and Modoc Counties (now being further developed by new lines under construction) and Southern Oregon. ”

“ The atmosphere is so clear that the eye can view the country for hundreds of miles, though to the untrained sight, distances are deceiving. Silhouetted against the northern sky is Long’s Peak; northward the range breaks down on to 16 the Black Hills with their Twin Mountains; eastward the country slopes symmetrically to the plains, treeless, level to where their horizon meets the curve of the sky. ”

“ Imports have increased, trade expanded and new industries established since the fire. The traffic of the railroads is greater than in the days of the old San Francisco. The Southern Pacific is spending millions in new terminal facilities and has completed a new water-grade route up the San Francisco peninsula into the heart of the city at an expense of millions more. 68 By the construction of a bridge at Dumbarton Point across the southern arm of San Francisco bay in 1908 the city has to all intents and purposes, from a traffic standpoint, been placed upon the mainland. ”

“ Battle Mountain is the junction of the Overland Route and Nevada Central Railway, a line ninety-three miles long, extending southward to Austin, once a famous mining camp and yet the center of a mining district 39 of much prominence. Battle Mountain lies three miles to the south. In the early sixties it was the scene of a fierce fight between immigrants and Indians. The Indians, while admitting they were worsted, claim to this day “heap white men killed.” ”

“ The railway came in the face of opposition and predictions of disaster. The builders were men to whom difficulty merely meant more effort, men who were not to be denied. The Pacific Railroads, as they were styled, were two; the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific. Starting, one from the center, the other from the extreme westward verge of the United States, they rapidly moved towards a junction; the Union Pacific being built westward 8 from Council Bluffs; the Southern Pacific eastward from Sacramento. ”

“ Westward are tumbled a confusion of mountains immeasurable, and far off to the southwestward if the weather be clear, may be seen the sparkling ridge of the Snowy Range, refreshing with its suggestion of coolness. ”

“ The next stop is at Rock Springs, the greatest coal mining town in the West. The town itself has the typical appearance of an active country town, and there is little on the surface to indicate the labyrinthine workings of the great underground measures, part of the vast mineral 19 treasure house of the state. Wyoming is a state of both underground and over-ground industries, with its coal mines, gold mines, copper mines, its great flocks of sheep and herds of cattle, and lastly a newly developed agricultural field of great possibilities. ”

“ The town is in the center of a productive agricultural section, and the Galena, Pittsburg, Copper Canyon and other productive mining districts, such as are springing up all over Nevada, help make it prosperous.
At the right of the station in Golconda are several mineral springs of much value, ranging in temperature from cold to hot enough to boil an egg in a minute. A good hotel is connected with the springs, which in any populous country would be visited by thousands of ill people. The great gold and copper deposits of Golconda are now being developed and extensive furnaces built. ”

“ No people are more kindly and hospitable than those of Salt Lake. They differ among themselves as to the plan of salvation, but are united in the belief that if there be a heaven on earth, Salt Lake is that heaven, and its portals are open to all who may choose to add themselves to the eighty thousand there now. ”

“ Louis in 1804, is the beginning of the history of the Overland Trail. Soon after came the Astor party, which in 1811 founded Astoria. Thirteen years later, a most adventurous spirit, a daring hunter and pioneer, Jim Bridger, began his picturesque career in the West. Caring for no neighbors in the wilderness, at home in the high mountains, on the treeless plains or in the desert, this fearless and intelligent man sent out much accurate information and guided the Mormon “First Company” to its future home. ”

“ The city is growing very rapidly and in the high average of its home places is not excelled anywhere. The new tourist resort, the Claremont Hotel, may be seen from the train.
Oakland, third city of the State, has a population of 175,000. The cluster of cities of which it is the center—Berkeley, Alameda, Fruitvale, Elmhurst, and others—has a population of 240,000. Oakland’s bay water front extends fifteen miles and its estuary is being made into a great ship harbor, along which many industries are growing. The city is becoming a place of skyscrapers. It is a city, too, of homes ”

“ Stockton, at the head of the bay navigation, is a prosperous city of 25,000 people with great natural resources near; gas, coal, electric power, and a million acres of as fat and fertile lands as may be found out of doors. Its manufactures are many and important, including flour and woolen mills, harvesters and other agricultural implements, mining machinery, street cars and railway cars, pottery and briquettes. It is in the heart of a great dairy section. ”

“ At times great herds of buffalo obliterated sections of the trail. Yet it held its own until the golden spike was driven, and passed away as a wagon road only when the need for it passed. But the railway lines that took up the burden of stage coach and Pony Express and ox team, have marked the way of the trail upon the map of the West so that it shall endure as long as the West endures. ”

“ This cosmopolitan metropolis at the gateway to the Orient possesses now as it always has during the past thirty years, that fascinating variety in its life which has made it a place of great attraction for people from all over the earth. ”

“ No other section of the west ships so many cars of fresh peaches to market and its fame as an orange growing section is growing rapidly.
THE PAVILION AT TALLAC, ANOTHER POPULAR LAKE RESORT
The Overland Route joins the Road of a Thousand Wonders (between Portland, Oregon, and Los Angeles) at Roseville, a great railway center to be, with fifty-seven miles of yards, round-houses of sixty-four stalls, machine and car shops, club house, icing plant and hospital. From Roseville to Sacramento the nineteen mile journey is made past horse ranches (a notable one at Ben Ali) , and great dairy farms. ”

“ Sacramento, the capital city of California, is a manufacturing and wholesale center, with an ever increasing and diversified trade extending up to central Oregon on the North, and to central Nevada on the East. ”

“ In a few years Lovelock will be multiplied a hundred fold in Nevada. An hour’s ride beyond is a favored section for the mirage, a summer-time illusion. It is said in the days of the trail many an emigrant thought he saw in the distance a second Lovelock, more lovely, only to be undeceived at even.
THE TITHING HOUSE IS ONE OF THE EARLIEST STRUCTURES
At Hazen, the overland trains leave the passengers who are to go fortune hunting in Southern Nevada among the mines. ”

“ The average size of the farms is 80 acres. The intensive cultivation possible under an irrigation system makes it most profitable to till a farm of moderate size. The railroad lands are now on sale at an average price of about $5 per acre and other privately owned lands may be secured at from $5 to $20 per acre. The cost of the water system is assessed against the land on the basis of ten equal annual payments and 46 is now determined to be $30 per acre or $3 per year without interest. ”

“ Apples, peaches, plums, and cherries grow in the oasis. At a point near Humboldt the old Oregon trail diverged from the Overland Route toward Northern California and Southern Oregon. All along through this section of Nevada, the Overland Route takes the way prepared by the Humboldt River.
SALT LAKE CITY AND COUNTY BUILDING, SHOWS WELL THE MODERN PROGRESS OF THE CITY
No longer, however, does it wind with the stream, but burrows through mountains and spans the river as often as need be to save curves, distance and grades. ”

“ The treasure houses underneath held wonderful stores of wealth. Virginia City at one time had 30,000 people, one-third of the population being always underground. The place was built on the steep slope of Mount Davidson, 6200 feet above sea-level. Until the discovery of the Comstock Lode (an ore-channel four miles long and three-quarters of a mile wide, along the eastern base of Mount Davidson, eighteen miles southeast of Reno) , men worth $200,000 were called rich, and the world’s millionaires could be counted on one’s fingers. ”