The Great Land Grab: Seattle's Board of Commissioners Condemns Northern Pacific’s 'Gross Swindle'
In a rare show of unified civic resistance, Thurston County officials denounce the railroad's seizure of public lands as an outrage against settlers.
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.
At the opening of the County Court yesterday, the Board of County Commissioners adopted unanimous resolutions condemning the Northern Pacific Railroad Company. The board declared that the withdrawal from sale and settlement by homestead and preemption claimants in favor of the Northern Pacific Railroad Company of every odd section of public lands over the entire agricultural portion of the county was a "very great hardship, damage and wrong to the people of said county." This action prevents the settlement and improvement of the county and imposes upon the agricultural settler the burden of paying $20 per acre for the public lands, whereas otherwise he would only have to pay one-half of that price.
The board further stated that the known and avowed purpose of the Company to appropriate 795,000 acres of the public lands in King County for the building of a local coal road in Pierce County, from Tacoma up the Puyallup valley thirty-one miles to certain coal mines, is an "outrage and gross swindle." They argued that these mines and said real road are wholly within the limits of said earned lands of said Company upon their main line of road, and are in no manner justified by the land grant of said Company.
Furthermore, the board recognized and regarded the movement set on foot at a public meeting of the people of King County, held in Seattle, May 1st, 1877, for the purpose of aiding in procuring a restitution of the public lands to settlement, and preventing the misappropriation of said land to the building of said local coal road, as a "grand, just and wise course," and recommended the hearty concurrence and support of the whole people therein.
This 1877 resolution captures the fierce early battle over who truly owned the Pacific Northwest: the federal government's railroad grants or the actual settlers. The Northern Pacific Railroad was granted massive tracts of land to fund its construction, often at the expense of homesteaders who found their claims blocked by corporate interests. This mirrors modern tensions between large-scale development, infrastructure projects, and housing affordability, where civic bodies often struggle to balance economic growth with the rights of ordinary residents.
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