Mr. Dodge was originally from Massachusetts and was born in
the year 1831; however, little did he know that he would end his life in a
little town just outside of Omaha, Nebraska.
One of the major events that most like summed up Dodge’s
personality would be when the young engineer met president-to- be Abraham
Lincoln by chance in Council Bluffs, Iowa in 1859. On that day Dodge assure
Lincoln that the Platte Valley would be the route of the Pacific Railroad. A
pretty bold statement for a young gun engineer. He was right because seven
years later he began the project.
Before the project to complete the Transcontinental Railroad
was stuck in his head, something else was. A Rebel bullet to be exact because
Dodge worked his way up to Brigadier General under future president Ulysses S.
Grant and earned the friendship of William Tecumseh Sherman. In 1864, Lincoln decided to ask him to man
the Eastern part of the Pacific Railroad. After the project that changed
transportation across the United States was completed, Dodge would retire to a
town east of Omaha, Nebraska where the railroad began to Council Bluffs, Iowa.
There he rested with his wife Ruth Anne Brown Dodge, later dying in 1916.
No comments:
Post a Comment