How the Railroads Came
HEN the West moves, it moves quickly. The map of Oregon had long shown a huge area without the line of a single railroad crossing it. This railless land was Central Oregon, the largest territory in the United States without transportation. Then, almost over night, the map was changed.
Normal men, if they are reasonably good, hope to go to Heaven. Westerners, if they are off the beaten track, hope for a railroad; and if they have one road they hope for another! You who dwell in the little land of suburban trains and commutation tickets have no conception of the vital significance of rail transportation in the Land of Many Miles.
In Central Oregon the railroad question was one of life and death. The country had progressed so far without them, and could go no farther. Farm products not qualified to find a market on their own feet were next to worthless, timber could not be milled, irrigation development was at a standstill. The people had seen so many survey stakes planted and grow and rot and produce nothing, and had been fed upon so many railroad rumors, that there was no faith in them.
"I think it's a railroad!" gasped the telephone operator as she called me to the booth. Her eyes were bright. It was as if a Frenchman had said, "Berlin is taken!"
But I, a skeptic hardened by many shattered hopes, smiled incredulously. Nevertheless, I took the receiver with a tremor born of undying optimism—the optimism of the railless land.
"It's long distance," whispered the operator, torn between a sense of duty and a desire to eavesdrop.
"Hello!"
The only answer was a grinding buzz; a mile or two of Shaniko line was down—it usually was.
Then Prineville cut in and The Dalles said something cross and a faint inquiry came from Portland, far away. Yes, I was waiting.
Crooked River Canyon, now spanned by a railroad bridge
In the Deschutes Canyon. "The river winds sinuously, seeking first one, and then another, point of the compass"
Copyright 1911 by Kiser Photo Co., Portland, Ore.
"Hello, Putnam?" The speaker was the managing editor of a Portland newspaper. "Gangs have broken loose in the Deschutes Canyon," said he. "One of 'em is Harriman, we know, but the others are playing dark. Think it's Hill starting for California. You go—" then the buzz became too bad.
Finally The Dalles repeated the instructions. I was to go down the Canyon of the Deschutes and find out all about it. The head and nearest end of the Canyon was fifty miles away, and the Canyon itself was one hundred miles long. Glory be! But it was a railroad, and before I started the town was in the first throes of apoplectic celebration.
I went to Shaniko by auto, and thence by train to Grass Valley, midway to the Columbia. From Grass Valley a team took me westward to the rim of the Canyon of the Deschutes. There were fresh survey stakes and a gang of engineers working with their instruments on a hillside. Very obliging, were those engineers; they would tell me anything; they were building a railroad; it was headed for Mexico City and they themselves were the owners! Below was a new-made camp, where Austrians labored on a right of way that had come to life almost over night. This was a Harriman camp; orders were, apparently, to get a strangle hold on the best line up the narrow Canyon—to crowd the other fellows out. But the mystery surrounding those "other fellows" clung close. From water boy to transit man they knew nothing, except that they were working for a famous contracting firm and that they emphatically were not in the employ of Hill interests.
This, which was no news at all, I 'phoned to Portland, and then set about visiting the suddenly awakened Canyon.
It is the only entrance from the north to the plateaus of Central Oregon, a deep gorge cut by the river through the heart of the hills. So one fine morning in July, 1909, after a generation of apathy, suddenly the two great systems, whose tracks follow opposite banks of the Columbia, threw their forces into the field, attempting to secure control of this strategic gateway. Altogether, it was a very picturesque duel; the quick move was characteristic of the country, and the very unexpectedness of it somehow was half-expected. And in the end, after all the strategy and bluff and blocking tactics with shovels and with law briefs, the duel was a draw, and to-day each railroad follows the waters of the Deschutes.
During my observation of this picturesque battle of the Canyon, I walked its length twice, and saw amusing incidents in plenty.
At one point the Hill forces established a camp reached only by a trail winding down from above, its only access through a ranch. Forthwith the Harriman people bought that ranch, and "No trespassing" signs, backed by armed sons of Italy, cut off the communications of the enemy below. At a vantage point close to the water both surveys followed the same hillside, which offered the only practical passageway. One set of grade stakes overlapped the other, a few feet higher up. The Italian army, working furiously all one Sabbath morning, "dug themselves in" on the grade their engineers had established in most approved military style. But while they worked the Austrians came—these literally were the nationalities engaged in this "Battle of the Hillsides," unrecorded by history!—and hewed a grade a few feet above the first, the meanwhile demolishing it. That angered Italy, whose forces executed a flank movement and started digging still another grade above the hostiles, inadvertently dislodging bowlders which rolled down upon the rival workers below. Then a fresh flanking movement, and more bowlders and nearly a riot! And so it went, until the top was reached, and there being no more hillside to maneuver upon, and no inclination to start over again, the two groups called quits and spent the balance of the day playing seven-up, leaving settlement of their burlesque to courts of law. And there were times when "coyote holes"—which are tunnels of dynamite—exploding on one side of the river, somehow sent shattered rock and pebbles in a dangerous deluge upon the tents across the stream.
