The High Cost of Being 'Across the River'
In 1878, Sumner settlers faced a familiar struggle: a transportation monopoly that forced them to pay as much to haul freight across the river as to ship it 150 miles by rail.
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 Sumner settlement, from Bowman and Grainger’s ferry up to Elm, is the agricultural cream of the Puyallup valley. The railroad runs on the south side of the river, yet no good warehouse accommodations have been provided. Freight rates are punishingly high; settlers north of the river pay $1 per ton for warehousing at Puyallup, and another dollar to haul their freight home across the river. This means it costs them more to get goods from New Tacoma to their homes—just nine miles away—than it costs to ship those goods 150 miles from Portland. This imbalance has led settlers to earnestly desire the opening of the river for steamboat navigation. The river is deep enough, but snags and jams currently block the path. A man experienced in water logging could clear these obstacles for about $300, which local settlers are prepared to pay. If the river were opened, it would break the monopoly, providing a vital artery for the 600 tons of freight these farmers produce annually.
“No community has permanent prosperity that depends upon a single product that finds a market once a year, and has nothing to dispose of the rest of the year.”
This 1878 dispatch perfectly mirrors modern logistical anxieties in Washington's agricultural corridors. Just as Sumner's 19th-century farmers were held hostage by rail monopolies and river blockages, today's local producers still battle the 'last mile' problem—where the cost of local transport often outweighs the efficiency of the global supply chain.
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