The Struggle for the Snoqualmie Pass
A new wagon road connecting Seattle to Eastern Washington promises to redirect trade currently flowing to Portland.
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.
Walter K. Bull, President of the Seattle and Walla Walla Trail and Wagon Road Company, is currently in Seattle to solicit subscriptions for a new wagon road from the Yakima Valley through the Snoqualmie Pass to Fall City. The company is offering scrip that can be used for future toll payments in exchange for loans. Bull argues that the current route to market—hauling produce 140 miles to the Columbia River and shipping to Portland—is prohibitively expensive and inefficient. By creating a direct route to Seattle, the company hopes to secure the trade of over four thousand people in Eastern Washington, claiming it will save the city a fortune in beef costs alone by allowing cattle to be driven to slaughter pens without the physical toll of the longer journey through Oregon.
“United we are strong, divided we are weak. This road will unite us forever.”
This 1883 push to secure a mountain pass for trade mirrors Seattle's long-standing obsession with regional connectivity, a theme that persists in modern debates over highway infrastructure and rail projects that bind the Puget Sound to the agricultural east.
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