3-028-741 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Central Pacific Railway of America: valley in the Sierra Nevada, 1870. 'Several Illustrations of the scenery of the Utah and Nevada territories along the line of the Central Pacific and Pacific Union Railways, which now afford uninterrupted communication between the Atlantic States and California, have been published in this Journal. They were sent us by Mr. F. Whymper, consisting partly of his own sketches, partly of the photographs of Captain Russell, with which he had permission to deal in this manner. The one now engraved is a View of the valley of the Sierra, through which the railway passes, near Emigrant Gap. Its mighty walls of rock, the lower parts of which are fringed with scattered forests of pine, have a most forbidding aspect; but the grassy pastures of the mountain valley are better than the sterile plains of the lower country, which is a dreary and desolate region in Nevada territory, overgrown with wild sage-bushes and other coarse weeds. The mineral riches of this district are indeed beyond calculation - gold, silver, quicksilver, iron, coal, and salt being found to exist here in great abundance. It will hereafter become an important State of the Union'. From "Illustrated London News, 1870.