The Struggle to Build a Mountain Road
Proponents argue that a completed wagon road through Snoqualmie Pass is vital to break the monopoly hold of railroad companies on Washington Territory.
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.
A movement is underway to connect the fertile valleys of Yakima and Kittitas counties with Seattle through the Snoqualmie Pass. Since the first settlement, there has been no feasible way to transport stock and agricultural products from those regions except by long, circuitous, and expensive routes. A few men recently undertook to build a road over the mountains to Seattle. It was a heavy undertaking for men of limited means, involving the building of seventy-five miles of mountain road. Through vigorous effort, about thirty miles of this road have been completed and kept open for travel throughout the winter. Bands of cattle have been driven over this route, arriving in Seattle in fine condition at less than half the expense of transporting them by way of the Dalles and Portland. This road is of great utility as a competing line that will render settlers east of the Cascades independent of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company and the Northern Pacific Railroad Company.
“A good wagon road over the Cascade range, through the Snoqualmie pass, would afford direct communication between two sections of Washington Territory, with vast mutual benefit to residents of both localities.”
The century-old struggle for control over transit corridors and the desire for independence from railroad monopolies mirrors Seattle’s modern-day debates over regional transit authority, funding, and the power of corporate stakeholders in public infrastructure.
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