Driving the first piling for the Seattle & Walla Walla Railroad, Seattle, May 4, 1874 (CURTIS 356)

Seattle, looking east toward Beacon Hill (CURTIS 1190)

Seattle from Beacon Hill in 1881 (CURTIS 1265)

The Seattle and Walla Walla Railroad (earlier Seattle and Walla Walla Railroad and Transportation Company) was a

narrow gauge A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge narrower than standard . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and . Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with tighter curves, smaller structu ...

railroad Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...

and was the first proper railroad to serve

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

, preceded only by horse-drawn rail vehicles and by a coal train making the very short haul from

Lake Union Lake Union is a freshwater lake located entirely within the city limits of Seattle, Washington, United States. It is a major part of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, which carries fresh water from the much larger Lake Washington on the east to ...

to Pike Street. Despite its ambitious name, actual construction never went beyond

King County King County is located in the U.S. state of Washington. The population was 2,269,675 in the 2020 census, making it the most populous county in Washington, and the 13th-most populous in the United States. The county seat is Seattle, also the st ...

, the county of which Seattle itself is the seat. After being sold to

Henry Villard Henry Villard (April 10, 1835 – November 12, 1900) was an American journalist and financier who was an early president of the Northern Pacific Railway. Born and raised by Ferdinand Heinrich Gustav Hilgard in the Rhenish Palatinate of the Kin ...

's Oregon Improvement Company in 1880 it was renamed the Columbia and Puget Sound Railroad. In 1916, that became the Pacific Coast Railroad Company.

History

Seattle and Walla Walla

When the

Northern Pacific Railway The Northern Pacific Railway was a transcontinental railroad that operated across the northern tier of the western United States, from Minnesota to the Pacific Northwest. It was approved by Congress in 1864 and given nearly of land grants, whic ...

chose nearby Tacoma as its western terminus (1873), many thought that this would condemn Seattle to, at best, a secondary role on

Puget Sound Puget Sound ( ) is a sound of the Pacific Northwest, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, and part of the Salish Sea. It is located along the northwestern coast of the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected ma ...

. While most of the other towns that were passed over in favor of Tacoma simply accepted their fate, Seattle did not.

Selucius Garfielde Selucius Garfielde (December 8, 1822 – April 13, 1883) was an American lawyer and politician who was a Delegate to the United States House of Representatives from the Territory of Washington for two terms, serving from 1869 to 1873. Early life ...

proposed a railway east through

Snoqualmie Pass Snoqualmie Pass is a mountain pass that carries Interstate 90 (I-90) through the Cascade Range in the U.S. state of Washington. The pass summit is at an elevation of , on the county line between Kittitas County and King County. Snoqualmie Pass ...

to the grainfields of

Eastern Washington Eastern Washington is the region of the U.S. state of Washington located east of the Cascade Range. It contains the city of Spokane (the second largest city in the state), the Tri-Cities, the Columbia River and the Grand Coulee Dam, the Hanfor ...

. The railroad was incorporated September 19, 1873. Its founding trustees were Arthur Denny, John Collins, Franklin Mathias, Angus Mackintosh,

Henry Yesler Henry Leiter Yesler (December 2, 1810 – December 16, 1892) was an entrepreneur and a politician, regarded as a founder of the city of Seattle. Yesler served two non-consecutive terms as Mayor of Seattle, and was the city's wealthiest resident ...

, James McNaught, J. J. McGilvra, J. M. Colman, and Dexter Horton. They ventured to

Walla Walla Walla Walla can refer to: * Walla Walla people, a Native American tribe after which the county and city of Walla Walla, Washington, are named * Place of many rocks in the Australian Aboriginal Wiradjuri language, the origin of the name of the town ...

, where they were given a warm welcome, but that city lacked Seattle's concern for the project: they already had land transport to

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

, not to mention access to the

Columbia River The Columbia River (Upper Chinook: ' or '; Sahaptin: ''Nch’i-Wàna'' or ''Nchi wana''; Sinixt dialect'' '') is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river rises in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, C ...

. J. M. Colman, owner of the Seattle lumber mill founded by Henry Yesler, emerged as the leader of the enterprise. He staked US$20,000 of his own money—a fortune in those days, especially during the slow recovery from the

Panic of 1873 The Panic of 1873 was a financial crisis that triggered an economic depression in Europe and North America that lasted from 1873 to 1877 or 1879 in France and in Britain. In Britain, the Panic started two decades of stagnation known as the "Lon ...

—on the condition that other Seattle businessmen would loan the enterprise at least twice that sum. Colman brought in labor contractor

Chin Gee Hee Chin Gee Hee (June 22, 1844
, Bureau of Archives of Taishan City. in December 1881. Additional short lines out of Black Diamond would eventually go to Denny (renamed Bruce in 1897) and to Kummer; the latter opened no later than June 30, 1903); about halfway between Renton and Black Diamond, a line was extended from Maple Valley to

Taylor Taylor, Taylors or Taylor's may refer to: People * Taylor (surname) **List of people with surname Taylor * Taylor (given name), including Tayla and Taylah * Taylor sept, a branch of Scottish clan Cameron * Justice Taylor (disambiguation) Plac ...

company town A company town is a place where practically all stores and housing are owned by the one company that is also the main employer. Company towns are often planned with a suite of amenities such as stores, houses of worship, schools, markets and re ...

owned by the Denny Clay Company) around May 1893. The C&SPRR eventually had of track. The C&PSRR gave Seattle at least a tenuous link to major railways to its south and east. At Maple Valley, it connected to a line owned by the

Milwaukee Road The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (CMStP&P), often referred to as the "Milwaukee Road" , was a Class I railroad that operated in the Midwestern United States, Midwest and Pacific Northwest, Northwest of the United States fr ...

