Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1871-01-10
Letter from Washington Territory.
The Northern Pacific Railroad.
[coRREsPoNDEScE OF THE srY.l

INphhEofONbENtE VI HE SRI .
OLYMPIA, w. T., Dec. IT, 1870.
You think of me as on the northwestern con-
fines of our country. Far from it. am near
the central point. Puget Sound is about hale
way between the meridians of eastern Maine
and the Western Aleutian Islands, and is also
halfway between the parallels of latitude of
northern Alaska and southern Texas Clearly
Boston is on the felloe and Olympia is the hub.
| We are glad here that the eyes of the nation
are turned upon this central point They should
be- Wisdom comes when the sight is turned in
ward. We have much to be seen,-much that
can be seen afar off. The best wheat, the big
gest vegetables and fruits the tallest trees and
the largest and most perfect harbor in the
world, are TO be found here But the biggest
| thing we have-no, it has us, not we 1.-THE big
gest thing here, is the Northern Pacific railroad;
and that, indeed, is the principal thing that
most people are looking for, when they turn
this way. To enlighten the blind, and clear the
vision of the short-Sighted, propose to give
briefly an idea of this, The Biggest Thing
Run line from the extreme southern point
of Puget sound due south for sixty miles, and it
will fall few miles short of touching the near
est point of the Columbia river. Suppose the
Northern Pacific railroad located on that right
line-the shortest distance between the two
points Ii will then have, in that distance, under
the land grant of congress, every alternate sec
ton of land in a belt forty miles WIDE that is TO
say, for twenty miles on each side of its track.
For every mile of road it will have under the
grant twenty square miles of land, and for the
supposed sixty miles 1900 square miles, or S1S,-
900 acres. Nearly all this land is heavily tim
bered with large trees OF fir and cedar. Now,
what money value has this small fraction of land
| grant to the company? Full one-third enough
to build the entire Northern Pacific railroad
| as is demonstrable by the use of estimates so
low that they cannot err on the side of excuses.
The largest lumber dealers on the sound, men
of great experience in the yield of lumber per
acre of such lands, who own themselves i'm
mense timbered regions here estimate the aver
age yield of lumber from their own lands at
100 NJ feet per acre. Other mill owners here
say, that such is not an uncommon yield. But,
call it exorbitant if you please, and in esti-
mating the yield of the company's lands
throughout, call the average per acre only one
fourth as large, i. e. only 25 NJ per acre-which
is an extravagantly low estimate. This SIS 900
acres then will yield, all told, at % NJ feet per
acre, 20, 450,0 900 NJ feet of lumber. This produc-
tiveness, almost inconceiyable to stranger, is
made possible by the great height of the trees,
which sometimes tower 400 feet above their
roots-250 feet is not an uncommon height.
The same lumber dealers and others estimate
that, if work on the railroad be prosecuted to
completion according to the charter, lumber
throughout the territory will, in ten years, be
worth five dollars per NJ. on the stump. Call it
worth but half that and we have the value of
the lumber along only this sixty miles of road,
in ten years from now, in round numbers, $751;
100000 The value of the land shorn of timber
will, at that date, average at least IS per acre,
(for the road will run through the best parts of
the territory and the value of the S18 900 acres
apart from its timber, will be, consequently,
81 100000. Reckoning them together, the tim
Der and the soil, and we get the grand total
value of the land grant along only sixty miles
of road in Washington territory, west of the
Cascade Mountains, in round numbers, $780,
900, 900, the present value of which sum, at ten
per cent interest, is S27 100000, full one third
enough to build the whole road complete.
But the N. P. R. R. company expect to get
west Of the Cascade Mountains, by judciously
crooking and extending their line, to the ex-
IRENE limits to which congress may suffer them
to co. quantity of land, III this territory alone,
six times as great as the amount we have been
| contemplating, all equally valuable with that,
both in timber and in soil. They expect to
possess, own and control, in this territory alone
and west of the Cascade Mountains. property
under their land grant of which the present
value may be stated at S165,OOO, 900. But stay
that sum might be sensibly Ito put it mildly
increased; for under this soil lie inexhaustible
measures of coal, which have been left entirely
out of our calculations-and this coal, the best
west of the Rocky Mountains, and destined to
supply the entire Pacific market.
Consider now, if you please, that this compa-
ny will own alternate sections almost through
out the territory west of the Cascades; that no
intersecting or rival lines of railroad can be
made except across its lands: that no person or
company can without its consent procure land
enough in one tract to proftably engage in the
| numbering business; that the company for an
indefinite number of years will possess all the
rail transportation in the territory, and about
half the land that is worth anything; and you
have glimpses and outlines from which you may
point a conception, clear in some particulars,
but eonfounding by its magnitude, of this cor
poratiOn, now setting down its foot amid our
forests,-a being so enormous that the magma
ton cannot soar high enough to survey, nor
language dilate sufficiently to bound its tiresome
| dimensions. Alas, that so august a being,
having Travelled thus far can find no more con-
siderable a legislature than that of Washington
to tic up with its purse-strings and button down
in its breeches pocket win it not sigh for the
legislature that sits in the other Washington,
and cry that here at the center of the republic
Should be the capital? HERMAN.