The Sliding Hill: Railroad Abandoning Prosser
A shifting, unstable hill beneath the tracks forces the Northern Pacific to build an expensive eight-mile detour, threatening to bypass the town of Prosser.
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.
Announcement has been made by officials of the Northern Pacific that the Grandview-Gibbon cut-off will be built this summer. There is a saving of eight miles on this cut-off in addition to the advantage of better grades. The construction of the link between Grandview and Gibbon is likely to change the main line traffic of the Northern Pacific on that part of its system and leave Prosser on a branch line. There is a bad hill on the main line between Gibbon and Prosser. The roadbed on the hill seems insecure and the grade is heavy. The railroad has spent a vast sum of money on this hill but in spite of all they have done, the whole hill seems to be sliding slowly but surely toward the Yakima river.
“The whole hill seems to be sliding slowly but surely toward the Yakima river.”
The instability of the terrain in the Yakima Valley remains a constant challenge for modern infrastructure. This story captures the era of 'railroad determinism,' where a single engineering decision—like abandoning a sliding hill—could dictate the economic survival of an entire town like Prosser.
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