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Travelers Official Railway Guide 1869 June Reprint
Travelers Official Railway Guide 1869 June
This Travelers Official Railway Guide of the US and Canada was originally published in June 1869. This reprint from the first issue was reprinted for the National Railway Publication Co in 1969. Contains approx 300 pages. Measures 6 X 5 and is in good condition.
Includes Excerpts from Harpers Weekly of May 29, 1899, advertisements, General railway index, tourists guide to places of summer resort, river & Lake steamer routes, index to railway stations, more. Maps.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface i-x
Excerpts from HARPER'S WEEKLY of May 29, 1869….. xii
Title Page
Advertisement
General Railway Index
Editorials ………………………. 1-23
Tourists' Guide to Places of Summer Resort. ………. 24-33
Official Railway Time Tables:
Tables are numbered consecutively from 1 through 279
River and Lake Steamer Routes
Index to Railway Stations
Appendix
PREFACE
This is a facsimile of the June 1869 issue of the TRAVELERS' OFFICIAL RAILWAY GUIDE, which was then starting its second year of publication. Reproduction of this volume is especially appropriate during the Golden Spike Centennial year, in that it was the first to show time-tables of "through" rail service across the entire United States, following the original Golden Spike ceremony at Promontory, Utah on May 10, 1869.
Curiously, this issue makes no editorial mention, whatever, of that historic event, though the previous month's issue, which went to press before the Union Pacific-Central Pacific connection was completed, had commented on it as follows:
Central Pacific Railway
"There is little doubt but that the connection of this line with the Union Pacific is complete, and although some weeks may elapse before travelers will go through from the Atlantic to the Pacific by an all-rail route, still the problem is solved, and the great continental highway will be an additional proof, if such were necessary, of the enterprise which-an exotic in older countries-has become indigenous to this continent. Freight trains were being run from Sacramento to Montello, a distance of 576 miles, on the 4th ult; but at that date passenger trains arrived at and started from Elko, 107 miles west of Montello. The time for these trains, as it appears in the Guide is correct, and we have abstained from inserting the additional stations between Elko and Montello until advised officially that passengers, by a new arrangement, could obviate a tedious stage ride."
So that the reader may compare the first "through" time-tables with earlier and later schedules of the two railroads involved, their tables 176 and 177, as shown in the May and July 1869 GUIDES, are reproduced at the end of this article.
It is interesting to note that the Central Pacific's July table shows trackage to Monument has been increased by three miles, though the line's over-all length is shown to be two miles shorter. The name "Terminus" has been substituted for "Promontory" in this table, though the latter re-appears in later issues. The further fact that the, June and July tables are both dated May 1869, led to an inadvertent misidentification in the 100th Anniversary issue of THE OFFICIAL GUIDE published in June of last year.
The page reproduced therein was from the July 1869 issue, this having been substituted without notice for the June page when it was discovered that partial crumbling of the latter had obliterated eastbound arrival time of the "accommodation" trains between Winnemucca and Montello. A corrective notice should have been published at the time. The imperfect June page appears in this volume.
"Connecting" times originally scheduled at Promontory for Union Pacific and Central Pacific express trains leave something to be desired, even though the hours shown in the time-tables are probably those on the superintendents' clocks at Omaha and Sacramento, respectively. This is not so stated in either table but a footnote to this effect appears in many other tables. For example, table 179 bears the note that "The Clock in the Superintendent's Office at Chicago will be taken as standard time". Inevitable confusion arising from such widely varying "local" times, led fourteen years later to the adoption of "Standard Time Zones" throughout the country.
While the route through Promontory was as yet the only all-rail means of crossing the country, others were being dreamed of and some had even been traced on paper. A prime example in this issue is the Kansas Pacific's Smoky Hill Route, a map of which accompanies table 192. This map clearly depicts two lines not yet existent. One is the route northwest from Pond Creek, Kansas, through Denver and connecting with the Union Pacific main line, well east of Promontory. The second and much longer route is shown to run southwest from Pond Creek all the way to San Francisco, via Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Zuni, Fort Mohave and San Jose! Table 192 brings the reader back to reality however, by showing service only over the relatively prosaic 405 miles from Wyandotte to Sheridan, Kansas, still east of Pond Creek.
The same map and table appeared in earlier Guides under representation of the Union Pacific, Eastern Division, which was originally projected as a direct connection from St. Louis to the Union Pacific main line at about the 100th parallel. Sheridan lies at about that longitude, but some 100 miles south of the main line; a far cry indeed from the connection north and west of Denver, shown on the map. Further reference to this extension to Denver is made in a Special Notice reproduced below from the December 1869 GUIDE where it appeared beneath Kansas Pacific's table 214 dated September 26, 1869:
The only rail connection eastward from the Union Pacific's terminus at Omaha, in June 1869, was with the Chicago & Northwestern Railway which terminated at Council Bluffs, Iowa, on the eastern bank of the Missouri River. The latter's table 171, as late as in the July 1869 issue still carried a footnote stating that the Union Pacific extended only as far as Bryan (860 miles) rather than Promontory, 225 miles further west.
This footnote is changed in the December 1869 issue (if not earlier) to read, (connects) "at Missouri River with ferry to Omaha where close connections are made with the Union Pacific Railroad for Julesburg, Cheyenne, Denver, Laramie, Ogden, Salt Lake City, Promontory and all points on the Central Pacific Railroad between Promontory and Sacramento. Also for San Francisco, China and Japan."
The Union Pacific itself is a bit more modest in the December GUIDE claiming only that its Lodge Pole Division, running from North Platte to Laramie provides a stage connection at Cheyenne, "for Denver, Central City, Santa Fe and points in Colorado and New Mexico."
In view of these and other rather wide discrepancies, and Editor Vernon's repeated emphasis on the accuracy of information in his publication, it may be in order to end these comments with a selective quotation from his lead editorial in this very issue, on "honesty being the best policy." He says in part, "... the past success of the Official Guide is no indication of what its future will be ... when the editorial department can be distinct from that of publication. Our readers and patrons must bear in mind that up to the present time the labors of editor, publisher, advertising and traveling agent have devolved upon one person, and it has been a physical impossibility to carry out all the improvements which naturally suggested themselves to any observant mind; now, however, an arrangement is made whereby the editor can devote his whole time to compilation, arrangement and strictly editorial duties...".
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