A Canal, 51,000 Acres, and a Bond Deal Gone Wrong
A federal court in Tacoma appoints receivers for the Yakima Investment Company after an English syndicate backs out of a $700,000 bond issue.
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.
TACOMA, Jan. 2.—Judge Hanford in the United States circuit court today appointed President Paul Schulse, Joseph S. Allen, of Spokane, and George Donald, of North Yakima, receivers of the Yakima Investment Company, which is the successor of the Northern Pacific, Yakima and Kittitas Irrigation Company. The receivership was granted on the application of Judge O. F. Paxton, of Portland, Or., representing the California Safe Deposit and Trust Company, of San Francisco, which holds, as trustee, the Yakima Investment Company’s mortgage given in 1893 to secure a $700,000 bond issue which was to be sold to an English syndicate. Later the syndicate failed to take the bonds, causing complications.
The company is said to have a floating indebtedness of $360,000, and $630,000 of bonds are outstanding, part of them being pledged to secure the indebtedness. The company’s assets are valued at $1,500,000. They include 51,000 acres of land in the Yakima valley, forty-four miles of main line canal, known as the Sunnyside canal, and about 50 miles of laterals, branches and ditches.
“Later the syndicate failed to take the bonds, causing complications.”
The Yakima Irrigation receivership is an early chapter in the long fight over who controls water and land in the Yakima Valley. Then as now, big irrigation dreams depended on distant bond markets and speculative capital. When the financing failed, the land and canal became a court problem.
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