Note T — Front matter
Reading edition
Of interest in this connection is the following extract from a recent letter to the writer by the present managing editor of the Kansas City Journal:
“The interview had with Bridger was in the year 1856. He told Col. R. T. Van Horn, Editor of the Journal, which was published at that time, the story of the Park with the geysers, and at the same time, drew with a piece of charcoal on a piece of wrapping paper an outline of the route necessary to be taken by a railroad should it ever cross the continent, which route is exactly on the line that is now crossed by the Union Pacific.
In this conversation, he told the Colonel about the mud springs and the other wonders of that part of the country, or to use his own expression, ‘it was a place where hell bubbled up.’
The Colonel was much interested in the matter at the time and took notes of the account, but did not print it because a man who claimed to know Bridger, told him that he would be laughed out of town if he printed ‘any of old Jim Bridger’s lies.’”