Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 September 1883 — THE NORTHERN PACIFIC. [ARTICLE]

THE NORTHERN PACIFIC.

Formal Opening of the Great Bailway Signalized by Impressive Ceremonies. Driving the Golden Spike at the Joining of the Two Sections of the Bead. . - ' History of the Work—The Discouragements Encountered by Its Builders. At a point 'fifty miles west of Helena, Montana, which has appropriately been christened, and will hereafter be known as •Gold Spike, the formal ceremonies of completing' the Northern Pacific railroad were celebrated on the sth of September. A pavilion had been erected for theguests, capable Ofholding I.BCO persons, andiheband of the Fifth United States infantry furnished the music. ’ President - Vi! lard made the opening address, and introduced Hon. W. M. Evarts, who was the orator of the occasion. Secretary Teller, sex-President Billings Gen. Grant, the Governors of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Dakota, Montana, Oregon and Washington made brief speeches of congraiulationa The German Minister, Von Kisendecker, presented the good wishes of his countrymen, and was followed by Dr. Kneisß, f>f Berlin University, and Dr. Holfman, the greate-t living microscopist. A photograph was taken of the entire assembly. Immediately before the final ceremonies took place, 3U) men stepped up and laid the connecting rails on the l,u<) feet left uncompleted, spitting them firmly, leaving the last spike for the railroad king himself to drive. Meanwhile the band Was playing and the crowd shouting, through all of which • noise was heard the clanking of the bars of iron and the beating of the sledgea When nearly completed a salute was' fired, and the golden spike was tapped by President of the road with a silver sledge. The final blows were given by H. C. .Davis, Assistant deneralJJassenger Agent o£_the road, who drove the first spike on the opening of the road. The last spike was uonneeted by telegraph with "New York, and 1 the blows were thus heard throughout the length of the land.

History of the ltoad, from Its Inception to Its Completion. Although the Northern Pacific railroad was the fust projected acioss the continent, it has proved the last to be completed in the United Statea In 18.15, almost fifty years ago, the newspapers of the country discussed a proposition to build a railway from New York city to the moujli of the Columbia river. While the papers presented an advanced theory,,they confidently expressed the belief that, although the task then seemed to be herculean in its nature, it would eventually be accomplished. Many of the papers that then took part in the discussion have survived, the storm and blasts that crowd upon the newspaper world, and will chronicle the completion of the great railway .which they then advocate ! Ten years after the question was first presented by the newspapers of the country, in 1845, Mr. Asa Whitney, a merchant of New Ytirk. submitted a proposition to Congress for the construction of a railroad from the head of Lake Michigan to the mouth of the Columbia river, on the Pacific coast His plan embraced a provision for a grant of land sixty miles in width—thirty mi;es on either side of the line—for the whole length of the road. After the maturity of his plan, it was embodied in a bill which was presented to Congress, where it hung for many years, and in 1847 ctfine very near passing. Mr. Whitney traversed the country from Maine to Louisiana in support of the bill, addressing public meetings at various points, for the purpose of creating public opinion in iis favor, and legislative bodies, in order to have them jrass resolutions recommending Congress to take fa\orable action in reference to his bill. In his efforts to accomplish his purpose he expended his entire fortune and was forced to retire from the scene, acknowledging, for the time being, that his project was a failure. ■ ■ For his propositions and his advocacy of them, Mr. Whitney is entitled to be recognized as the father of the enterprise, which is now an accomplished fact, aLer a peiiod of nearly forty years has elapsed, under the title of the Noitaern Pacific railroad. •

