The Unfinished Railroad to Nowhere
Construction on the Northern Pacific line stalls as contractors fire workers and shutter mess halls.
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.
Yesterday, under the direction of Roadmaster Thelson, about three miles of siding along the Seattle extension was taken up, loaded on cars, and hauled to the point about three-quarters of a mile from South Prairie, where the junction of the present line and the Cascade division will be made. The iron was piled up there and it is evidently intended for use upon the road across the mountains. We are in receipt of a report from Superintendent of Construction Stone, on the Seattle extension, which conveys the information that his working force between Black River junction and Seattle has been reduced to thirty Chinese workers and twenty white men, barely enough to watch and save the material on hand. He received orders on Tuesday to close the mess house. Work has virtually been suspended, and it is not probable that it will be resumed. Each day drives another nail in the coffin of Villard’s wild scheme of operating a railroad over forty miles of rough and swampy country, when twenty-five miles of steamboat service meets the entire demands of business.
“Each day drives another nail in the coffin of Villard’s wild scheme.”
This article reflects the intense period of speculation during the construction of the Northern Pacific's Cascade division, a massive undertaking that defined regional power. Just as then, Seattle's growth remains fundamentally tied to the volatile boom-and-bust cycles of transit infrastructure and the labor that builds it.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.