The Struggle for an Inland Route
Olympia’s leadership frets that without a wagon road over the Cascades, the capital city risks losing its status to the burgeoning trade of the Upper Columbia.
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.
We have on several occasions within the past two years directed the attention of the people of the Territory, and more especially of the Sound region, to the importance of constructing a good passable wagon road from the Sound to the Upper Columbia. While nobody questions the importance of the speedy construction of such a road, and all concede that the business and population of the Sound region is steadily diminishing rather than increasing for the want of it, still no active steps have been taken. Unless something is done to secure a portion of the population now pouring into the Territory east of the mountains, we shall very soon be outnumbered in population and representation, the result of which will be the removal of the capital, and the transfer of trade which is now languishing upon the Sound, to other sections of the Territory. A few months ago a party of enterprising citizens explored and marked a route from Olympia to the Upper Columbia, and they represented it as possible to make a good road for an outlay of about two thousand dollars. The late discovery of rich gold diggings on the bars of the Upper Columbia add greatly to the importance of the work proposed. If nothing is done on the Sound to secure the rich trade of that section, it will necessarily continue to fall in the lap of our Oregon neighbors. We would suggest the propriety of calling a meeting of our citizens at once at different points on the Sound for the purpose of devising ways and means for opening the road.
“We will awake from our Rip Van Winkle sleep to find that we are strangers to the more enterprising people who adjoin us.”
This 1863 plea for a mountain road highlights the perpetual anxiety Olympia has faced as the state capital, fearing isolation from the eastern and central regions of Washington. While the 'wagon road' has long been replaced by U.S. Route 12 and I-90, the political tension over resource allocation and geographic representation between the Puget Sound and the Inland Empire remains a defining feature of state politics.
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