=Book: Wheat Country Railroad: The Northern Pacific’s
Spokane & Palouse and Competitors (WSU Press, Dec. 1, 2018) by Philip
F. Beach
For more
info:
According to WSU Press:
“Vying for economic supremacy on the Palouse, the Oregon
Railway & Navigation Co., Union Pacific, and Northern Pacific Railroad laid
rail, invested capital, speculated, and built a remarkable infrastructure that
included the Columbia and Palouse Railroad and the competing Spokane &
Palouse Railway. Their intense rivalry played a critical role in eastern
Washington and northwest Idaho’s agricultural and population growth. Based on
internal railroad correspondence and documents, and contemporary publications and
newspapers, Wheat Country Railroad offers the most comprehensive and detailed
study ever compiled of the area’s late 19th and early 20th century railroading.
“Railroad development and competition played a critical role
in eastern Washington and northwest Idaho’s agricultural and population growth.
Sweeping opportunity lured transportation moguls into the fertile Palouse
country—one of the world’s most productive grain-growing landscapes.
Recognizing the potential for profit, East Coast financial interests, as well
as powerful Portland and Puget Sound players battled for regional economic
supremacy in an intense rivalry. Meanwhile, settlers and farmers arriving in
the 1870s and ’80s courted competition between railroad companies in order to
reduce freight rates.
“Initially as partners and later as opponents, the Oregon
Railway & Navigation Co., Union Pacific, and Northern Pacific Railroad laid
rail, invested capital, speculated, and built a remarkable infrastructure that
included the Columbia and Palouse Railroad and its rival, the Spokane &
Palouse Railway. Wheat Country Railroad offers the most comprehensive and
detailed study ever compiled of the area’s late 19th and early 20th century
railroading—evaluating the personalities and actions of Henry Villard, Charles
Frances Adams, Elijah Smith, James J. Hill, Edward H. Harriman, Charles Mellen,
and other railroad barons who vied for wealth and empire. Based on internal
railroad correspondence and documents, contemporary publications and
newspapers, this new study presents a unique reference work on railroads in the
West and nation during the Gilded Age and beyond.”
AUTHOR: Now retired, Philip F. Beach was a political science
professor for35. He left the WSU political science faculty in 1964 and joined the
Fesno State University faculty in 1964 until retiring in 1997. He’s a former
chair of that university’s political science department. He has published
multiple articles on Washington and Idaho railroad history, said WSU Press and
other sources.
=Info: The “Grain Fleet”
1900
For
more info: https://clackamascountyhistoricalsociety.wordpress.com/2014/09/01/the-grain-fleet-1900/amp
I have
always considered this photograph of the 1900 “Grain Fleet” at anchor in
Portland the most beautiful scene at the Portland waterfront. The following is
an article from the November 4, 1900 Oregonian that echoes the romance
and poetry I see in this photo. Although not about Clackamas County, a large
portion of the wheat being shipped out through the “Grain Fleet” grew in our
county, says a posting at the website of the Clackamas County Historical
Society in Oregon.
Also from Clackamas
County Historical Society website:
Leading with Grain
Few
people, perhaps, when they mention it realize the magnitude of a shipload of
grain. The capacity of the graceful three and four-masted vessels that yearly
visit this port is something to surprise and unreflecting person. Ten freight
trains of 25 cars each, or one train over a mile and a half long, would be
required to carry the wheat that goes into the hold of a single ship. The
manner in which the cargo is taken on depends upon the stage of the water. When
the river is at its lowest point, or somewhere near it, the grain (in sacks) is
sent from the warehouse down a zigzag chute, into the hold. In its descent, the
sack turns over at each angle of the chute, and when it reaches the bottom is
seized and securely stowed where it is to remain during the long voyage around
the Horn. As the sacks are piled in place, the interstices between them are
filled with loose grain, in order to prevent any slightest shifting about of
the cargo. The loose grain is packed in, trampled by the feet of the laborers.
When
the water is so high that there is not sufficient fall from the dock to the
hold for the grain to move by gravity, elevators, operated by electricity, are
employed, and the work proceeds uninterruptedly until the ship has received her
full cargo. The facilities for loading are constantly being improved, and keep
pace with the increase of tonnage. It is by no means unusual for a ship to
begin discharging ballast Monday morning and have her cargo stowed by Saturday
night of the same week. The discharging of hundreds of tons of ballast is in
itself a task that involved no small amount of labor.
But to
go back: The British ship Lady Wentworth recently took on 25,900 sacks of wheat
during a period of nine hours, and in the same length of time, the Dumeraig, as
was reported in the Oregonian of Tuesday last, received 23,525 sacks. The
Conway, also English, and of 1776 tons register, which cleared from Portland
October 30, was only 12 days in the Willamette River, while the Osterbeck, a
German, was ready for sea exactly 15 days after crossing the bar. The
last-mentioned craft loaded over 3,000 tons of wheat and was in Portland not
quite 12 days.
The
grain for shipment is delivered at the vessel’s rail by the exporters who
supply the laborers or “dockmen” to handle it. The longshoremen then take
charge of it and put it aboard.
While
nature has done much for this inland harbor, making it one of the safest in the
world, man has not neglected to add improvements that have contributed to make
it one of the most accessible as well. Systematic and combined effort on the
part of the Commission of the Port of Portland has within the past few years so
deepened the channel from the city to the sea that it is now not only possible,
but perfectly safe, for laden vessels drawing 22 feet of water to pass out at
any stage of the tide and with the river at zero.
The Incoming Fleet
In
addition to the vessels already cleared since the opening of the season and
those now loading, no less than 62 sailing craft are on the way to this port to
receive cargoes of wheat. These, of course, do not include the steamships that
are here, or due soon to arrive from the other side of the Pacific and which
will, in many instances, load with wheat and flour.
Taking
all things into consideration, Portland may well be proud of her grain fleet.
There are but four ports in the United States that, in the nine months closing
with October 1, exceeded this on the Willamette in the amount and value of
wheat shipments. And for this last month, Portland has led both San Francisco
and Puget Sound.
Commerce
is not without its aesthetic features, in spite of Ruskin’s notion to the
contrary. And its commercial utility in no way detracts from the romance and
the poetry that are the inalienable characteristics of the grain fleet of the
Willamette. Any ship that sails the high seas embodies this romance, this
poetry. In every mast and spar and straining timber she is thrilled with the
hidden meaning of the deep.
PHOTOS:
…Book cover – WSU Press.
…Ships - Clackamas County Historical Society
