The Iron Road Approaches Aberdeen
A progress report on the Northern Pacific railway construction as the long-awaited line inches toward the city.
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.
As conflicting reports circulate regarding the track-laying progress of the Northern Pacific, a Herald reporter made a trip to ascertain the reality. At the crossing of the Chehalis River to South Aberdeen, the piling has been driven for a wire drawbridge costing over $80,000. Construction is expected to start around the first of June. Further up the grade, a gang of six men is at work on the sloughs. At the brickyard on the slough, a machine is moulding 10,000 bricks per day, with plans to turn out over a million this season. Currently, twenty-eight men are engaged in track-laying, averaging less than a mile a day. While the grade is settled, it is not probable the road will be running into the city before August 1st unless the force is considerably increased.
“The grade between here and Montesano is being raised, two to three feet, to the grade of the bridge, and this work has been accomplished to within half a mile of that place.”
The arrival of the railroad was the 'boom' event that defined Aberdeen's future as a lumber capital. Today, while passenger rail is a memory, the geography of the industrial waterfront and the rivers that necessitated these expensive bridges remain central to the city's identity.
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