Synopses & Reviews
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE RAILROAD STRUGGLES IN THE FAR NORTHWEST IF A line be drawn from Spokane to Seattle and Ta- coma, thence to Portland and thence back to Spokane, a glance at the map will show that within this area lies an immense and fertile section. The southern zone of it has high strategic value. Its lower boundary is the Columbia River, with a water-level grade to the sea. Stretching away southward and eastward from the junction of the Columbia and the Snake, the valley of the latter runs through Idaho and into the territory of the Union Pacific. After leaving Butte and Garrison on the north and Ogden and Pocatello on the south, this is the last available route east of the coast mountain ranges for a connecting link between the northern and the central transcontinental lines. To understand the whole situation and its problems, a brief review of transportation conditions in this country is necessary. At the mouth of the Columbia River had been located the trading station of the earliest commerce of the North Pacific Coast, called Astoria, after John Jacob Astor, its presiding genius. The Columbia and the Willamette were at that time and for long afterward, just as the Mississippi had been for its valley, the sole means of communication with the interior. In 1860 the owners of many lines of steamboats on these two rivers united their interests to form the Oregon Steam Navigation Company. Jay Cooke and Co. bought it out in 1871 in the interest of their Northern Pacific project. When it should be completed they desired control of all transportation in the Columbia Valley. After the smash, with indefinite postponement of the railroad enterprise, Portland interests bought back control of the company, which was secured for a song. It enjoyed a monopoly of steamboat traffi...
Synopsis
This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.