The Struggle for the Pacific Northwest’s Iron Backbone

For nearly a quarter of a century, our people have been looking forward with anxious solicitude for the completion of a railroad from the shores of Puget Sound to Lake Superior. The route was surveyed in 1853, and on July 2, 1864, a charter was granted by Congress to the Northern Pacific Railroad Company to build the line. To enable the company to construct its road, a magnificent grant of land was made to it, amounting to 60,000,000 acres, estimated by the company to be worth $150,000,000. More than thirteen years have elapsed since that charter was granted, yet only 555 miles of the road has been completed. If mistakes have been made, we can at least entertain the hope that in the future, governed by the experience of the past, they may be avoided. The grant was not made to enrich a few individuals, but to benefit the whole nation. The policy heretofore pursued has retarded settlement, not only on railroad land but on government land contiguous thereto. The settler is in a great measure precluded from occupying any of the unsurveyed lands. He is unwilling to make improvements which may, when the lines of survey are extended, be found to be on the lands of the company, and instead of securing a homestead, he may be compelled to pay the company double or even fourfold the price of government land, or lose his claim and his improvements entirely.