The Great Hotel Hunger: Chehalis Builds to Catch the Rail

CHEHALIS, Jan. 25.—The new Chehalis Hotel is finished and is being fitted up. It was greatly needed, as not a night passes but arrivals from the late trains are compelled to lay out for the remainder of the night. Chehalis surely needs a large and comfortable hotel.

The water works company is getting ready for business as soon as the weather is settled. They are also preparing for electric lights to follow the water works.

Mr. Alsworth, general manager of the Northern Pacific Railroad, has passed through here this morning, and states that the depot site is incomplete. He is of the opinion that a large warehouse to transact business is needed to meet the increasing demands of the town.

There is to be a new restaurant on Way Street.

The strong tendency that railroad machine shops and a roundhouse will be built here when the depot is located, has given another upward tendency to prices of real estate. The railroad officials were highly pleased with the site designated for the new depot, expressing their wishes in highly pleasing terms, but demanded that one acre more lot be given for the roundhouse privileges. Mr. Irwin gave the demanded land, and they returned to Tacoma announcing that all interested were well satisfied.

There is also reason to believe that the company who have been so long surveying from Gray's Harbor eastward will locate their railroad through Chehalis. Charles Charlevagus Tower, who owns valuable timber and coal lands east of here, is the principal instigator of these surveys, and his interests are principally about the Newaukum and Chehalis valley. He is doing his best to reach that section. Mr. Irwin knows that the only practicable route is up the Newaukum river, and that makes it necessary for any road to reach the coast from either the Sound or Gray's Harbor to pass through Chehalis, which is located within a mile of the mouth of the Newaukum.