One Landowner's $1,000 Demand Stalls a $200,000 Logging Road

Owing to difficulty in securing right-of-way over private ground and the necessity of building a half mile of county road up the gulch in order to get the vacation of the old road, it is probable that the Panhandle Lumber Co. will temporarily abandon its intention of building a logging road to take off its timber holdings in this township.

In order to get the feasible grade up the gulch the company asked the vacation of a portion of the county road. A petition to the county commissioners was gotten up which was signed by practically all of the business men of Newport and residents of the township west of town. The commissioners and county engineer viewed the proposed vacation and also the road intended to be used during the vacation.

At the meeting of the county commissioners at Colville last week, the county engineer submitted to the commissioners a report favoring the building of a new road alongside the proposed right-of-way, the latter taking the old county road. Objection was made to the substitution of the Calispell road connection for the reason that the latter is not a dedicated county road.

The commissioners are on record to the effect that they are willing to do all in their power to forward the development of the country by granting the vacation asked by the Panhandle Co., but must have the matter put through in proper legal form. They cannot grant the proposed vacation until the forms of the law have been complied with and if a protest is made against the vacation they could not grant same unless a new road is built to be used as a substitute. Neither could they consider the proposal to use the Calispell cut-off road until a petition to make it a county road could be acted on, survey made and dedication to the public completed.

There is where the matter stands at the present time, and it is reported that the Panhandle Co. has about dropped negotiations leading to the building of the road. The substitute road asked for would cost in the neighborhood of $1,000. Another reason for postponing the building of the railroad is the fact that a property owner near the wye asks $1,000 damages for crossing a five-acre tract. The company, it is understood, has tendered a rental of $100 a year for the tract for three years, but this tender is refused.

Probably, if the company had only this timber available, neither of these objections would count at this time, but in the present state of the lumber market, wages, price of grain and hay, etc., the company is likely to seek other places in its large holdings to log, where a large expenditure for a logging road is not necessary.

If the road is not built Newport will lose the benefit of logging operations in the next three years that would require an expenditure of at least $200,000. Farmers in that section will be kept from a market for their timber, cordwood and other produce, and the clearing of the country will be delayed at least four or five years.

It is true that all of this work will have to be done some time, but just now this territory needs this enterprise and the advantages that will accrue from the hastening of the development of the country and its transition from the raw stage to a cultivated, producing territory.