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Spokane Portland & SeattleThe Northwest's Own Railway Ry BY Wood DJ 1st Ed
Spokane Portland and Seattle Ry The Northwests Own Railway by Charles and Dorothy Wood
Hard cover with dust jacket SUPERIOR PUBLISHING
Copyright 1974 FIRST EDITION NAME written inside front cover
159 pages
Table of Contents
Foreword 8
Introduction 12
Chapter IThe North Bank Road 23
Chapter IIThe Oregon Electric 70
Chapter IIIThe United Railways Company 80
Chapter IVThe Oregon Trunk 85
Chapter VThe Motive Power110
Caboose 141
Steam Motive Power Roster 151
Index 155
Prior to and in the years immediately after the Civil War, the emphasis on the railroad building was in the East. The vast lands reaching west simply did not have the population centers or the industrial complex to support a railroad. The first railroads in the Northwest were the portage railroads, which were an adjunct of the navigation systems. They transported passengers and cargo from one body of water to another, or passed by water too difficult, dangerous or obstructed for navigation.
The first of the portage railroads constructed along the Columbia River was at Cascade in 1851, with a competing line built across on the Oregon side, the Oregon Portage Railroad. These two lines were absorbed into the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, which was to maintain a monopoly over the transportation of the region for some time to come. The Oregon Portage Railroad was allowed to disintegrate, but the Cascade Portage was maintained along with another portage railroad between the Dalles and Celilo. The Oregon Steam Navigation Co. with the two portage railroads became the nucleus of Henry Villard's Oregon Railroad and Navigation Co. Added to this nucleus were the ocean interests of the Oregon Steam Ship Co. and the Walla Walla & Columbia River Railroad.
The navigation part of the OR&N was very real. It operated many river boats on the lower, middle and upper sections of the Columbia, on the Willamette, Yamhill, and Snake, and on Puget Sound. Henry Villard controlled most of the transportation of the area. He envisioned a great empire in the Pacific Northwest opened by the railroads which he would build and control. His entry to the coast would be by way of the Columbia River, and he would thus be in a position to meet any westward building railroad whether it be the Northern Pacific pushing its way across Montana or the proposed line of the Oregon Short Line across Idaho and along the Snake River.
Ferdinand Heinrich Gustav Hilgard (Villard), born in Bavaria in 1835, had come to Oregon in 1874 at the behest of the German bondholders of the Oregon and California Railroad to protect their interests. The Oregon and California had been reorganized two years earlier from the....
The railroad giants battled in court . . . The construction crews fought with everything from fists to dynamite .. . But James J. Hill put through the Spokane Portland & Seattle Ry. in spite of hell, high water, and Edward H. Harriman.
Harriman, a dominant figure in northwestern railroading, had ignored the pleas of wheat farmers, lumbermen and others who wanted better transportation than a horse and wagon between Spokane, Portland and Seattle. Hill, who had welded together a railroad system himself, was only too glad to provide this important link in transporting people and materials to the seaports and centers of commerce. And it was a feather in his cap to outwit rival railroad magnate Harriman.
But that's just the beginning of the story of the SP&S. The authors have put together a rare collection of pictures and knowledgeable text, bringing to life the fascinating account of the Northwest's own railroad. Rail fans have long awaited this pictorial treatment of the SP&S line, with its unique management procedure and interesting array of motive power and rolling stock.
Whether your home station is east or west . . . If you follow the rails this classic belongs in your library. All ab-o-o-oo-o-a-r-d!
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