mountains. News of such a pass, even unexplored, was too important to wait for publication. Ever self-confident, Isaac Stevens must have spread word of Marias Pass by mouth: in 1857, three years before publication of the Survey results, James G. Swan, early resident of Washington Territory, wrote in The Northwest Coast, In 1853, Governor Isaac I. Stevens, the first Governor of the Territory, surveyed a route for a Northern Pacific Rail-road and discovered a pass near the sources of Maria’s River suitable for a rail-road, estimated to be 2500 feet lower than the south pass of Fremont. By modern measurements, Marias Pass is lower than the south pass of Fremont. Survey of 1889 Marias Pass was finally explored and charted in December 1889 by John Frank Stevens, principal engineer of the Great Northern Railway (GN). The location of the pass had been rumored for decades beforehand, but it took Stevens and a Flathead guide named Coonsah, who had been hiding out with the Blackfoot in Browning, to discover it. The pass proved ideal for a railroad, because its approach was broad and open, within a valley ranging from one to six miles wide, and at a gentle grade that would not require extensive excavation or rockwork. Construction of the railroad through the pass began on August 1, 1890, starting west from Fort Assinniboine toward Marias Pass. The railroad followed the Middle Fork of the Flathead River west of the Continental Divide. Stevens also discovered the pass across the Cascades in central Washington which bears his name. Roosevelt Memorial Obelisk A memorial to President Theodore Roosevelt was constructed along the Continental Divide at the top of the pass. Construction began in 1930, with the original intent to produce a granite archway across the highway, and a cornerstone was placed to the southeast of the highway. Eleanor Roosevelt was later on hand to place a small copper box filled with a copy of the bill that appropriated funds for the memorial as well as some other documents into the cornerstone. The obelisk is in height and extends into the ground. It has a tapering cement core covered on all sides with slabs of Montana granite quarried near Helena. It was later decided to build an obelisk instead of an archway; it was completed in 1931. Today, U.S. Route 2 uses the pass, along with the BNSF Railway, a successor to the Great