The effort to unite America by rail moved toward reality in June 1865 when the Union Pacific Railroad Company began laying track westward from Omaha, Nebraska, and after slow construction it reached this point two years later. On May 10, 1869, the Union Pacific met the Central Pacific Railroad at Promontory Point, Utah. The company laid only nine miles of track in Colorado along the north side of the South Platte River, sealing the fate of the military post, trails, towns, and telegraph line along the south bank, while freight trains still use this route today. In 1867, New Julesberg began with forty men, one woman, four tents, and a half-finished eating house, then became the third Julesberg and the end of track on the Union Pacific Railroad. The town rapidly expanded to 1200 buildings, most tied to vice or illicit activity, as one of the "Hell on Wheels" settlements that moved west with the railroad and served construction workers. After the rails pushed on to Cheyenne, Wyoming, New Julesberg quickly declined, but the name survived: when the Union Pacific started building its Denver branch line in the 1880s, a fourth Julesberg was founded, and the small community left at the third site renamed itself Wier. In July 1867, Sir Henry Morton Stanley wrote that murders for five dollars occurred there and that dead bodies with rifled pockets were found so often that local people seemed strangely indifferent.