Authors: Peter J. Lewty
ISBN-13: 9780874221145, ISBN-10: 0874221145
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Washington State University Press
Date Published: January 1995
Edition: (Non-applicable)
In just a few years of prosperity, between 1886 and 1891, a wave of railroad construction broke across the sparsely populated inland plain of the Pacific Northwest. Racing to secure strategic routes and sources of traffic, the railway promoters built an extensive and bewildering network of competing lines. Continuing the saga he commenced in To the Columbia Gateway: The Oregon Railway and the Northern Pacific, 1879-1884 (WSU Press, 1987), Peter Lewty describes the region's dramatic railroad boom in the years 1885 to 1893. Recreating the prevailing atmosphere of optimism and excitement, he traces the expansion of the Northern Pacific and Union Pacific systems in the interior Northwest, chronicles the construction of the Pacific extension of the Great Northern Railway, and presents a multi-faceted portrait of railway operations on the last frontier of American settlement.
Preface | ||
Prologue | ||
1 | Lease and Joint Lease | 1 |
2 | To Moscow, Pomeroy, and Weston | 21 |
3 | Rivals in the Palouse | 27 |
4 | The Cascade Branch | 35 |
5 | The Stampede Tunnel | 59 |
6 | The Columbia River Bridge | 67 |
7 | The Hunt System | 71 |
8 | Lexington, Heppner, and the Coal Mines | 93 |
9 | Coeur d'Alene | 99 |
10 | Oregon Railway Extensions | 119 |
11 | In the Big Bend | 129 |
12 | The Great Northern Railway | 143 |
13 | Down to Juliaetta | 171 |
14 | To Keep the Wheels Turning | 177 |
15 | The Road to Ruin | 211 |
Appendix A: Railways in the Columbia Interior, 1879-1893: Distances and Elevations | 219 | |
Appendix B: Glossary of Railroad Terms | 239 | |
Notes | 267 | |
Bibliography | 307 | |
Index | 311 |