The Iron Road Rushes East
In 1892, railroad tycoon James J. Hill arrived in Spokane to finalize plans for a massive rail expansion that would forever link the Columbia River plateau to the transcontinental network.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Spokane, Feb. 9. President J. J. Hill, of the Great Northern railroad, arrived here today in a special car. The object of his visit is to make arrangements for the entry of his road into Spokane. He will receive the last report of his engineers tonight, and tomorrow will probably ask the mayor to call a meeting of the citizens. To a reporter Mr. Hill talked freely of his plans. He declared that the rails would be laid into Spokane and that the cars would be running into this city by the first of April. Hill says that he will be running trains to the Columbia river by the first of July. He stated that what is known as the Crab Creek route has been definitely chosen across the Big Bend plateau, between Spokane and the Columbia, as offering the easiest grades and cheapest construction. 'When our line is completed to the Columbia,' said he, 'the maximum grade between the Rocky and the Cascade mountains will be only 1 percent.' Mr. Hill declared that he would give Spokane a rate on flour that would enable the mills here to grind the bulk of wheat produced in the Palouse, Potlatch, Walla Walla and Big Bend sections.
“You have no idea how hard your city is to get into and out of. There is little or no trouble in building in here on a 1 1/2 percent grade, but that is 1 percent higher than we desire to go.”
James J. Hill’s drive to connect the inland empire to global markets set the template for Spokane as a logistics and processing hub. Today, that same infrastructure—the rail lines and highways built to carry wheat—remains the backbone of the region’s economic connection to the Puget Sound and international shipping ports.
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