From Wikipedia.org:
In 1853, Grenville M. Dodge took charge of a crew surveying central Iowa to find a terminus for the Rock Island Railroad on the Missouri River. Dodge chose Council Bluffs, and later he settled his growing young family there in 1855. In 1858 Dodge made the acquaintance of an Illinois railroad lawyer named Abraham Lincoln, who had been hired by railroad financier Thomas Durant to do work in Iowa where Dodge was engaged in surveying. Upon meeting, Lincoln and Dodge, shared their mutual interest in establishing a transcontinental rail route through the Midwest to the Pacific Ocean. By January of 1861, Lincoln had assumed Presidential office. Two attempts to establish a transcontinental railroad in the middle of the country failed. After the southern states seceded from the Union, both houses of Congress quickly approved the “Pacific Railroad Act of 1862” that Lincoln signed into law on July 1 of that year.
The act set forth a plan to build a 1,907-mile contiguous railroad line that ultimately was constructed between 1863 and 1869 across the western United connecting San Francisco with Omaha. It took an investment of over $100,000 in 1860 dollars ($2.638 billion today)
After construction, the new Union Pacific line began heading west from Omaha but didn’t directly connect to the existing rail network that ended at Council Bluffs. Initial plans called for train passengers to disembark and make their connections between the two rail lines by ferry boat. The first railroad bridge connecting the Transcontinental Railroad to the eastern United States opened on March 25, 1873.
This is a bonus cache for the “One Track Mind” Adventure Lab Cache. The final coordinates will appear in the journal to stage five of the Adventure Lab. Enjoy and good hunting!
This is my 200th Cache placement. I hope you enjoy finding it.