USA > Washington > History of Washington; the rise and progress of an American state, Vol. IV > Part 21
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When Governor Squire's term of office began the financial condition of the territory was excellent. It was entirely out of debt and had $47,901.81 in its treasury on July 1, 1884. The counties were no longer negligent about paying their territorial taxes. The assessed valuation had risen to $50,508,484. In 1885 this total was slightly reduced, partly by the depressed business conditions which then prevailed, but largely by the fact that railroad property was not assessed, the legislature of 1883 having passed a law providing that railroad companies should pay taxes on their gross earnings. This law soon became unpopular and was repealed in 1887.
Population was increasing rapidly. The national census of 1880 had shown only 66,979 people in the territory, but the territorial census taken in 1885 showed a total of 129,438. The counties of Asotin, Lincoln, Kittitas, Franklin, Adams and Douglass, east of the mountains, and Skagit County in the Sound country, had been organized in 1883, and all were prospering. This prosperous growth continued until the territory became a state in 1889.
The annual reports of Governor Semple were prepared with quite as much care as those of Governor Squire, and show that the territory was quite as prosperous during his
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term as in that which preceded it. The coal mines and lumber mills were steadily increasing their output. Manu- factures in various lines, including ship building, was increas- ing. The fisheries along the Columbia and in the Sound, as well as deep sea fishing, was attracting more and more atten- tion each succeeding year. The labor supply was scarcely equal to the demand. Irrigation, particularly in the Yakima and Kittitas valleys, was beginning to give evidence of the wondrous change it was to produce in the middle portion of the territory, and companies with capital sufficient to build ditches that would water large areas were beginning to be formed.
During the last months of the territorial period a large part of the business portion of Seattle was destroyed by fire, and the cities of Spokane, Vancouver and Ellensburg suffered from similar conflagrations. The fire in Seattle began about half past 2 o'clock on the afternoon of June 6th, and before midnight about one hundred and twenty acres in the very heart of it had been burned over. Many people were made homeless temporarily, but the relief promptly furnished by neighboring cities saved all from actual suffering. The fire, which for the time being seemed a calamity, soon proved to be a blessing in disguise to the city. Rebuilding was promptly begun; some faults in the city's plat were removed or corrected, and within a year few people felt occasion to regret that the fire had taken place.
The last of the reports made by the territorial governors, was that of Miles C. Moore, at the close of his short term of only nine months in the executive office. It showed that the population of the territory was at that time 239,544; at the election for state officers just held, 58,543 votes had been cast. The assessed value of taxable property was
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$124,795,449, having more than doubled in the two preceding years. Of the 44,798,160 acres in the territory, 21,715,258 had been surveyed. During the year, 487,410 acres had been taken up by homestead entries and 527,505 by preëmp- tion. The total entries, including timber and coal lands, and timber culture claims, amounted to 1,425,968 acres, and the total disposed of during the year, including sales by the Northern Pacific Railroad Company, was 1,841,989 acres. The farmers in the eastern counties were sending a large part of their products to St. Paul, Minneapolis and Chicago, while the flour mills at Walla Walla and Spokane were finding an abundant market in the mining regions of Montana and Northern Idaho. Trade in all lines was active. The total tonnage entered at the Port Townsend Custom house for the year was 955,036 tons; the clearances were 962,751 tons. The value of exports for the year was $2,937,477. During the year the Oregon Railway and Navi- gation Company had taken out of the wheat-growing counties 104,464 tons of wheat, 13,670 tons of flour, 9,458 tons of barley and 1,226 tons of wool. The hop crop had amounted to 8,202,287 pounds. The total output of the coal mines was 917,603 tons, a falling off from the previous year, when it had amounted to 1,133,800 tons. The total lumber cut for export amounted to 755,00,000 feet. The salmon pack for the year was 205,000 cases. A new hospital for the insane had been established at Medical Lake, and the new peniten- tiary at Walla Walla, which had been completed in 1887 had been considerably improved. The territory turned over to the state an efficient national guard composed of two regi- ments of infantry, of six companies each, and one troop of cavalry, a total of 845 officers and men.
