The Iron King Comes to Town
James J. Hill, railroad magnate, plots the Great Northern's arrival in Seattle and the future of regional freight rates.
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.
President James J. Hill and Chief Engineer E. H. Beckler of the Great Northern railroad arrived in Seattle yesterday. Mr. Hill spent the afternoon in conference with P. P. Shelby, the general manager of the coast lines, and the road's attorneys, Judge Thomas Burke and Thomas R. Shepard. Hill expressed his desire to settle the terminal question amicably with the Northern Pacific, emphasizing that access to the waterfront must be maintained. Regarding freight rates in Spokane, Hill promised that the city would eventually have rates competitive with the coast, though he cautioned that rail rate wars were a business error to be avoided. He reaffirmed that the Great Northern line would reach the coast by late 1892.
“The people of Seattle have as large an interest in this matter as the railroads. What they have got to guard against is blocking off access from the city to the water front.”
Hill's push to secure rail terminals while negotiating waterfront access echoes Seattle's century-long struggle to balance industrial growth with public access to the Elliott Bay shoreline. His pragmatic, sometimes contentious approach to infrastructure planning remains a hallmark of the city's development cycle.
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