The Steilacoom Bubble That Burst
A grand, failed railway scheme proves that even the most ambitious 'railroad kings' can't build an empire without a single cent in the bank.
The Oriental and Occidental Railway and Steamship Co. of Steilacoom, W. T., was a project which, during its lifetime, beat the celebrated, but visionary, Doodlebug and Dogtown lines. This company included a transcontinental road to Boston direct; a line of weekly steamships from Steilacoom to China; and an elevated road from Steilacoom to Port Townsend. Its incorporators were the County Clerk and County Judge, and that they were dead in earnest may be gathered from the fact that they had spent large sums of their own money in getting the thing chartered, and in filing their plans and specifications in the office of the Secretary of the Interior in Washington. The O. and O. Company had plenty of brains, plenty of pluck, plenty of friends and plenty of officers, but it lacked one thing, and that one thing was money, and of course it had to die. The County Clerk and County Judge tried very hard to get money to build the transcontinental line, but they couldn't come it. The Clerk found out that capital was very tenacious, and the Judge, to use his own expression, 'found it was a d—d hard thing to borrow,' and hence the O. and O. bubble burst and Steilacoom no longer dreams of becoming a great city.
“The Clerk found out that capital was very tenacious, and the Judge, to use his own expression, 'found it was a d—d hard thing to borrow.'”
Steilacoom’s Victorian-era dream of becoming a global transit hub—complete with elevated trains and trans-Pacific steamships—mirrors the persistent, high-stakes speculation that has defined Washington’s urban development for over a century. Just as in 1880, the tension between visionary 'planners' and the brutal reality of capital remains a central, often messy, theme in our region’s growth.
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