ver Pacific Company, and ironed and
equipped by the Union Pacific Railroad Company.

In connection with the Denver Pacific proposition an application was
made to Congress for a land grant to assist in the construction of the
road, but before this was acted upon the Kansas Pacific Railroad
Company had agreed to transfer the land grant which they had been
given by Congress so far as it applied to their proposed line from
Denver North, and the application of the Denver Pacific Railroad to
Congress was consequently changed to one for bonds. This was granted
in 1869 to the amount of twenty-four thousand dollars per mile, or two
and a half million dollars in all.

The grading was commenced May 18th, 1868, and the same fall was
completed to Cheyenne, one hundred and six miles. Owing to the delay
of Congress in acting on the bond proposition as well as on account of
the financial stringency the Union Pacific Railroad Company was then
encountering, the latter was not able to carry out its contract in
regard to the completion of the Denver Pacific Railroad, and the
arrangement was accordingly cancelled. An arrangement was then entered
into with the Kansas Pacific Railway by which the latter Company took
a certain amount of stock in the Denver Pacific Railroad and proceeded
with its construction, completing the line between Cheyenne and Denver
on June 22nd, 1870.

There was great rejoicing over the event. The last spike,--one of
solid silver contributed by the miners of Georgetown, Colo.,--was
driven by Governor Evans of Colorado.

The first engine to enter Denver was the first engine that the Union
Pacific Railroad owned. It had been the first to enter Cheyenne, also
the first into Ogden.

In 1872 the road passed into the control of the Kansas Pacific Railway
Company by purchase who operated it until the consolidation of both
lines with the Union Pacific Railroad Company in 1880.

The Kansas Pacific Railway was completed into Denver in August 1870,
and immediately embarked in the through trans-continental traffic from
Kansas City and points east thereof, via Denver and the Denver
Pacific Railroad. This was, of course, in competition with the Main
Line of the Union Pacific Railroad who in accepting business at
Cheyenne were losing the haul from Omaha to that point. The Kansas
Pacific Railway and the Denver Pacific Railroad people were insistent
and with no little degree of correctness that under the original
Charter the Un