A Secret Passage Through the Cascades
A railway superintendent confirms the discovery of a new, low-elevation pass through the mountains, sparking interest from major rail lines.
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.
Whatcom, Wash.—Superintendent Donovan, of the Bellingham Bay and British Columbia railway, who has just returned from a meeting of the directors of the road in San Francisco, today confirmed the reported discovery of a pass through the Cascade Mountains, between the line of the Great Northern and the international boundary, of a lower elevation than any one at the present time used. His company, he said, had agreed to pay the discoverer $5,000 for information as to where it existed. The company's surveying party engaged in the location of the line from here to Spokane has been taken through the pass by the discoverer. Mr. Donovan said that his road would be built through Spokane, but denied that it had been acquired by the Union Pacific. That road will reach the Sound over it, but other roads, he declared, would have the same privilege.
“His company, he said, had agreed to pay the discoverer $5,000 for information as to where it existed.”
The race to secure mountain passes was the 19th-century version of fiber-optic routing or pipeline infrastructure—a high-stakes game of geography and engineering that dictated which towns would thrive and which would become ghost towns. Today, these same mountain corridors remain vital, though they are now contested by climate resilience needs rather than just steam locomotive access.
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