Lincoln tapped Iowa’s Dodge to plan a transcontinental railway

Long before it was transformed by the automobile and the airplane, the railway system was the mode for cross-country travel. After the U.S. victory in the Mexican War provided the last piece of territory needed to complete the country ocean to ocean, leaders quickly realized that a transcontinental railroad would be needed to facilitate westward settlement.

Politics was tenuous in the 1850s and the railroad would be a hot issue. Both northerners and southerners wanted the railroad in their regions. The Pierce and Buchanan administrations who favored slaveholding states believed the railroad should run down south, while powerful northern abolitionists stalled the advancement. But a prairie lawyer named Abraham Lincoln who was seeking the new Republican Party nomination had a vision of seamless cross-country travel, where one could get from Washington to San Francisco in one week instead of four months.

While seeking the nomination for president, Lincoln met with a young surveyor in Council Bluffs by the name of Grenville Dodge. Lincoln was fascinated by Dodge and asked him where the best route for a railroad would be. Dodge pointed on the map right to Council Bluffs and laid out his reasoning while the two explored the town. Lincoln agreed and they parted ways.

The following year, Lincoln would win a four-way presidential election with just under 40% of the vote. One month after his inauguration, the Civil War broke out. Dodge became a highly decorated soldier in the Union Army. But as the war dragged on, all plans he had for a railroad seemed like a far-off dream.

Or were they? Even with what should have been a complete time consuming war, Lincoln was thinking about the future of westward expansion. He called Dodge to the White House in 1863 for what Dodge believed would be a punishment for a mistake he made in battle. Instead Lincoln wanted to talk railroad again. With Congress now comprised only of northerners, Lincoln had already signed the Pacific Railway Act and now wanted Dodge’s expertise in railroads.

As Dodge would later say, “Lincoln picked my brain for every bit of information I could give.” By the end of their meeting it was clear the transcontinental railway would run through Iowa and cross the Missouri River at Council Bluffs.

Assassinated on April 15, 1865, Lincoln didn’t live to see his dream fulfilled. Grenville Dodge was not only instrumental in finding mountain passages for the railroad, he was also was present on May 10, 1869, front and center as the Union Pacific Railway’s chief engineer when the golden spike was laid in Utah.

President Lincoln believed it would take 100 years to settle the American West. It was done by the end of the 19th century. None of it would have started if not for unknown candidate Abraham Lincoln meeting a young surveyor Grenville Dodge in Council Bluffs, a meeting that was so powerful for Lincoln that he would call Dodge off the battlefield to officially plan the route for the cross-country railway.

Tom Babbage first became a presidential history enthusiast as a third-grader at Indian Creek Elementary School in the Linn-Mar district. He now resides in Casa Grande, AZ.