Ten Strangers at the Tunnel: Is the Union Pacific Coming Back to Olympia?
A corps of engineers has been quietly pacing the unfinished Tumwater tunnel, refusing to say who sent them or what they want — while heavy rain eats away at the abandoned work.
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 long silence of the Union Pacific railroad has been broken by the appearance of a corps of engineers who have been seen examining the roadbed and surroundings just south of Tumwater. The headquarters of the party cannot be found, neither will they state their business nor their intentions. Foreman Dwyer, however, who had charge of the work from the north end of the Tumwater tunnel to the old brickyard, was the first to discover them, and having been connected with the company for a number of years, recognized them as having come from the neighborhood of Kansas. At least, that is where he last saw them. He states that they were ten in number, and at the time were examining the tunnel, about 100 feet of which has been built from the south approach. Mr. Dwyer thinks that they are endeavoring to get around this work if they possibly can, as it is the most expensive part of the line. The intention was to run the tunnel several hundred feet through the sand bank, and about 100 feet had been finished when all work stopped. The heaviest kind of timbers were used and the work was slow and tedious, but the heavy rains are washing the earth away and causing a cave-in. The present whereabouts of the mysterious body of men cannot be learned, but it is supposed they are covering ground in the direction of Centralia.
“The headquarters of the party cannot be found, neither will they state their business nor their intentions.”
A railroad's survey crew could raise or dash a town's fortunes overnight in 1891, and the company felt no obligation to explain itself to the people whose land it crossed. Ten men with levels and no answers were enough to set Olympia speculating about the line that never quite arrived. The corridor south of Tumwater is still rail and trail right-of-way today, a reminder of how much of this region's shape was drawn in distant corporate boardrooms.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.