The Ghost Railroad Through Cowlitz Pass
Booster papers are peddling impossible surveys for a transcontinental line that exists only in the imagination of speculators.
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 Ellensburgh and Tacoma papers have been publishing absurd rumors regarding the location of the Manitoba railroad through Washington Territory to the Sound. The rumor claims that Major Rogers of the Manitoba road is planning a line from the Bitter Root mountains, through the Moses Face Indian reservation to Lewiston, Idaho, then following the Snake River to Orange City, making a bee-line for Ellensburgh, and eventually punching through to the coast via Cowlitz Pass. The truth is, there is no truth in it at all. Major Rogers hasn't been to Ellensburgh since 1887. Aside from this, the line as nominated would be neither economical in grade nor distance. If the road were to be built, why would any sane engineer run lines forty miles north of the direct route? Is the road to be carried across the mountains by balloons, or is it to parallel the Northern Pacific down the Yakima canyon to North Yakima? The sons of old Munchausen are outstripping him in tales of impossibilities.
“Is the road to be carried across the intervening mountains by means of balloons?”
Speculative railroad mania was the 19th-century equivalent of today's tech-bubble venture capital hype. Much like modern developers promising transformational infrastructure in remote areas to drive up land values, these 1889 papers used 'railroad rumors' as a tool for real-estate boosterism rather than factual reporting.
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