In 1853, 1851 and 1855, an expedition of officers and men under the leadership of Isaac I. Stevens, Governor of Washington Territory, who was commissioned by the United States Government, made an exploration of the country lying between the forty-seventh and forty-ninth \ arallels of latitude, to determine the practicability of a route for a railroad from the great lakes and the Upper Mississippi to the waters of Puget s sound. The scope of the exploration included, among other data, the characteristics of the intermediate reg.ons, then very indefinitely known, or wholly unknown,' as to their adaptability to agricultural .pursuits, their water supplies, their mineial, timber and other resources, and their conditions in general for the maiutenapce of a civilized and progressive population. The official report of the expedition confirmed the truly-na-tional character of such an enterprise as the Northern Pa ific, brought prominently into view its advantages iu respqct to oistanees as a route of- travel and commerce, its greater proximitv to Asia, its shorter distance between grea, wa.er lines, its greater proximity to Europe, and the fact that it was much the sh- r.est and most direct route between _ As a and Europe. It also established the fact that by the Northern route were ihe easiest graUien.s, the least and fewest engineering difficu.tie -, and that there existed an abundance of wood, water and materials of construction. With re pect to the general resources of the countries to i.e traversed by the proposed line, for thq support of a compact population, the elaborate reports of the expedil.on presented the stronge-t confirmatory ] roofs. Except at the crossing- of the mountain .ranges the entire route \\ as found to pass through a su session of line at able lands—countries extraordinarily well wa eredbyiaige rivers, manv important < on meats and numerous tributary streams —ancTco .ered \vi,h a vegtation which plainly -indicated the lichlyproduccive capacity of their soils. The dims e was shown t >'i e universally superior iu the quaities which assure l eal hful and pleasant living, geneially favorable for the product on' of crops, and ften more propitious man elsewhere found for tl.e growth of wheat, oats, rye, bar.ey and the vegeta blea In 1852, when the Union and Central Pacific i ailway Com) anies were chartered, a vey st ong~»eJOrt v\as made to obtain a charter for tue Northern Pacific line. For ihe rime be,ng it fa led, but ii was again revived in 18 4, at the time the. Union and Central Pacific C mpim.es were asking Congress tor legislation subordinating this* Government to the liist mo-tgages of *the two li US. .; ' , —Supported by-*fche-woll a curtained facts emtraced in,the report of-Gqv. Stevens and hi; corps of engineers, the enthusiastic friend* of the North ?rn ro ite again - confide;] tly sought the aid an.l encouragement of the Government, and,'By acfc of Congress, approved July V. i 0 , a large b dy of corpora ors were treated a body corporate ind j o itic, und r the style of the Northern Paer e ltat matt Company wrh power to build a railr, ud from lake Bi| erior to Puget sound on the iiue of the forty-, fth parol cL 'lhe man who ucceeded In gettng the charter was Josiah Perh ug w'ho I ad orgunF.ed a company, under ihe sanction of the Le‘- isla tore of Maine, c lied the People a lacifio I,abroad Company, a d bad attempted, in lbu , to obtai i the Union Pacific charter for his corpora i n. Fading in this, le.turned his atfc n ion to the Northern toiite. and. by promising to ask ’Or no subsidy m bonds or money from the Government, he obtained, in 18t>4, a charter co-pled with a land grant just doable in

area that given to the Union and Central Pacific Companies The Northern Pacific grant embraces the alternate sections of land for twenty miles on each side of the road in the States and for forty miles in the Territories, with an additional ten miles on each side as an indemnity limit, within which lands may be selected to compensate for those taken by settlers inside of the original grant Perham had been a merchant In Maine, and also in Boston, and was principally known for his success in organizing railroad excursion parties; in fact he was the inventor of the cheap excursion system He tried in vain for nearly two year's so obtain capital fbr the Northern Pacific Company, of which he had been elected Pr. sident." The obstacle In the way,beside the tendency in the public mind to regard the Northern belt of States and Territories as a semi-Arctic region, was chietly a clause which Perham himself had inserted in the charter,andwhich prohibited the company from mortgaging its road or land grants, or issuing bonds. Per hi m’s idea was that $100,000,0C0 of the stock of the company would at once be taken by popular subscriptions. The first set of Direotoi-s was elected Dec, 0, 1864, and on the following day organized by the election of Josiah Perham, President Air. Perham and his associates were not men of practical experience. They proposed to raise $100,(XX),0uO by the subscrij>tioa—of a million individuals, whom . they believed could fie found willing to take one share of stock each at par, and thus build the roail. The scheme, of course, failed, and in December, 1865, Air. Perham turned aver the franchise to a syndicate ofNew Erg,'and capitalists, for barely enough to pay bis debts, and did not live to see the first spadeful of earth turned in the prosecution of the enterprise for which he had obtained from Congress a grant of laud greater in extent than many of the kingdoms of Europe. He died at Boston in 1868. The next set of Directors, headed by J. Gregory Smith as President, memorialized Congress to the effect that the land grant, being mainly located remote from the then settled portions of the country, and little known to the public, had, with the many other favorable provisions of the charter, proved insudioient-to indnee capitalists to embark in the enterprise, more particularly so because other roads to the Pacific were able to offer not only their land-grant security. bu.t also the * bonds of the United States. The memorialists solicited similar aid for the Northern Pacific in Government bonds. Congress finally failed to adopt legislation authorizing aid in Government issues, and in May, 1865. and in January, 1810, the Northern Pacific Company, then controlled and directed by a combination of the best railroad experience and general ability and wealth in this country, made a contract with .Jay Cooke & Co., then become eminent in finance by their success in negotiating the war bonds of the Government, to act as the fiscal agents of the Northern Pacific. Jay Cooke obtained legislation in Washington authorizing £he issue of bonds and changing the main line of the road, so that it should run down the Columbia river to Portland, and thence north to Puget sound, instead of across the tremendous barrier of the Cascade mountains Cooke first proposed to place the Nc rtlierii Padfice loan in Europe, but his plans to this end were defeated by the breaking out of the FrancoGerman war.

