Miners and Travelers' Guide to Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado, Via the Missouri and Columbia Rivers

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1865. Excerpt: ... Rocky Mountains, and flowing thousands of miles into two oceans, must ever enter as essential and economical elements into trade, travel, and railroad construction across the continent. The Columbia is the only stream that rises in the main chain of the Rocky Mountains, breaking through the coast range and emptying into the Pacific. The large watercourses, with their great net-work of tributaries, lying between the 44th and 49th degrees of north latitude, must ever cause this region to enjoy facilities given by nature to no other west of the Mississippi. These large bodies of water tend to modify the climate, supply mill sites, water farms, and grazing fields; enable the miner to work miles of sluice-boxes, the merchant to float, by steam, his wares to the very heart of the Rocky range, and stand ever ready and panting to be converted into steam for the iron horse that must soon invade their dominions. MOUNTAIN SYSTEM. The early geographers who attempted the mapping of the country west of the Mississippi left us a very vague and erroneous outline of the Rocky Mountain formation, or the direction of the vast system of spurs that go to form them. The dividing ridge of the Rocky range was nearly always represented as a right line trending from northwest to southeast from our northern boundary to New Mexico. This right line has, however, disappeared from our maps, as explorations have brought in from year to year the results of their researches. The greatest deviation from a right line that occurs in close proximity to our road exists from the head of Deer Lodge Valley to the Wind River chain, where the mountains enclose in a large reentering angle the Big Hole Valley. I look forward to seeing this section become a great centre both for mining and agricultura...