Spokane Capitalists Map an Electric Railroad and Irrigation Empire West of Newport
Surveyors traced a line from Arcadia to Newport while a syndicate secured water rights on five Stevens County lakes, promising power, irrigation and a transformed countryside.
Two corps of surveyors have been working for some time between Arcadia, an irrigated section in the northern portion of Spokane county, and Newport. The engineers state that they are running the lines for an electric railroad to be constructed in connection with the big project for irrigating a large portion of land in the southern portion of Stevens and the northern portion of Spokane counties.
The new project is backed by a syndicate of eastern and Spokane capitalists. Floyd L. Daggett, formerly mayor of Spokane, is the manager of the company which has already obtained control of large bodies of land and secured water rights on five lakes in this county and a few small ones in Spokane County.
The lakes on which rights have been secured in Stevens county are Diamond, which is the largest and is located but eight miles from Newport, Sacheen, Trout, Horseshoe and Fan. Sacheen will be developed for power for the electric line as a greater fall can be secured from that lake than the others. From the other lakes it is proposed to obtain a flow of 5,000 cubic feet of water per minute for use in the irrigating of the lands owned by the company.
In addition to the industries that may be developed in the region from irrigating, there are large bodies of fine timber lands and also fine farming lands that do not need irrigating. It will be a fine agricultural section when the timber is removed.
Diamond Lake is but eight miles from Newport and with the road completed to that point there is but little doubt regarding its construction to Newport.
“Diamond Lake is but eight miles from Newport and with the road completed to that point there is but little doubt regarding its construction to Newport.”
The promised electric line and irrigation network never became the region’s defining infrastructure, but the playbook—outside capital, water rights, and a rail spur to unlock land—is an old Stevens County story. Water and transportation still decide which rural places grow.
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