The Youngest Rail President in America
How George S. Brown and F.H. Bronnall, fresh out of Brown University, became the power brokers behind the rapid rise of Everett.
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.
George S. Brown and F. H. Bronnall, of Everett, are striking examples of young men who have succeeded in the Puget Sound country. Both are graduates of Brown University of the class of 1888, and in all probability neither of them is over 25 or 26 years of age. They came to Washington in the summer of 1890 and until Everett was started they were in the law business at Tacoma. Their work there was so successful that when the Everett syndicate began its operations, they became the legal advisers of the Everett Land and Improvement Company, the Steel Barge Company, the Everett & Monte Cristo Railroad, and in fact all the other corporations in which the syndicate is interested. Mr. Brown is himself a director of most of these companies and is president of the railroad. So far as is known, he enjoys the distinction of being the youngest railroad president in the United States. In speaking of his line he said last night: 'About 1,000 men are now working in clearing and grading, and we expect to have the sixty miles completed by November. As far as Everett is concerned, I am a conservative, but I believe we shall have a good town there. We now have about four miles of graded streets, and gangs of men are pushing steadily ahead.'
“So far as is known, he enjoys the distinction of being the youngest railroad president in the United States.”
Everett was a classic 'company town' boom, designed by syndicates to exploit the resources of the Cascade mountains. Today, the scale of corporate influence over local development remains a central, often contentious, feature of Puget Sound's rapid urban growth.
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