Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 February 1899 — The Black Diamond Road Again. [ARTICLE]

The Black Diamond Road Again.

During the past two years The Republican has made several mentions of the so-called Black Diamond Railroad project, of which Col. Boone, is the moving spirit, Sunday’s Chicago Inter Ocean devotes two columns to the scheme in its present status, and from which article we extraot the following statements. Last year a powerful English syndicate sent Sir Thomas Tancred, the famous engineer, to America, and lie and Colonel Boone, with other officials of the road, havespent many months and thousands of dollars in making a careful survey of the entire route from Vincennes, Ind., to Port "Royal, S. C., some 1,240 miles. Of this, 700 miles was traveled in wagons and ou horseback, and now Sir Thomas has returned to England with a most favorable report of the route. The Black Diamond system, briefly stated, is to consist of a main line double track, standard guage road, 1,900 miles long, from Fargo, N. D., southeast through the states of Minnesota, lowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, and South Carolina to the deep harbor of Port Royal, S. C., on the Atlantic sea-board. Among the numerous branchet proposed is one running north 250 miles through Indiana to reach Lake Michigan at Hammond, and conneot through the Belt tine with Chicago. The lines now more or less definitely fixed will require more than 2,000 miles of road, making the system rival the Baltimore and Ohio under the new organization. Among the advantages claimed by Colonel Boone and his associates for the Black Diamond system are these. It is the shortest and most practical route from Duluth and Chicago to the South Atlantic, thereby securing the cream of the traffic with Cuba, Porto Rico, Central America, and South American together with the full advantage of the Nicaragua canal. It will have the three largest coal fields of the world to draw upon, viz., the Southeastern Ohio, with its Waterloo apd Meigs creek coals, covering fully 1,000 square miles; the Southwestern Indiana field, with fully 2,500 square miles of coal area, and the 2,000 square miles of the Eastern Tennessee .and Kentucky fields, including the Jellico coals, said to among the finest m the world, but now for the most part inaccessible. In Tennessee it will pass through the largest deposits of slate and marble in the world. It will tap hundreds of miles of iron ores, among them being the same vein as that found at Cranberry, N. C., said to be equal to the Swedish iron when manufactured. It will pass through immense beds of manganese ores needed in the manufacture of steel. It will tap mines of copper, zinc, and lead. It will pass through mountains of the finest kaolin used in the manufacture of chinaware, and through many deposits of glass rock needed for glassware manufacture- It will pass through fully two-fifths of the hardwood timber standing in the United States today, and tnrough the finest tanbark district in the world. It will touch the great bone phosphates of the bays add inlets near Port Royal, S. C. The Black Diamond system proposes to find its cutlet at Port Royal, S. C., for that port is claimed to be the best on the South Atlantic coast. It is proposed to begin building on the section from Greenfield, Ind., south 381 miles to Knoxville, Tenn. The entire section has been surveyed and located. On the monntain division, from Knoxville south 222 miles to

in a few months. The lines from Vincennes, Ind., to Jefferson, 125 miles, and from Cynthiana, Ky., to Columbus, Ohio, 165 miles, are also located, making in all nearly a thousand miles ready for the scraper. To the above we may add that if the road as projected ever gets to Hammond, it will pass through some part of Jasper county, but if it takps anything like a direct route from Greenfield to Hammond it would hit only the northeastern portion of Jasper..