The Iron Flash: How Spokane Fell for a Railroad

WALLA WALLA, Jan. 10. — Anticipating trouble from the one-track obstructionist, and being among our most wealthy men, the O. & W.T. road, which for some time had halted its advance on the common near the tannery, on Saturday quietly purchased the rights-of-way across the only two intervening lots between the end of their track and Spokane street, over which they already had the right-of-way granted them.

So, while the court was out of town, early Monday morning, like a flash, the 120 brawny men composing the advance guard of O. & W.T. tracklayers, graders and surfacers sprang to their appointed task, and almost before the few early risers who were watching the proceedings were aware of it, the track was laid and the engine and accompanying construction train was across lots and headed southward down Spokane Street.

In fact, it is said that the work was done so expeditiously that the track-laying machinery did not stop at all till high and dry upon the thoroughfare aforenamed. To be sure, the ties were not stone-ballasted, nor were the fishplates tightened to withstand the impact of an 80-ton engine at a mile-a-minute gait. All the same, the 30-ton freight engine did jump over them and onward in fulfillment of its high purpose, which, before the evening shadows fell, it had so gloriously multiplied; for just at dusk the ponderous locomotive with its accompanying train and glad trainmen and willing co-workers on the ground, surrounded by a host of men, women and children, many of whom had all day followed the advancing forces, stood at rest on the common in front of the residence of Whitman College.

The bell rang, the engine screeched, and long and loud hurrah went up from the joyful throng, and thus the long expected and anxiously watched-for road was done and the one great Washington Territory railroad is at last within the gates of our fair and now thoroughly happy city.