The Perils of the Columbia Gorge Rail Route

In view of these facts, the Union Pacific officials should make every effort to make their line independent of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, and to avoid the treacherous route down the Columbia River. This route is, at the best, a most uncertain one. Nature seems to have halted all her forces in one mighty effort to baffle the skill of the engineer. The natural difficulties of the country having been overcome by the railroad builder, the operator of the line must now stand prepared for a lasting and unending struggle with the cavalry of the whirlwind and the infantry of the rain. Everlasting wind whirls charge up and down the gorge of the Columbia, whirling cones of sand high in air, and ever threatening to bury the track beneath a desert deluge, or to rend it from its earth moorings and fling it into the seething waters. When snow storms arrive, the snow is drifted and piled up by the wind until the work of clearing the track is almost equal to that of building a new line. Such is the present route to the North Pacific Coast. In order to free their new branch from the loss and dangers consequent upon their present connection, the Union Pacific stockholders should insist upon its completion to tide water on Puget Sound. Then are two possible routes from Huntington, the present terminus of the road, to the populous districts of Eastern Washington. One follows a reasonably direct line to the Northwest; the other, longer but less difficult, follows the Snake River. With its lines now pushed into Eastern Washington, the Union Pacific would be master of the situation.