Aberdeen Builds Its Own Railroad to Escape the Steamboats
Fed up with ferry transfers and scow shipments, Aberdeen's citizens offer to grade and lay track for free if the Northern Pacific will just run a train — and the company says yes.
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.
Aberdeen, Sept. 8 [Special.] The Northern Pacific railroad does not enter the city of Aberdeen proper, but passes through South Aberdeen across the Chehalis river from the main town, necessitating the transfer by steamer of all freight and passengers to this place. This causes much delay and annoyance to passengers, and heavy additional expense to consignees of freight. Besides, the four sawmills on the north side of the river have been heavily handicapped in their Eastern shipments by the necessity they were under of scowing their Eastern orders across the river and there reloading them on cars, thus adding greatly to their expense of delivering such orders and making it impossible, in many instances, for them to compete with mills more fortunately situated.
The people have long chafed under these conditions, and many have been the propositions submitted to the railroad people by citizens of this town during the past two or three years for the building of the line in on the north side. Finally, a few weeks since, the citizens sent in a proposition that they would complete the grade into town, furnish rails and ties and lay the same and give free right-of-way, depot, etc., if the company would furnish a construction train, locomotives and supplies and an engineer to oversee the construction. This proposition brought some engineers to Aberdeen without loss of time, and these men looked over the ground, made estimates and reported favorably to acceptance of this offer.
Yesterday the regular west-bound passenger train brought with it the special car of Chief Engineer McHenry, and with that gentleman were Engineers Ehrler and Lonoke. In the evening a party of our leading citizens met at the rooms of the Chamber of Commerce, and were there formally notified by Mr. McHenry of the acceptance by the railroad company of the offer of the citizens. Mr. McHenry stated that it was the first proposition of the kind that had been accepted by the company in over two years.
The people are much encouraged at the present outlook. As a result of the assurances of direct railroad connection, the West mill here, one of the largest on the harbor, which has been idle for a year or more, will be enlarged at once and started up with increased capacity. All the local industries will be stimulated from the same cause, and we are looking forward to prosperous times.
“The citizens sent in a proposition that they would complete the grade into town, furnish rails and ties and lay the same and give free right-of-way, depot, etc., if the company would furnish a construction train.”
When the railroad wouldn't build the last few miles, the town paid to build it themselves — furnishing rails, ties and right-of-way just to get a train into town. That same bargain-hunting boosterism, and the sawmill economy it served, built the timber towns of Grays Harbor, and the tension between a community's needs and a faraway corporation's bottom line never really went away.
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