CHAPTER LVI. THE RAILROAD COMPLETED.
W HEN Jay Cooke & Co. could no longer sell bonds, and procure money to extend the rails of the Northern Pacific across the continent, the promoters of the enterprise began to realize more fully than they had ever done before, the vastness of the undertaking in which they had engaged. Most of them were railroad managers and railroad builders, and they knew well that railroads require a local patronage to sustain them, while they had undertaken to build nearly 2,000 miles of track through an almost uninhabited country. There were sparse settlements at either end of the line; between them there were long stretches of arid plains, and two mountain ranges. There was an abundance of fertile land also, which they had confidently expected to get settled as their road building pro- ceeded, but in this they had only begun to be successful. So persistently had people believed that Minnesota and the Dakotas were ice bound regions during eight or nine months in the year, that settlers had not been induced to go there as rapidly as had been hoped. Had not President Cass and Director Cheney purchased large tracts of the company's lands in Dakota, and by the help of Farmer Dalrymple, began to demonstrate, on a grand scale, that the boundless prairies of that region would readily grow the best bread- making wheat in the world, the road already built between the Mississippi and the Missouri might still have been with- out patronage. They had thus far counted, too hopefully perhaps, on the transcontinental business-the trade with the Orient that Stevens had foreseen would come in time-but none of this would be available until the whole line was com- pleted, and even then it would require to be developed and built up, which was to be a slow process. Less experienced men than they were in railroad building and management,
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would have been wholly incompetent, in the position they were in; less courageous men would have abandoned the undertaking in despair.
But these had ventured too much to lose all; they knew too well the worth of what was to be won to abandon hope or effort. Plans were made by which a part should be sacri- ficed in order that a part might be saved, and the road already built maintained until better days should arrive, when work could be continued. Accordingly the bond holders gave up their places as bondholders to become stockholders, in order that the property might be again pledged for a new loan.
But no money could be raised even in this way, for a con- siderable time. During 1873 and 1874 the road scarcely earned operating expenses. Then a small surplus was earned for the three or four succeeding years, which was expended in building a few short branches, and in securing a connection with St. Paul. Meantime appeals were made to Congress for help in various ways, all of which were refused, and at times it even seemed possible that the forfeiture of certain portions of the land grant, on which the company depended to complete its line, would be declared.
But in 1878 conditions began to improve. The govern- ment was about to resume payment in gold and public con- fidence was returning. In 1879 Mr. Billings, who had by that time become president, was able to negotiate loans for resuming work both on the eastern and western divisions. Track laying extended slowly westward from the Missouri River for the first few months, and it was not until 1880 that work was begun in Washington.
During the early panic years the German holders of bonds and stocks in the Oregon and California Railroad, and the
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various steamship enterprises of which Ben. Holliday had been the promoter, had sent Henry Villard to the coast to take care of their interests, and he had managed so success- fully, in these and other matters which they had entrusted to him, as to secure their almost unlimited confidence. They had furnished him money with which to build a rail- road along the south bank of the Columbia, from Portland to the broad wheat fields and rich stock-growing country in eastern Washington and Oregon. Its tracks had already reached and passed Wallula; it had changed Dr. Baker's road to a standard gauge, and was extending its branches to Waitsburg, Riparia, Dayton and Pendleton. Villard had also secured control of the Oregon Steam Navigation Com- pany, which the Northern Pacific had lost soon after its financial difficulties began.
As it was neither advisable to antagonize Villard and his railroad and river lines, by building a competing line along the north bank of the river for the purpose of securing only a share of the existing business, an agreement was made with him to haul construction material from Portland to Wallula upon favorable terms, and for an option to use his line from Wallula westward, when the Northern's tracks should be completed to that point. By this means building could be begun from Wallula eastward, the construction of a difficult section of track would be avoided for the time being, and direct connection would be easily and more quickly gained with the lower river and deep water when the line should be nearing completion.
