The Struggle for the Rails: Seattle’s Economic Isolation in 1880
As the Seattle & Walla Walla Railroad is sold to Henry Villard's powerful combine, local editors fear the city's economic future will be shackled to Portland's river monopoly.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
As indicated by the telegraphic dispatches, the Seattle & Walla Walla Railroad has finally passed into the hands of Mr. Villard and his associates. The price paid for the property, which consists of the narrow gauge road from Seattle to Newcastle, with its rolling stock, shops, wharves, etc., is $110,000. As we all know, the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company is a very strong corporation. It occupies a field of untold resources and unlimited profit. Its credit is good, and it pays heavy dividends with strict regularity. All the company has to do apparently is to express a wish, and if it is in their power, our people willingly grant it. The last dispatches say that the road is to be extended to the Carbon Hill coal mines. It is but a question of time when we must have direct communication. The talk about the Columbia River being 'the natural highway to the sea' is all humbug. The Columbia might be a natural highway to Portland, and it is a very poor one even to that malarious spot. Now our millers ship Walla Walla flour to Portland; from thence, by reason of its superiority, it goes still further to San Francisco, and from thence it is shipped back to Seattle, within 250 miles of the locality where it grew. It is only one instance of a terrible waste of time and money which could be saved by means of a railroad direct. All their cured meats and breadstuffs to the extent of nearly a quarter million tons are at present purchased either in the Willamette Valley or else California, while our own products up here are rotting for the want of a market. It is our firm belief that the company knows all this, and that at no very distant day we shall be congratulating each other in this city on the completion of the Seattle & Walla Walla Railroad.
“The talk about the Columbia being 'the natural highway to the sea' is all humbug.”
This 1880 editorial highlights Seattle's long-standing anxiety over corporate control of infrastructure and the frustration of being bypassed by regional trade hubs. Today's debates over Seattle's transit expansion and regional freight logistics echo this century-old fear of being cut off from the economic lifeblood of the Pacific Northwest.
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