Bypaths of Kansas History - February 1947
February 1947 (Vol. 15 No. 1), page 104.
Transcribed by lhn;
digitized with permission of the Kansas Historical Society.
TRACK LAYING ON THE UNION PACIFIC
From the Leavenworth Weekly Commercial, June 20, 1867.
An observer thus tells how the track-laying on the Pacific railroad is done: "A small car having been loaded in the same manner and with the same precision as the large ones had been, was run forward to the end of the track by horse-power. A couple of feet from the end of the rails already laid down checks were placed under the wheels, stopping the car at once. Before it was stopped, a dozen men grasped a rail on each side, ran it beyond the car, laid it down on its chairs, gauged it, and ere its clank ceased to reverberate, the ear was run over it and another pair of rails drawn out. This process was continued as rapidly as a man would walk. Behind the car followed a man dropping spikes, another setting the ties well under the heads of the rails, and thirty or forty others driving in the spikes and stamping the earth under the ties. The moment that one car was emptied of its iron, a number of men seized it and threw it off the track into the ditch and the second followed on with its load."
LOVE IN BLOOM
From the Kansas Daily Tribune, Lawrence, May 13, 1868.
A newly married couple, from some place away up the Kaw, made their appearance on the streets yesterday, who had evidently been united so recently as to still be under the influence of the "gentle delirium." In passing down Massachusetts street, in the distance of one square, they stopped four times on the sidewalk to kiss, and otherwise exchange compliments. 'Twas a sweet and touching sight.
INDIANS VS. THE UNION PACIFIC
From the Marysville Enterprise, May 16, 1868.
A band of Indians, ten or twelve in number, attacked one of Shoemaker, Miller & Co., trains, seventeen miles west of Coyote [the fight took place in present northern Gove county], at about noon today, and burned three freight cars on a side track, tore down the telegraph poles, and destroyed a portion of the track. They also attempted to throw a construction train from the track, but failed. A number of other Indians were seen at some distance off, but how many was not known-Lawrence Tribune, 9th.
A few days after the recent attack by Indians on the construction train west of Coyote, our Railroad friends tell us that the Indians attempted to capture the locomotive alive. They took a large quantity of telegraph wire, and doubling it several times, stretched it across the track, an Indian or two holding each end. They didn't want to shoot the thing lest they might injure it, and hence this strategy.
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