Great Northern Railroad Pushes Toward the Columbia
Tracklayers near the river as construction crews work around the clock to connect the Big Bend country to the Seattle market.
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 Great Northern tracklayers are now within sixteen miles of Rock Island. All but two of the ten bridges in the coulees and along the Columbia river are finished. The construction train will be here within twenty days. Car wheels and rails for the transfer over the Columbia have arrived, and the work of construction of the approaches and pontoons is progressing with all possible speed. Day and night shifts are at work all along the line in this vicinity putting the grade into condition to receive the steel as soon as it arrives. The people of the Big Bend country are anxiously awaiting the opening of this thoroughfare to the Seattle market, to which it will be a valuable addition.
“The people of the Big Bend country are anxiously awaiting the opening of this thoroughfare to the Seattle market.”
The race to bridge the Columbia was the engine of 1890s economic growth, effectively tying Eastern Washington's agricultural output directly to Seattle's harbor. This infrastructure boom cemented the regional dependence on rail that defined the Pacific Northwest's economic geography for decades.
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