The Great Land Ring of the Northern Pacific
Settlers of Washington Territory take on a powerful railroad corporation accused of hoarding public land for private profit.
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 Tacoma Herald has become furious at the action of Messrs. Jacobs and McGilvra in their efforts to defend the settlers of Washington Territory against the machinations of a foreign corporation which sought to hold a large portion of the public domain for private speculation. Those gentlemen are accused of sacrificing the interests of Eastern and Western Washington to the interests of Seattle. However, a large majority of the people of Washington Territory take a different view. For eight long years, waiting industry has been at the mercy of an organized band of land speculators. Their agents preceded the railroad surveyors and entered 40,000 acres of land in the best locations for private speculation, to which the location of the road was subsequently made subsidiary. Five millions of dollars have been expended and 2,667,000 acres of public lands acquired without promoting settlement, opening new trade, or building a single mile of road in the direction of its eastern terminus. Instead, the company built a coal road south of Tacoma exclusively for the improvement of their own private property. If the people of Tacoma have been betrayed in this bargain between the Northern Pacific Company and the Portland Board of Trade, they have no cause to blame Jacobs and McGilvra, who labored faithfully to defeat this nefarious project.
“For eight long years waiting industry and prostrate enterprise has been at the mercy of an organized band of land speculators.”
This 1878 battle over the Northern Pacific Railroad's land grabs echoes contemporary Seattle debates regarding corporate influence on city development and the privatization of public land. Just as settlers then struggled against a 'land ring' manipulating infrastructure for speculative gain, modern residents continue to confront how concentrated ownership shapes housing and transit accessibility.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.