The Rush for the Big Bend
A new gold and grain boom on the Columbia River, driven by railroad expansion, promises to transform the Washington Territory.
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.
The directors of the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company have decided on opening up a country of more magnitude and of greater richness than has yet been touched. This new land is a land of gold and a land of grain; it is a land of promise and rare fulfillment. It is the country that bounds the Columbia River from Pasco to the Nespelem River, a distance of nearly 450 miles. Eastern capital is looking in this direction, and representatives of various syndicates of moneyed men are continually coming, investigating and making reports. The field is a broad one and there is an assurance of large returns on investment. This the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company appreciates, and in order to forestall any effort other corporations might make to enter a field which they consider practically their own, they are moving in all available directions. William S. Ladd, the Portland banker and Vice President of the company, has always been fascinated by the glories and possibilities of the Big Bend country. It has been his hobby that with an outlet this vast body of land would blossom into fruitfulness exceeded by no country in the world of equal extent. There are now about 1,500 miners in the Granite Creek, Colville and Similkameen districts, and it is confidently expected that this number will be increased to 20,000 before the middle of summer. While the mines to the north are rich in minerals, there will never be the output of wealth from them that there will be from the agricultural lands of the Big Bend of the Columbia, when once that favored section is settled and put under cultivation.
“It is a land of gold and a land of grain; it is a land of promise and rare fulfillment.”
In 1886, the 'Big Bend' of the Columbia was framed as an untapped frontier of endless resources and speculative potential—a sentiment that resonates in contemporary real estate booms across the Pacific Northwest. The tension between mining and large-scale agricultural settlement highlights the ongoing struggle to define Washington's economy between extraction and development.
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