Rainier’s Shingle Boom and the Road Olympia Forgot

A practical shingle man has secured an option on a mill site on the Deschutes River near Rainier and has gone East to purchase machinery and find a market for his shingles. Several shingle mills are contemplated in this vicinity, which will be a good thing. It is a shame to burn up good cedar, even to clear the first-class land found here.

Some of our farmers are hauling shingle bolts to the railroad and shipping them, preferring the small margin of profit this gives them to burning up the cedar.

Yelm claims to be on the direct route from Olympia to the Mineral Creek region. I would suggest, in the spirit of friendly rivalry which prevails between that village and Rainier, that anyone take a map and look it up. Rainier will abide the consequences. The road to Yelm may be more direct, but ours can be straightened at small expense. While on the road question (Mineral Creek and the claims of Yelm and Rainier as a base of supplies aside) it is my belief that it will pay the business men of Olympia to look this up.

This section is tributary to Olympia, which should have its city trade. Those who are used to trading at Olympia take the roundabout road and pay 'steen bits for shelter for their horses and furnish their own feed when they want anything from the city. Newcomers ship their produce to Tacoma and then take the cars for that city and trade it out there.

A new railroad is a great thing and is welcomed to a city with boom of cannon and roll of orators' tongues, but the country road that winds its way over prairie and through groves of 'Christmas trees' and enters unannounced, gets there likewise. I hold this an axiom of commercial economy: That no city can grow so great as to afford to ignore the country immediately around it. VERITAS.