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way into the San Joaquin Valley would have compensation for curvature, our line will connected with the Santa Fe. Among them
been near to or coincident with the present have a maximum grade westbound of 8/ 10 were Henry D. Minot and A. Guthrie of
location of I-5. Minot calls this surveyed percent, or 42 feet to the mile, and east- St. Paul."
line The Fort Tejon Route. bound 2 percent or 105Y2 feet to the mile ... Some idea of the proposed route can
Now, quoting from his Report to Presi- our proposed summit is at an elevation of be gleaned from the following reports in
dent Manvel, "The value of The Fort Tejon 3,734 feet, some 300 feet lower than Te- the Californian - August 2, 1890; "Our
Route, as presently located, is the economy hachapi." little burg (Rosamond), being situated on
of the grades. There is an absolute saving of Through the research of John Sweetser the S.P.R.R., where the Santa Fe crosses
300 feet as compared with Tehachapi and of Bakersfield, California, we learn that The has been very lively of late with the fre-
this saving is worth money in proportion Kern County Californian reported July 19, quent arrivals and departures of the several
to the volume of traffic. We cannot satis- 1890, that "The party (survey) was camped engineering corps. A new party will make
factorily calculate, on any basis, the cost here (Antelope Valley) for a few days and a second technical survey from Rogers to
of lifting a ton of freight 300 feet, but in we learned it is not connected with the San- this place and thence to meet another corps
the aggregate, for a trunk line, the cost is ta Fe System. They will have an entire new coming in from Castaic on a similar mis-
large." Elsewhere he reports, "From Rogers route which has already been established sion." September 13, 1890; "Three camps
to Bakersfield via Mojave and the Southern with superior advantages. The road ... will of surveyors are still at work in Tejon Ca-
Pacific is eighty-eight miles, or thirty miles run within a mile and a half of the county nyon."October 4, 1890; "The engineers on
less than the new route proposed; but the line to Rogers. Mojave will not be on the the Tejon ranch making surveys for the new
advantage of our line will be so decisive that route." railroad are endeavoring to effect the decent
we can haul the SP's traffic over the moun- On July 26, 1890, The Californian into the valley by means of a loop similar to
tain at rates less than the cost of operation reported that "Several gentlemen arrived that of Tehachapi."
by Tehachapi and earn a profit. With full here (Bakersfield) who are believed to be On December 6, 1890, however, the

1. The Minot North Dakota Chamber of Com-
merce informs that their City is named after
Henry D. Minot. The biography of James J.
Hill by Michael P. Malone discloses that both
Minot and Allen Manvel were employed by Mr.
Hill as he was developing the Great Northern.
In 1886 Manvel was General Manager of the
St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway,
predecessor of the GN. Malone writes (pg 96)
"Since poor Alan Manvel had by now, 1886,
been driven to the verge of distraction by
overwork and the frustrations of working for
his boss, Hill furloughed him to a vacation in
Europe." Manvel would serve as President of the
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad Com-
pany from September 6, 1889 until his death
on February 24, 1893. About 1886 Minot
went to work for Hill. Malone describes him as
"Haughty, brilliant, aloof and acerbic .. . and he
burned for glory in the romantic world of rail-
roading." "Minot's brief time with the Manitoba
coincided with its period of remarkable expan-
sion ... and he played a prominent role in it as
Hill's right-hand man." He too was replaced by
the hard to please Hill, but before his departure
he participated in the selection of Seattle as the
port where the railroad should have its termi-
nus. Malone says (pg 130) "Minot wrote Hill in
May 1890 that Seattle, in his opinion, could be
worth an extra $1.2 to $1 .5 million annually to
the GN beyond what the competing port cities
could generate." So it seems that Minot was
corresponding with, if not employed by, Hill in
May 1890. And by August 1890 he was submit-
ting a handwritten report to Santa Fe President
Manvel. This appears to give Minot little time
to conduct an extensive survey as is described in
his report. Later in 1890 Minot was killed in a
train accident in Pennsylvania when his private
car was demolished. So Mr. Minot appears to
have had a very busy year in 1890.

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