The graders began work at Wallula in October 1879, but made very slow progress during the remainder of that year. In 1881, the grade was completed to and beyond the state line. The work was prosecuted under many difficulties
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and embarrassments. The line ran, during the greater part of the way, through an uninhabited and untimbered country, and the graders were sometimes nearly 100 miles in advance of the track layers. Ties, and timber for bridges and trestles, were obtained with the utmost difficulty. While a sufficient supply had been cut in the timbered regions along the upper Columbia and its branches, a long time in advance, as it was supposed at the time when it was to be used, the streams were so low at first that it could not be got out. Then an unusual flood came and much of it was washed away, and a new supply had to be provided.
The resumption of work on the Northern line, and the building of the new line along the Columbia from Portland to Wallula gave an immense impetus, for that day, to the settlement of all the eastern counties. The rate on grain from Walla Walla and neighboring points to Portland was reduced to $8 per ton, and on stock and all other farm prod- ucts proportionately. The farmers everywhere took new courage. The Oregon Improvement Company, with a capital of $5,000,000, which was one of the Villard enterprises, organized for the purpose of developing the mines and other resources of the country, bought 150,000 acres of farm lands from the Northern Pacific land grant, and by liberal advertising, offering farms to settlers on easy terms, did much to hasten settlement. The towns everywhere grew as rapidly as the farming regions were settled. Columbia County had been set off from Walla Walla in 1875, and in 1878 contained a population of 5,771 people, which in 1880 had increased to 7,103. Garfield County was set off from Columbia in November 1881, with Pomeroy as its county seat. Six years earlier, there were probably less than 200 settlers within its limits. Yet at its first election, held in
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1882, 1,014 votes were cast. A year later, in October 1883, Asotin County was organized.
The Walla Walla country had developed rapidly, even before the completion of the railroad line which gave its products a direct outlet to Portland. By the census of 1870, when the country included all of what afterwards became Columbia, Garfield and Asotin Counties, the wheat grown had amounted to only 190,256 bushels. By the census of 1880 this product had increased to 779,907 bushels, not including what was grown in the part of it out of which three new counties were made. Other crops had increased in proportion, although during all this time the surplus had been sent to market from some parts of the county at great cost. In the northern part, along Snake River, it had been necessary to build chutes more than half a mile in length, through which wheat, oats and barley were poured down from the high bluff along the river to the steamboat landings. The first experiment with these chutes was very discouraging. The first one constructed was a wood box four inches square, and 3,200 feet long. The grain poured into it made a de- scent of 1,700 feet in its passage, and with such velocity as to convert much of it into unbolted flour, by the time it reached the bottom, as well as rapidly to wear away the chute itself. But by repeated experiments a way was found, not only to check the golden grain in its descent, at intervals 100 feet apart, but to materially lessen the wear of the chute, and also to make the grain clean itself in transit. By the coming of the railroads, this novel method of transporting grain was largely done away with.
Not only did the area sown to wheat increase rapidly from year to year during this period, but that planted to kindred crops increased in proportion. The farmers also found their
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land admirably suited to fruit growing and the raising of vegetables, and with the completion of the railroad giving the farmers access to market, the growing of these products, particularly of small fruits and vegetables, increased phenom- enally. The towns grew in proportion as the country devel- oped. Manufacturing, particularly of flour and lumber and lumber products, also increased and the manufacture of farm machinery was begun and throve in proportion as population increased.
Railroad building in an uninhabited country brings with it a people who build railroads; few of them do anything else to benefit the country. A few others follow to despoil them of their earnings, and waste them in riotous living. They too, do nothing of value to the country, except finally to leave it. People of both kinds came into the country east of the Columbia River, when work was resumed on the main line of the Northern Pacific, at Wallula. Towns sprang up at various points along the line that did not long remain after the track laying had been finished. One of these was at the crossing of the Snake River. Here a bridge, costing $750,000 was to be built, and it was certain that a considerable number of men would be employed there for several months. The graders and track layers, the quarry men and wood choppers working on both sides of the river would resort thither to spend their earnings if suitable attractions were provided. Within a short time sixteen saloons, most of which had dance halls and gambling rooms attached, were established there. There were no stores; the company's store supplied all the articles of rough wearing apparel that were required. A few restaurants provided food for those who had money to buy; hotels were not needed as every traveler carried his blanket with him and found
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convenient lodgings, with nothing to pay therefor, under the spreading sage brush. The money thus saved by these thrifty lodgers, together with all the rest they brought with them was soon spent in riotous living. The town contained all the vicious elements that are found in the vilest parts of great cities, and they were wholly unrestrained by police regulations. The only law known or recognized was the law of the strongest. But the reckless bravado of the mining camp, where differences of opinion are often settled by resort to the ever ready revolver, was rarely seen there. One day a man was stabbed to death in a street quarrel. His slayer claimed he had not meant to kill him, but a committee of the bystanders thought differently and promptly hung him to a telegraph pole. After that most quarrels were adjusted in quieter ways, after dark, and with the aid of the sandbag or bludgeon, and the swift-flowing waters of the river carried with them to the sea all evidence that a tragedy had taken place, except that which the wielder of the bludgeon carried with him until he, too perhaps found his way down the river.
