Railroad's Right-of-Way Bill Comes Back at $6,000
A Colville jury rejects a $30,000-an-acre claim from the old Jordan cement plant and hands the Idaho Washington Northern a costly but smaller condemnation verdict.
Another big judgment was rendered against the Idaho Washington Northern Railroad at Colville last week. The jury in the condemnation proceedings for right of way through the property of the old Jordan cement plant at Cement awarded a judgment of $6,000 in favor of the defendant.
All of last week was consumed in the hearing of the case. The jury visited the site and evidently was impressed with the representations of the defense as to the value of the property. Witnesses for the owners testified that the whole property of the company, consisting of 200 acres and the tumbled-down plant, is worth $600,000 and that the six acres the railroad company sought to acquire for right of way was worth $30,000 per acre. The jury held that it was worth $1,000 per acre and decided accordingly.
“The jury held that it was worth $1,000 per acre and decided accordingly.”
This was a fight over who pays when private infrastructure cuts through private land—and how much a factory site is really worth. The jury's $1,000-per-acre verdict was a rebuke to the owner's $30,000-an-acre claim, but the $6,000 judgment still showed that railroad condemnation carried real costs. Modern disputes over pipelines, transmission lines and rail rights-of-way still turn on the same question: what is a community owed when someone else's route crosses it?
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