The Race for the Rails: Seattle’s Fight to Keep the Northern Pacific Branch

SEATTLE, April 18th, 1877.

To the Intelligencer:

In your editorial of this morning, I think you struck the head on the following point: An extension of our railroad fifty or sixty miles would solve the problem, as then the grain could be hauled to some port. Perhaps you will give a few further thoughts upon this subject.

I will not say that you drove the nail sufficiently deep, for I think that at least 110 additional miles will be required to make the road able to reach the great grain-growing region. The time has come, it is now at hand, for the most earnest effort in this direction, must appear to every one who gives this subject a careful thought.

The present outlook of a long and desperate war in Europe is one great incentive, and the very doubtful prospects of the Northern Pacific R.R. Co. ever building their branch road, is another. The Oregon people are wide awake to these important issues, and are making the most bold and ingenious attempts to turn them to their benefit at the expense of the people of Washington Territory.

At our expense in attempting to take from us a land grant which was given for our benefit, they have been ingenious in their artful devices to make the people believe that our 'Seattle and Walla Walla R.R. (or any other railroad through either of our passes) is both impracticable and needless.' Let them succeed in their efforts to get the land grant of the N.P. R.R. for their branch road, transferred to the Portland, Salt Lake and South Pass Company, and Puget Sound is set back ten or twenty years, if it does not lose Eastern Washington altogether.

It is claimed by some that the N.P. R.R. Co. will, at the next session of Congress, in their effort for an extension of time in which to build their road, attempt to hold their branch land grant, and offer their present real road as so much of their branch road completed. This would be far better for the interests of Puget Sound, than to let the Portland Salt Lake Co. have the grant, and our people would be justified in extending their aid in this effort, were there even a shadow of reality in it.

The fact that they are building this line nearly parallel with their main line, and without the limits of its land grant, is quite sufficient proof of their intentions, nothing of the many other acts in the way. Our salvation (and the only immediate one which I can see) is to secure the branch land grant of the N.P. R.R., to the interest of the Seattle and Walla Walla Railroad.

As to how this may be accomplished, is left to wiser heads than mine. Certainly our Seattle Company can bring to bear much stronger arguments in favor of their rights, than can possibly be brought in the interest of the Portland, Salt Lake Company.

The O.S.N. Company, I am told, are building several boats suitable for transporting grain from the Cascades direct to Astoria, and I should not be at all surprised to hear that freights had dropped 20 to 40 per cent (for the time being) on the Columbia river.

Significant signs, that they are 'girding for the fight' on the 'Oregon Pacific' again. Let the 'Seattle and Walla Walla Company' chip in and make it four hundred this time. The victory is not always to the strong. The 'under dog in the fight' often receives the help of others, to get on top.

There are certain principles and impulses in human nature which, when brought to bear at the right time and in the right place, outweigh even the 'god of the world'—the almighty dollar. The Congressman who could resist the rights of Washington Territory for the transfer of the land grant of the North Pacific branch line, must be a 'boss Tweed' of some sort.