The town was incorporated, and had its mayor and other officials in its day. It continued its career until the bridge was finished, and then it became evident that there was no further occasion for its existence. Its inhabitants, or most of them, followed the bridge builders to the next favorable stopping place. Some took with them the buildings in which they had lived, as lumber was valuable. Those who did not do so abandoned them, and they were soon appropriated for firewood. The town was disincorpo- rated, but left no debt, and today some fifteen or twenty acres of empty and broken bottles alone mark its former site.
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There were other towns where things were active enough for a time, simply because the contractors made their head- quarters there, and when they moved, disappeared because they were in the midst of a desolate waste that at the time seemed to be utterly valueless. Still others began a per- manent existence, growing slowly at first, and then more rapidly until they became centers of thriving industry. Among these were Cheney and Sprague, Ritzville, and later Connell, Lind and Eltopia. As settlement progressed the arid region gradually narrowed. Broad acres where once the rainfall was sufficient only to produce cactus and the bunch grass, began to have moisture enough to raise cereals in abundance, and in time, as water was brought into even the dryest wastes by artificial means, they were proved to be the most productive in the world.
One of the first towns to get a promising start on the new line was Cheney, named for Director Benjamin F. Cheney of the railroad company. It was laid out in 1880 and became the county seat of Spokane County by a close vote, the thriv- ing settlement at Medical Lake, in the western part of the county, having turned the balance in its favor.
Spokane had been its competitor in the race, but was at a disadvantage because the railroad was approaching from the west and would reach Cheney first. It had grown steadily but slowly since 1875. Its people had been badly frightened in 1877, as all others in eastern Washington had been, by the Nez Perce uprising in that year, and as one result of this two companies of United States troops had been stationed there, which not only gave the inhabitants a sense of security that they had not previously enjoyed, but added materially to the prospects and importance of the town. The discovery and exploration of promising mining districts
A. M. CANNON.
One of the first members of the Chicago Board of Trade; crossed the plains to Pike's Peak in 1859; went to San Francisco in 1870 and came to Washington in I'S78, settling at Spokane Falls.
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
to blood warning auf in boundmuch more things, more active enough from les St di des' a'guld of aging and horrortorbenfade their head- disappeared because alle Insloge to griffse 8 dit waste that at the tiene SAN others began a pcr- 1000 TERMAL poring dowy or fir, and then more ismile moi thay mesame centers of thiwing industry. Among there were Ovenny and Sprague, Ritzville, and later Conwell. Lind and Mops. A soofEment progressed the Trid ogion erdusily seomvond Broad owes where once the samfall was sufficient omy bo prodlu cactus and the buoch grass, begaty i Have mor tar emwell to tai e cereals in abundance, and in time, al water was brought into even the drywy om by anihcial means, they were proved to
Obc of the link to ti get a promising start on the new The mu Cheney, nuoviod (01 Director Benjamin F. Cheney I was laid out in 1880 and became the coorog ssas od Spadaro County by a close votc, the thriv- uy sediment u woord Lake, in the western part of the Coux , boxfor porpod the balance trib favor.
