The Great Divide: The Fight for a Mountain Rail Link

A new railroad project is now being agitated on the Sound. Your correspondent hopes that it will not end in talk. There is money to be made by a road that will connect Walla Walla with Puget Sound. Your people want coal, fish, lumber, and lime. We here want the same, and flour, wheat, fruit, and vegetables to give for such articles in exchange. The transportation cannot necessarily be much, as the distance is not great. There is a great deal of truth in the foregoing, but the writer betrays a feeling shared by too many people east of the mountains as well as west. He says, 'I think you ought to encourage the movement. What will help Walla Walla will help us. Write it up and give your aid to the enterprise.' The correspondent says nothing whatever about helping himself, or his neighbors helping. Our people would be glad enough to build the whole road if they were able, and they will make a big try anyhow. Still, it is not generous on the part of Yakima and Walla Walla to thrust the whole burden upon Seattle and King County. The hardest, slowest, and most costly part of the work is that west of the Cascade Mountains. Our people will undertake this job themselves, and will put it through on short notice if Walla Walla and Yakima people will build down the eastern slope. Let the people take hold for themselves, and not whine at their neighbors and call upon them to do all.