The struggle for transportation supremacy was bitter enough, and comic, too, in spots. But the stage set for its acting was superb beyond compare.
Not without reason, the defile of the Deschutes has been called the "Grand Canyon of the Northwest." For a full one hundred miles the river races at the bottom of a steep-walled canyon, its sides here and there pinching in to the water's very edge, and often enough with sheer cliffs towering mightily, their bases lapped by the white foam of rapids. Great rounded hills, green in spring, brown in summer, and white under the snows of winter, climb into the sky a thousand feet and more on either hand. Their sides are ribbed with countless cattle trails, like the even ripples of the wind and tide on a sandy beach. Strange contorted rock formations thrust forth from the lofty slopes, and occasional clutters of talus slides spill down into the water. Rich hues of red and brown warm the somber walls, where prehistoric fires burned the clay or rock, or minerals painted it. White-watered, crystal springs are born miraculously in the midst of apparent drought, offering arctic cold nectar the year around. The river winds sinuously, doubling back upon itself interminably, seeking first one, and then another, point of the compass, a veritable despair for railroad builders whose companion word for "results" must be "economy." Despite the stifling oppressiveness of that canyon bake-oven in July, with breezes few and far between and rattlesnakes omnipresent, the ever-changing grandeur was enough to repay for near-sunstroke and foot weariness.
However, enjoyment of the scenery was not my mission. I was supposed to discover, authentically, who was backing that other road—where the millions were coming from. If it was Hill, it meant much to Oregon, for as yet the "Empire Builder" had never truly invaded the state, and if now he planned a great new line to California the railroad map of the West would indeed be disrupted. But at the end of ten days I knew no more than on the first.
At the farmhouse where they took me in to dinner mine host was highly elated, for the survey crossed the corner of his southern "forty" and he saw visions of a fat right-of-way payment and of a railway station. Later—his optimism was characteristic—surely a city would spring up, with corner lots priced fabulously. "Then," said he to Mandy, "we'll go to Yerrup." It was, of course, long before Yerrup became a shambles.
The old man was reminding me of the growth of Spokane—that universal example of the West!—which expanded from nothing to more than one hundred thousand in thirty years, when Mandy interrupted the universal pastime of counting your lots before they are sold by producing a soiled printed form.
Along the Canyon of the Deschutes
Copyright 1911 by Kiser Photo Co., Portland. Ore.
"Can you tell me if this has any value now?" she asked.
It was a voucher of the Great Northern Railroad.
"Where did you get it?"
She narrated how a crew had laid out the preliminary survey, now followed by the mysterious workers, coming through there secretly the previous autumn.
"They told us they was surveyin' water power," said she. "The papers never said nothing about it, and neither did we. They bought buttermilk here, an' when the Ol' Man cashed in the slips he forgot this one. Wonder if it's too late to get it paid?"
I told her it wasn't. In fact, I bought it myself, paying face value. It was $1.40.
Then I made tracks for the 'phone, eighteen miles away. Here, at last, was positive evidence that the Great Northern, the Hill system, was the power behind the new line. Six months ago while Oregon slept, they had made the secret survey upon which they were now constructing. A very pretty scoop, as western newspapering goes! I offered my driver an extra dollar for haste's sake.
The managing editor listened while I outlined my beat over the wire. His silence seemed the least bit sad.
"Dandy story," said he. "If we'd had it yesterday it would have been fine. But—" There was no need for him to go further; I knew the worst.
An afternoon paper had wrecked my yarn. The emissary of the Hills, who had traveled secretly and under an assumed name all through the Interior determining whether or not the new line should be undertaken, had that morning told his story. The Hills were in the open as the backers of the Oregon Trunk. By a matter of hours a precious scoop was ancient history!
That man built much of the Panama Canal. He is one of the world's best-known construction engineers and railroaders. But I shall never forgive his tell-tale interview—it was premature. And some day I shall present for payment that voucher for $1.40, mentioning also the dollar I gave the driver, to John F. Stevens.