He then put the bonds upon the American market, using the same means to popularize them which he had successfully employed in selling the great war loans of the United States Government. In two years’ Lime, beginning in the spring of 1810; he sold about $60,000,000 of bonds. In 1810, with the means supplied by him, the company began to build its line, commencing work at Thompson Junction, twenty-three miles west of Duluth. Jay Cooke was then, building a line from St Paul to Duluth, and the Northern Pacific bought a half interest in the twenty-three miles from its junction to Duluth. Duluth was an obscure hamlet in the forest, inhabited by perhaps a hundred people. It had no harbor, but a good one was obtained by cutting a canal across a long, narrow sand-bank inclosing the Bay of Superior. Construction was also begun, in the same year, on the extreme Western division of the road, running from the Columbia river at Kalamo northward to Puget sound. Ip 1871 the road was finished across Minnesota to the Bed Biver of the North, and in 187.1-3 it was built as far as the Alissouri river, Where a town was laid out and named Bismarck. Qn-tke Pacific side liß miles of road, between the Columbia river and Puget sound, were completed by the fall of 1873, and a terminal city laid out in a dense fir forest, on the sound, and named Tacoma During the same period there were completed and put in operation 555 miles of road —viz.: The Minnesota division, from Thompson Junction to Fargo, 650 miles; the Dakota division, from Fargo to Pism trok, I!<s miles; of the Pacific division 105 miles, from Kalamajio Tacoma; also, jointly with the St Paul and Duluth railroad, the line from Thompson to Duluth, 65 miles. , In September, jsj3 the house of Jay Cooke A Co, suspended—a memorable event, which precipitated a general financial revulsion, a sudden and enormous contraction of prices and values which-had obtained in the period of extravagance and inflation engenderedby the wardebt and the»papcr issues of the Government The failure of Jay Cooke & Co. involved the speedy bankruptcy of the Northern Pacific.

Two years were required to complete the readjustment of the company 8 affairs The foreclosure of its mortgage was initiated by the Trustees, with the concurrence or parties jin interest, April 15, 1873; and a receiver appointed by the court Later,-during the same year, the entire property was sold under decree of foreclosure, and purchased by a committee of the bondholders The reorganization was . perfected and -a- new of Directors elected Sept 2tU'lß?s. The directory was organized by the election of Charles B. Wright, Presidents. .George Stark, Vice President Samuel Wilkeson, Secretary, and by the choice also of Treasurer an: general counsel. In' May, 18711, Mr. Wright, for reasons of health, resigned the Presidency of ihe Northern Pacific, which he had held*for more than three years, nnd was succeeded by Frederick Billings. During the incumbency of Mr. Wright in the office of President the general financiel condition of the country and the difficulties opposed to extension into Montana by uontmued Indian hostilities, had long rendered the recommencing of .con.truction aero s the continent impractiable. Important renewals, improvements and betterments in road-bed track, and equipment of the operated Ine had, however, been made Also a branch line had been b lilt sixty-four miles from Brainerd to a connection with the cities of St Paul and Minneapolis at S.iuk Kapids, and thirty-one miles had been added from Tacoma *to Wilkeson, on the Pacific coast , In 187 b the company had s_> far Recovered its credit that-it u asal.de to borrow money to re uiue construction operu ions on a large scale It begun to build from the Mb so iri river westward, and from the Columbia r ver, in Eas e n'Washing on Territory, near the junction of the 8n .ke river, northeastwardly toward Lake Pend d’Oreiiie, in Northern Idaho. Toe company ditl not feel strong enough to put for.h any financial sc.ieme for completing the entire road, but only asked for money enough to build two ..d.visions, which it mortgaged separately, wi.h ihe land gran s attaching to mem. in 1880, after Mr. Billings had succeeded to' the Presidency, negotiations were completed with a syndicate of bankers, including the New York hou-es of Winslow, Lanier A Co.. Dre.vel, Morgan a Co. and August Beimont A Co., and the London hous.' of J. S. Morgan •A Co., bv which a .oan Of $-0,1X0,00J was p accd during that and the two following years, and money thus tecured for compie lug the load a toss Montana and filling the gap-in- the trackswhich then amounted tkio.er HoOmles. In irßl a very important change took place in the man igement of the Northern Pacific's at: airs. Fenry Viliard, a Geunan bv birth, who came to this coun ry at the age of 18, and who won considerable reputation as a newspaper oorre-pc ndent during and after the civil war, and who had l>et»me interested in railroad managemen in Kansas and Oregon m the representative of large financial interests had gradually obtained control,during the six years following the panic of of the tr ansportation lines by rail, river, and tea in the State of Oregon.

