The Great Mountain Road Debate of 1877
As Seattle dreamed of a transcontinental railroad, settlers in the Kittitas Valley argued that a simple wagon road was the true key to their economic survival.
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 question of the extension of time to the Northern Pacific Railroad Co. is the great item of news to most people in our immediate locality. The concern, regarding this people, is as to the retention of the land grants already withdrawn. Others deem it preferable and more beneficial for this immediate section that the company will work a forfeiture under the act of Congress, restoring the land in July 1877. It would open to settlement thousands of acres of good agricultural lands.
Again, we don't want a railroad through the Snoqualmie Pass as much as we do a wagon road. The wagon road we can have at much less cost, and receive better returns than could possibly be secured to us by railroad. The wages earned by teamsters is partly expended with us. Horses and mules must have hay and grain. The railroad company centralizes their labor, and the earnings of the company, which is wrung from the producer by extortionate rates of freight, are very seldom distributed in the rural districts.
Seattle certainly could meet us halfway. A passable road will divert the trade of this entire country from the Columbia River toward Seattle. In the building of a wagon road we have no lack of material along the whole line. The grade on both sides of the mountains is gradual, the natural rise is slight compared with many other localities which have been overcome on this coast and in other countries. Austria, for the benefit of commerce, has constructed through sixty passes of the Alps commodious wagon roads, from which her people derive greater benefits than from her railroads.
“The railroad company centralizes their labor, and the earnings of the company, which is wrung from the producer by extortionate rates of freight, are very seldom distributed in the rural districts.”
This 1877 debate highlights a perennial tension in Washington: the choice between grand, capital-intensive infrastructure projects favored by city elites and the practical, localized infrastructure needed by rural communities. Today, the debate over Snoqualmie Pass continues, shifting from wagon roads and railroads to the permanent struggle of maintaining the I-90 corridor against the geography of the Cascades.
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