The $100,000 Rail Bonus
Yakima outdoes its neighbors by raising a massive public bonus to secure a standard-gauge railroad link to the Columbia River.
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.
Yakima aspired to raise $100,000 bonus. She has not only raised that amount, but nearly three thousand dollars over. She has done that which Walla Walla and Ellensburg failed in, and which has only been equaled in this great state by rich and prosperous Spokane Falls. The latter raised $100,000 as a bonus to secure the building of the Spokane & Northern railroad; and now plucky Yakima, which only claims a population one-eighth as great as that of the “empire” city, comes proudly to the front with a like amount of bonus for the Portland, Lower Columbia & Eastern Washington railroad company, which agrees to build, equip and operate a standard gauge railroad from some point on the Columbia river, in Clark county, to North Yakima within two years. Work is to commence from the west end within 120 days and from this end within six months, and at least $100,000 is to be expended in Yakima county during 1890.
“Plucky Yakima... comes proudly to the front with a like amount of bonus.”
The practice of 'bonusing' rail lines was a common civic gamble in the 1890s. While these rail lines defined the growth of central Washington, they also show how town survival was often a matter of who could scrape together the most private capital to subsidize corporate transit.
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