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Show H GOULD FORGOT OGDEN AND IDAHO. H Under an Ogden date, a page advertisement from the "Motor H Kield." is mailed to the Standard, with this marginal note: H "Neither Ogden nor Ogden canyon is mentioned in any 'ad' I H have seen." H, The advertisement is that of the Denver & Rio Grande-Western H Pacific. The "Royal Gorge" forms the background for a long list H of cities and attractions to be reached by the roads. There are "Wn- H salch range. Utah lake. Salt Lake City, Great Salt Lake and "Glis- H 'toning Beds of Salt," but no Ogden canyon. H lias the Gould system erased Ogden from its literature? If it H has. why not tack a placard to that effect on the depot on "Washiug- H ton avenue, with this laconic wording: H "Ogden is forgotten Closed." H The Gould roads built the Western Pacific. They stretched HLv - across a desert to the Pacific after a bauble and closed their eyes to H the wonderful opportunities held out to them to the north of Ogden, H through Idaho to the developing, igrowing Nbrthwcst. Had the Har- H riman people held a hypnotic influence over them, the Gould people H could not have acted more in accord with the desires of their rivals H than they did. H The Goulds could have built 150 miles north of Ogden in half a H season and shared with the Oregon Short Line that rich field of H freight traffic in northern Utah and southern Idaho. Within a year 1 the new road would have been returning dividends, in addition to H- offering to the entire Gould system a new tonnage of large propor- Hj , tions. But what did the Denver & Rio Grande do? Instead of B building a comparatively , inexpensive feeder, into a developing H farming country, that road backed the Western Pacific, which for H 150 miles out of Salt Lake chases jack rabbits and hoot owls across B a desert so desolate that water has to be piped 40 miles to keep B the engines in steam. Eight hundred miles of road was built and H; equipped at a cost of $50,000,000. The same amount of money would V Y lmvc carried the Gould cars into the heart of the richesfinost prom-1 B v isiug developing empire in the world and would have tipped the rails H with the salt water on which floats the best of Asia's' trans-Pacific Hl commerce HL, Whenever Gould, scanning the horizon for a beckoning hand, B .looked northward, a siren at the Golden Gate sang a song of allurc- B "merit, and immediately the averted eyes saw Idaho no more. Odys- H sous, that hero of old, when he was tempted by the soft, enticing H ! voices of the mermaids from off the course that his better judgment B had directed, strapped himself to the main mast after having filled H ' . the cars of his sailors with wax. Had Gould and his landlubbers Hj bad their cars filled with wax at the time when they were consid- Bj cring the advisability of building north from Ogden, there would Hl have been a story of great achievement and rich reward to recite H and there would now be no hint that, because of a stringency, the Hj Rio Grande could not afford to advertise Ogden and Ogden canyon B or erect a respectable depot in this city. |