Excerpt from The Great Northwest: A Guide-Book and Itinerary for the Use of Tourists and Travellers The distance between the extreme eastern and western termini of the main line, on Lake Superior and Puget Sound, inclusive of 210 miles of rail road along the Columbia River which belong to the allied Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, is miles. The Northern Pacific Railroad is connected with the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis by a lateral line, 136 miles in length. It has also various other branches, including one to the Yellowstone National Park, either finished or under construction, which represents a total of 700 miles of track. In addition to these branches, the trunk line has for its immediate tributaries the extensive systems of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, in Oregon and Washington Territory, and the Oregon and California Railroad, in Western Oregon. This great system of allied railroads has opened to settlement during the past few years one of the fairest sections of the country - a region exceeded by no other part of the United States in its wealth of natural resources, nor surpassed in any of the conditions Of climate or of soil which are best adapted to the well being of the human race. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.