These lines he had consolidated and greatly extended, so that they represented what, tor a new country, was a transportation system. In 1880 Mr. Yillard determined, it possible, to secure a harmony of Interests and control between his Oregon lines apd the Northern Pacific line, so as to make the former the western extensions and feeders of the latter In 1681 bo organized what was known as the “blind pool” in New York, and obtained within a few weeks from subscriptions over SB,OOD,eOO of money, without diarlnsing the use which he meant to make of t>i«« large sum, and without giving any other security than his personal receipts. With money and Other means of his own he quietly purchased a controlling interest in the stock of the Northern Pacific Company and was elected Its President in September of that year, placing his friend and former associate in railroad management in Kansas and Oregon, Mr. Thomas F. Oakes, in the Vice Presidency as the chief executive of-r fleer of the company. Construction operations went on rapidly during the years 1880, 1881 and 1886 from both ends of the line, and at the beginning of the year 1886 the track remaining to be constructed was reduced to about ; 0j miles, on which the grading had been mainly done. The Missouii division was completed" in the spring of 1882, 617 miles to Glendive, its western terminus, and was at once accepted by the Government There are two great tunnels on the line; one at the Bozeman pass, in the Belt mountains, and the other at the Mullan pass, in the main division of the Bocky mountains. The fawr is 5,60) feet long, and the latter 3,‘850 feet: There are two great bridges upon the Northern Pacific: The Bismarck bridge, across the Missouri, at Bismarck, Dakota, which is placed so high aboye the rivSr as to require n 6 draw, and fairly ranks among the great railroad bridges of the world; and the Ainsworth bridge, not yet completed, across the Suake river, at Ainsworth, Washington Territory, which is a low bridge with a draw. Both these bridges are built upon stone piers, with superstructures of iron and steeL The Yellowstone riverls crossed three times, the Upper Missouri once, and the Clarke’s fork or the Columbia three times, by Howe truss bridges. Other interesting features of construction are the two long pile bridges across the arms of Lako Pend p’Oreille, each about a mile in length; and the great Marent Gulch trestle in the Coriacan defile, which has a height of 226 feet The mileage of the main line and branches of the—Northern Pacific system, now in operation, is as follows: MAIN LINE DIVISIONS. Miles. Minnesota Division, Duluth to Fargo 25214 Wi-consin Division, Northern Pacific Junction to Superior 2314 St, Paul division, St. Patti to Brainerd.... 136 r Dakota division, Fargo to Mandan 19954 Missouri division, Mandan to Glendive... 216 division, Glendive to Billings 225 Afontana division, Billings to Helena 239 Bocky 'Mountain division, Helena to Heron. ) 274 Pend d’ Oreille division, Heron to Wallula 269)4 Pacific division, Portland to Tacoma...... 145 TotaS mileage, main line divisions 1,980)4 ~~ " ISItANCHKS. Little Falls and Dakota branch. Little Falls, Minn., to Al-jrrls, Minn 88 Northern Pacific, Fergus and Black Hills r branch, Wadena, ‘Minn, to the present end of the trank in Pakqte. 116 Fargo and Southwestern branch, Fargo, Dakota, to Lamoure, Dakota 88 Jamestown and Northern branch, Jamestown, Dakota, to Devil’s Jjake, Dakota.. 104: Sykeston branch, Carrington, Dakota, to Sykeston, Dakota 14 National Park branch, Livingston, Alontana, to the boundary of tue National —Park .... 54 Palonse branch, Palouse Junction, Washington Territory, to Moscow, Idaho, (nearly completed) 150 Cascade branch, Tacoma, Washington Territory, to Wilkeson, W ashington Territory (under construction across the ‘ Cascade mountains and down the Yakima valley to Ainsworth, 210 miles)... 39 Seattle extension, Puyallup to Seattle, Washinton Territory...; ; 30 Total mileage of branches. 674 Grand total mileage of main line and branches. .2,654)4 The distance front Portland, Ore., to New York, all rail, is 6,683 miles.