History Of Jackson County Missouri PDF Download

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1881 edition. Excerpt: ...Missouri is closed, it is by rail to St. Louis, 283 miles, and from St. Louis to Memphis, 319 miles; 602 miles by rail from the mouth of the Kansas to Memphis, where the permanently open river and deep water is reached. By air line from Kansas City to Memphis it is 365 miles, and can be traversed by rail within 390 miles--in round numbers, 400 miles. The upper Missouri Valley can thus reach the Mississippi River below ice, and at permanently deep water, by 200 miles less by rail transportation than as now employed by way of St. Louis. By employing 107 miles longer rail transit than at present, 450 miles of river are saved, as against the route by St. Louis; and by employing 212 less miles of railway, the same point is reached by all rail, as now. And in both cases the only obstacles now existing are completely and entirely overcome. This obtained, and uniform freights throughout the year are secured, or, if there is any difference, the winter freights will be lower than the summer, from the fact that the boats that are driven from the upper rivers by ice, will seek the lower Mississippi for winter employment, making tonnage more abundant than in the summer. Then with the obstructions at the mouth of the Mississippi removed, or avoided, ocean steamers could land at Memphis just as freely as at New Orleans, and grain be loaded direct from the elevators, and shipped either to New York, Philadelphia, Boston or to Europe; and the flour made from our winter wheat, equal to any in the Union, be shipped by the shortest route to the West Indian and South American markets. It would practically place our grain port within four hundred miles of the mouth of the Kansas, and give us both for export and import the lowest rates, and uniform at all...