The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1896-01-25
The Puget Sound Country.
X
The Story of a Dozen Years.
SECOND ARTICLE.


ME history Of inception and growth
i of a great city is always interest
ing. The massing Of great wealth and
enterprises, with the attendant popula-
tions. will never lose its fascination for
the man who loves humanity. For it is
at these great centers of population that
the deepest problems of human life are
found, as is also the light by which they
may be studied.
The history of Tacoma, the coming
metropolis of the Pacific coast, reads
like fiction, and presents many chapters
which would give the blush to the i'm
agination of an Fl. Rider Haggard, or
the prophetic vision of an Edward
Bellamy. And yet it is simple story,
when one understands it.
A primeval forest. trod only by pad
ded foot Of jaguar or stealthy Indian.
Reaching down in graceful slope to the
blue arm of the Pacific which reaches
inland. with extended palm, $50 miles
for the commerce of the East! The un-
broken beauty of the scene guarded
over by the he airy heads of Mt. Tacoma
on the east, and Mt. Olympus and Mt.
Constance on the west This was the
situation which in a dozen years was
transformed into beautiful city of 50,
600 souls, with it's steam and electric
roads threading upon their lines Of steel
more than score of suburbs and vii.
lagos, stretching to the Columbia ON the
south, to the British line on the north,
and east to the Cascades. This is how
it happened:
One day early in the year 1865, a man
lay near the point of death in the city
of Boston. He held in his possession
the key to the Northwest. His name
was Josiah Perham, of Maine, and he
possessed charter from the United
States government for the construction
of railway from Maine to the mouth
of the Columbia River in Oregon. With
his charter granting the right of way
through the various States went heavy
grants of land either side of the pro-
posed route, without which subsidies
the building of trans continental line
would have been impossible. A strong
feeling was developing in Congress
against further trans continental rail
way charters and particularly against
the granting of such heavy tracts Of land.
Knowing this, the Canadian Pacific,
wishing toforestall the construction of
line so nearly parallel to its own, were
making overtures to Mr. Perham for the
purchase of his charter. Should the
Perham charter pass into alien hands
and expire before construction should be
begun it would be impossible to get an
other similar bill through Congress.
Thus it was that the critical illness Of
the man who held the situation in the
Northwest locked securely in his own
hand brought crisis in the affairs of
three men who had long been figuring
upon the northern route to the Pacific.
Aware of the splendid future awaiting
those trackless MOI thwest forests, with
visions of the stupendous commerce
which must one day ride upon those
Egean waters of Puget Sound. yet al
most dazed with the audacity of the en-
terprise. they hastened to the sick mans
bedside. and for what seems now an al
most insignificant sum secured the
charter and the destiny of the Northern
Pacific railway. They were men of
nerve, and better yet, men of resources.
Through them Mr.. Jay Cooke, that peer
less fnancier by whose Napoleonic
administration the first war bonds of
$500 ,OO0,0 900 were sold, was enlisted in
the enterprise, undertook the sale of
S100,000,O00 of its bonds, and the greatest
railway enterprise of the age was
launched upon it's stupendous course Of
construction across 1000 miles of track
less prairie and unbroken forest, over
and through the two great mountain
chains of the northern hemisphere. No
long trail of emigrant wagons to the
gold fields of California blazed the way
for the northern route. No rich COM
monwealth bade it welcome to the Pa
cific coast! 1t was literally "leap in
the dark"-a plunge from the light of
civilization into the darkness of an un-
explored wilderness. The traveller over
the superb line of the Northern Pacific
Railway, as he sits today enjoying all
the comforts and delights of modern
travel can scarcely realize that every
inch of those 1000 miles had to be
travelled by foot, first by the intrepid
engineers who found the way. and then
by the toiling laborers who fought the
course step by step.
The construction Of the Northern
Pacific Railway is worthy the high place
it occupies among the great engineering
feats of the age. and it's history during
the more than % years required for it's
construction and the raising of the hun
dreds of millions of dollars spent in it's
completion and equipment, stands as
monument to mans genius and our
American resources.
pnf uhv ahouId the fhin0 hava haan