I.

_The Builders._

Their Material and Methods--Oakes Ames (Financier)--George Francis
Train (Promoter)--John A. Dix (First President)--Thomas C. Durant
(Vice President and President)--Granville M. Dodge (Chief
Engineer)--Subordinate Officials--Casement Brothers, Track-layers,
Mormons--Materials Used--Their Source--Methods.

At Sherman Station, the highest point on the Union Pacific Railroad,
stands a monument some sixty feet square and about the same height,
bearing the simple legend, "In Memory of Oakes Ames and Oliver Ames."
This was erected in compliance with a resolution passed at the meeting
of the Company's stockholders held in Boston, March 10th, 1875, which
read as follows, "Resolved that in memory of Oakes Ames and in
recognition of his services in the construction of the Union Pacific
Railroad to which he devoted his means and his best energies with a
courage, fidelity, and integrity unsurpassed in the history of
railroad construction, the directors (of this Company) are requested
to take measure in co-operation with such friends as may desire to
contribute, for the erection at some point in the line of the road,
of a suitable and permanent monument." (By the recent shortening of
the line this monument has been left some three miles away from the
present track. Its removal to Cheyenne Depot Grounds or some other
equally prominent position is under consideration.)

Oliver Ames was born at North Easton, Mass., January 10th, 1804; he
passed his youth and early manhood assisting his father in the work of
a farmer and later of manufacturing shovels, attending during the
winter a country school. Serving first as apprentice, then foreman, he
was in due time taken into partnership with his father to whose
business he succeeded.

From twenty thousand dozen shovels turned out in 1845, their output
increased to one hundred and twenty-five thousand dozens in 1870. A
tireless worker dispensing with clerk or bookkeeper, his accounts were
kept in his head. Over six feet in height, weighing over two hundred
pounds, broad shouldered and massive in built. Elected to Congress in
1860 where he was kept until 1872. Becoming associated with the Union
Pacific in 1865, at the time when the enterprise was languishing for
lack of funds and it seemed almost hopeless. His attention was first
directed in that channel by his duties as a member of the House
Committee of Railroads in 1865. He was then a man of considerable
means