Ty-Nine Bad Bom os semipedroi by the rage, but was at de drang become the railroad was approaching from
Im ahy bor bely siner (815. Itl people had been badly frommust io ittf, as all nilwor in avier Washington had ban by do Mos Fære upsivoy in dit yoon and as one pobo of I mired State troops had been
Mind gave the inhabitants a sense
presion ly enjoyed, but added und importance of the town. We de wyers and capo wwwop co promising mining districts
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toward the east and north, had brought to it and through it an encouraging number of prospectors. With them had come a few men of affairs who were to be substantial factors in building up the city. In 1878 Captain J. M. Nosler, W. C. Gray, Dr. L. P. Waterhouse, A. E. Ellis, A. M. Can- non and J. J. Browne arrived, and Cannon and Browne bought an interest in the townsite from Glover and his part- ners, and began to push its development. Cannon, Warner & Co. opened a general store, as successors of Glover, and Gray opened a hotel.
In 1879, Browne went to Olympia to persuade the legis- lature to organize Spokane County once more. A bill was introduced for the purpose by D. E. Percival of Cheney, which soon became law, although some opposition was made to the final e in the name. In the same year the Spokane Times was started, with a special mission, as it appeared for a time, to get rid of the obnoxious e in the town name, and the first bank in the town began business.
As the railroad long looked for and hoped for, advanced eastward in 1880, and the confidence which had long pre- vailed that it would pass through the town gradually grew to certainty, prosperity increased. The Times was issued as a daily, and the Chronicle was started. By 1881 the town claimed to have one thousand inhabitants, and was incor- porated as a city, Robert W. Forrest being its first mayor, with S. G. Havermale, A. M. Cannon, L. H. Whitehouse, L. W. Rima, F. R. Moore, George A. Davis and W. C. Gray as members of its council. The railroad reached the city June 4th of that year, and the arrival of the first train was duly celebrated by the firing of giant powder, and a grand excursion to Cheney.
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From that hour the prosperous growth of the city began, which has almost uninterruptedly distinguished it. In 1884 its third newspaper, the Review, was founded, a Holly water system was established, and a United States land office was opened. In 1886 the Big Bend country began to attract settlers as the result of advertising done by the railroad. The Spokane and Palouse branch of the Northern Pacific was built, and D. C. Corbin constructed a short line called the Spokane and Idaho. In the same year the first street railway tracks were laid, the first four story brick building was built, and a county fair was established. The city now had 4,000 inhabitants. The years 1887 and 1888 were years of great prosperity for Spokane. During the former, the county seat was removed to it from Cheney after a sharp fight.
In 1889 the fairest and most substantial part of the city was destroyed by fire, an event that would have proved disastrous to many towns of its size, but its recovery from the effects of it was rapid. The tracks of the Oregon Rail- way and Navigation Company's railroad reached the city from the south in 1890, and the Spokane and Northern, which was to extend northward into British Columbia, was begun in the same year. The Eastern division of the Seattle Lakeshore and Eastern had been constructed westward from the city into the Big Bend wheat fields, so that Spokane was now beginning to be connected by rail, not only with the rich mining regions lying toward the east and north, but with the equally rich or richer farming and fruit growing regions on the West and South.
The settlement of these fertile regions had progressed favorably from the time that railroad building had begun. Many thousands of acres that had been used only as cattle
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ranges in 1880, and some portion of which had even been still in the possession of the aboriginal inhabitants, were now changed to productive farms. Farming was carried on only in a primitive way for the most part, but it was never- theless profitable, and the cultivated area was increasing rapidly year by year. Wheat was the principal, if not the only crop. The rich volcanic soil and dry atmosphere during the growing season, produced a plant with a stiff, hard straw that safely bore its burden of golden grain for many weeks after it had ripened, thus prolonging the period of harvest from July to November, during which the uncut grain suf- fered but little. The yield was always above the average for every other portion of the country. The weather during the long harvest season was almost always favorable, and the farmers rarely brought their grain from the fields until the threshing season. Much of it was cut by headers, and piled in heaps with no protection against rain until the threshers arrived. When threshed it was sacked and hauled to the nearest station, where it was left wholly unprotected from the weather, except by the sacks which contained it, until the railroad could haul it to market.
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