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absorb hydro-electric power up to the limits of the resources of the area, about 4,000,000 horse power.1

The fact of extensive hydro-electric development in the region, and the dependence upon it of many important industries, suggest a possible outlet for power which will be generated at Muscle Shoals. In the brief consideration of the geographic conditions of the region, the factors were suggested as focusing upon Muscle Shoals. There is no good reason to suppose that the various factors of industry will be brought to that point. Indeed, the experience of the region suggests that in the logical course of events the power of Muscle Shoals may more probably be brought to the raw materials, labor markets, and established industries which are already developed. Such has been the case in the history of electric power utilization in the area. Few modern industries have grown up at the actual point of power generation. It has been more economical to transmit the power to favored points. In addition, the experience of the region has shown the great advantages which are derived. from the interconnection of powers over a wide area. This is especially important in connection with the great proportion of the power of Muscle Shoals which is of secondary nature. The steamelectric plant at Nitrate Plant No. 2 has been functioning for three years as a part of the interconnected system of power plants and transmission lines which forms a great web over the region. The logical suggestion would appear to be the similar use of part, at least, of the power of Muscle Shoals. The recent offer by the combined southern power companies for the whole plant seems to indicate this idea of utilization.

From the foregoing it becomes evident that the presence of extensive water power development in the region adjacent to Muscle Shoals is certain to exert very powerful influences upon the utilization of that power. It is, perhaps, the most important environmental factor in the region in this connection, and the one which commonly is least considered.

Finally, the location of Muscle Shoals possibly is significant in relation to an area much broader than that which has been considered here. If power is sufficiently large it may be transmitted economically over distances greater than now are common. Within easy transmission distance of Muscle Shoals lie several important industrial cities. St. Louis, Louisville, Cincinnati, and New Orleans 1Loc. cit., p. 6.

are not so far away as are some of the points in North Carolina to which power from the steam-electric plant at Muscle Shoals has been transmitted. (See Fig. 2.) The possibilities of transmission of electricity to such established centers, which possess great advantages for the collection of materials and the distribution of manufactured goods, and which in most cases constantly are .requiring more power, are very alluring.

TRANSPORTATION ADJUSTMENTS IN THE RAILWAY
ENTRANCES AND TERMINAL FACILTIES
AT MONTREAL.*

BY CLARENCE F. JONES
Clark University

Montreal has been for generations the principal port and the chief railway center of Canada, and in recent year it has come to occupy the position of second port in North America. This is remarkable in view of the facts that the port is 1000 miles from the sea, that the original channel of the St. Lawrence was in places not more than eleven feet deep, and that the city is situated on a large island surrounded by an intricate series of water channels.

Adjustments in connection with the Railway Entrances
to the Island of Montreal.

Although Montreal is both a great port and an important railway center, there are only six railway entrances to the island on which the city is located. In order to understand why the entrances are limited to this number, it is necessary to realize that Montreal stands on the largest island of a group located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the St. Lawrence, where these two rivers break up into a number of streams and lakes surrounding the island of Montreal. Each of the six entrances is located at a point which afforded a feasible crossing to the principal island (Fig. 1). A study of the map shows that there are few, if any, other points at which a railroad could be built to the main island without meeting engineering difficulties so serious that the expense of construction would be economically impossible under present-day conditions. These six places are: (1) St. Lambert, (2) Lachine, (3) VaudreuilSte. Anne de Bellevue, (4) St. Eustache, (5) Bordeaux, and (6) Charlemagne. At the bridges marking these points all the railway lines which enter the City of Montreal focus. Moreover, at each of the entrances definite adjustments to local conditions were made in constructing the bridges and in making the approaches necessary to bring the railroads into the city. In order to elucidate these adjustments each situation must be considered in detail.

*Read at the Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Cincinnati, 1923.

(1) It will be noted that the Intercolonial and the Grand Trunk from Quebec, the Grand Trunk Line from Portland, Maine, the Central Vermont, the Rutland, and the Quebec, Montreal and Southern all approach Montreal across the St. Lawrence Plain from the east and south. All these lines combine into three as they converge

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FIG. 1.-The Environs of Montreal. The intricate series of water courses surrounding the Island of Montreal on which is situated the great port and the chief railway center of Canada, restricts the railway entrances to the island, and have required significant transportation adjustments by the railways in gaining access to the island.

on St. Lambert (Fig. 1). Consequently, the traffic to or from Montreal handled by these branches of the Grand Trunk and their numerous connections moves over the Victoria bridge at St. Lambert.

The natural conditions of the St. Lawrence along the Island of Montreal delayed for years the bridging of the stream. The river

has a swift current' except at certain lake-like expansions too wide for bridges. It is frozen part of the year and subject to powerful ice jams and floods.2 The river is from one to four miles wide opposite the island and consequently made the building of a bridge a serious undertaking. Before the Victoria bridge was built, traffic into the city from the south and out again was routed to Laprairie, where in summer the trains were ferried across the relatively quiet waters of the Laprairie Basin, and in winter were run on tracks laid on the ice. The ferry could cross only in a wide and quiet part of the river, but a bridge could span only one of the narrow and rapid sections.

3

The site chosen for the first bridge across the St. Lawrence is now occupied by the new Victoria Bridge (Fig. 2). It is located at St. Lambert, which marks one of two relatively narrow places offered by the St. Lawrence in the neighborhood of the Island of Montreal. It lies directly up-stream from the head of ocean navigation and below the Laprairie Basin. The bank of the river is low at St. Lambert, and also across the stream at Point St. Charles. Between these the river is shallow and flows over bed rock with a swift current. The water level at this point previous to the advent of winter is about ten feet above that of Montreal Harbor. The advancing ice-bridge, raising the whole river, floods the Sault Normand Rapids beneath the bridge and raises the level of the Laprairie Basin several feet before it is covered with ice. Once during the spring of 1887 the ice, on breaking up, slid up the east abutment of the Victoria Bridge above the highest coping, and touched the telegraph wires at a point seventy feet above low water mark. Such are the natural conditions of the site of the Victoria Tubular Bridge, which, when completed in 1859, was considered one of

'The St. Lawrence Pilot, 1917, pp. 461-512, Hydrographic Office, Washington.

2 Destructive floods and ice shoves occurred at Montreal in 1642, 1680, 1798, 1819, 1833, 1838, 1840, 1841, 1848, 1861, 1869, 1885, 1886, 1887, and others, the exact years not given. Lovell, Historic Reports of the Census of Montreal, 1891, p. 31; and Keefer, T. C., Floods at Montreal, (Montreal, 1890), pp. 10, 11, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21.

3

Atherton, W. H., History of Montreal, (Montreal, 1914), Vol. 2, 612 ff. 'Keefer, T. C., Floods in Montreal, (Montreal, 1890), p. 55.

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'Atherton, W. H., History of Montreal, (Montreal, 1914), Vol. 2: 614.

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