The Man Who Told James J. Hill There Would Be Two Railroads

Ten years ago, Mr. F. A. Blackwell came into the Spokane country from Pennsylvania. He brought with him some valuable experience gained in the timber business in the East, and enough cash to make the experience worth something. He put the cash and the experience to work, and in two years he was rich.

"He bought well, and sold better!" said a man that knows him pretty well.

So to-day he is building a railroad away up into the valley of the Pend Oreille River, running north to the British Columbia border. The road is not a monument but a business enterprise. Mr. Blackwell has, they say, the spirit of the pioneer, but he also wants to make money. So, while his pet ambition opens many miles of virgin country to the markets of the West, he also intends that it shall make him richer than he is to-day.

In fact, the Blackwell ambition is no modest one, if his friends may be believed. His friends, one may note, are not few, and they seem loyal beyond the usual. Men who have worked with him as equals, or under him as hired men, all seem impressed with the quiet strength of the man.

They say that when Mr. J. J. Hill heard of the Pend Oreille extension, he met Mr. Blackwell one day and said to him:

"I hear you are going to build down the Pend Oreille, Mr. Blackwell."

"Yes," said Blackwell, "I am."

"I was thinking about building a branch down there myself," said the master of the Great Northern, which crosses the valley at Newport.

Mr. Blackwell looked at Mr. Hill and said:

"All right. Then there will be two roads!"

And there it ended — but the Blackwell road will get its rails through this summer to Ione.