The Perilous Path to Nowhere
A survey team's disastrous expedition into the Cascades exposes the grand delusions of railroad barons chasing land grants.
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.
The report of the surveying party sent out to find a line for the branch of the Northern Pacific Railroad over the Naches Pass is published in the Tacoma Herald. This report describes the scenery on the route as 'grand' and 'gorgeous,' with immense ledges of rock five hundred feet high, with gorges and cascades sublime in their grandeur. The surveying party started from the end of the coal road, which runs from Tacoma in a northeasterly direction. From this point, the survey proceeded a little west of north to the valley of the White River. At 11:15, they had ascended about two miles, and were opposite a spur of Mud Mountain at 11:30. Owing to a narrow gorge with perpendicular walls through which the river runs, we were compelled to ascend and descend a very steep and dangerous mountain some four or five hundred feet high in order to gain about 200 yards on our journey. This required an hour’s time and was a perilous undertaking. The whole afternoon was spent in a hard zigzag tramp up into the mountain and down to the river. This performance was duplicated many times. The party did not pursue their survey to the summit, or Naches Pass, but returned to Wilkeson. Thus ends for the present the much-vaunted project of constructing the branch road from the coal mines across the mountains through the Naches Pass, upon which was predicated their claim to the land granted for a branch of the N. P. Railroad.
“Owing to a narrow gorge with perpendicular walls through which the river runs, we were compelled to ascend and descend a very steep and dangerous mountain... to gain about 200 yards on our journey.”
In 1877, railroad companies fabricated the 'practicability' of treacherous routes just to secure federal land grants, a pattern of corporate greed that echoes modern controversies over land development and regional transit infrastructure in the Pacific Northwest.
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