, the Chicago, & Puget Sound Railway Company. Beginning July 1, 1884, a third rail on C&PSRR track from Black River Junction north to Argo allowed the Northern Pacific to run their wide-gauge trains on C&PSRR's otherwise narrow-gauge track, and reach Seattle from the south with their

Puget Sound Shore Railroad The Puget Sound Shore Railroad (properly The Puget Sound Shore Railroad Company() and successor Northern Pacific and Puget Sound Shore Railroad (properly Northern Pacific & Puget Sound Shore Railroad Company() built a branch line of the Northern Pac ...

. The Puget Sound Shore Railroad was never really an adequate connection to the nation's railroad network. The line was built from the Black River Junction via

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

to Stuck Junction (about halfway between

Sumner Sumner may refer to: Places Antarctica * Mount Sumner, a mountain in the Rare Range, Antarctica * Sumner Glacier, southern Graham Land, Antarctica Australia * Sumner, Queensland, suburb of Brisbane New Zealand * Sumner, New Zealand, seaside sub ...

and Kent), leading in theory to the Northern Pacific's main terminal at Tacoma, but the Northern Pacific largely declined to operate the line. The name "Stuck Junction" became all too apt. " rvice was unpredictable and sometimes absent altogether," charges were high, and no

break bulk cargo In shipping, break-bulk, breakbulk, or break bulk cargo, also called general cargo, refers to goods that are stowed on board ship in individually counted units. Traditionally, the large numbers of items are recorded on distinct bills of lading ...

was allowed (an individual merchant had to ship and receive by the carload). This situation drove Seattle to look at the possibility of connecting north, leading to the creation of the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern. There were various degrees of accommodation at various times, but it would not be until 1902 that a genuinely amicable agreement was reached with Northern Pacific, with details finalized in 1903. The

Great Seattle Fire The Great Seattle Fire was a fire that destroyed the entire central business district of Seattle, Washington on June 6, 1889. The conflagration lasted for less than a day, burning through the afternoon and into the night, and during the same sum ...

in June 1889 destroyed C&PSRR's Seattle station, shops, roundhouse, coal bunkers, all of its wharves, four freight cars and a locomotive. The railroad was up and running again by the end of the year. The

Panic of 1893 The Panic of 1893 was an economic depression in the United States that began in 1893 and ended in 1897. It deeply affected every sector of the economy, and produced political upheaval that led to the political realignment of 1896 and the pres ...

severely impacted the Oregon Improvement Company, which went into receivership in 1895, emerging in 1897 as the Pacific Coast Company, a name the reflected its inclusion of the

Pacific Coast Steamship Company The Pacific Coast Steamship Company was an important early shipping company that operated steamships on the west coast of North America. It was first organized in 1867 under the name Goodall, Nelson and Perkins. The Goodall, Nelson & Perkins Stea ...

. C&PSRR upgraded to

standard gauge A standard-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge of . The standard gauge is also called Stephenson gauge (after George Stephenson), International gauge, UIC gauge, uniform gauge, normal gauge and European gauge in Europe, and SGR in Ea ...

, work that was completed in November 1897. The 1903 agreement with Northern Pacific gave C&PSRR a good route to access Pacific Coast Steamship Company's new Seattle coal pier at Dearborn Street, where they built a new roundhouse just off of Railroad Avenue (later Alaskan Way). In 1909, following up on a 1906 agreement, the Milwaukee Road was extended similar trackage rights from the south to what had been granted to the Puget Sound Shore Railroad. By 1913, the C&PSRR was operating 11 locomotives, 8 passenger cars, 152 freight cars, and 236 coal cars. The C&PSRR was consolidated into the Pacific Coast Railroad Company on March 26, 1916.

Pacific Coast Railroad Company

The Pacific Coast Railroad Company was incorporated November 27, 1897, but did not operate until March 23, 1916. The line from Renton to Newcastle and Coal Creek was closed in 1933. The last of the extensions out of Black Diamond, to Franklin, was closed in 1936. In 1945 the line from Maple Valley to Taylor was closed, and in 1947 the stretch between Maple Valley and Henry's shut as well, leaving only the lines from Seattle via Black River Junction and Renton to Maple Valley, and from Henry's to Black Diamond, a total of about of track. In 1951, the Pacific Coast Railroad became a subsidiary of the

Great Northern Great Northern may refer to: Transport * One of a number of railways; see Great Northern Railway (disambiguation). * Great Northern Railway (U.S.), a defunct American transcontinental railroad and major predecessor of the BNSF Railway. * Great ...

. It was sold to

Burlington Northern The Burlington Northern Railroad was a United States-based railroad company formed from a merger of four major U.S. railroads. Burlington Northern operated between 1970 and 1996. Its historical lineage begins in the earliest days of railroadin ...

(now part of the

BNSF Railway BNSF Railway is one of the largest freight railroads in North America. One of seven North American Class I railroads, BNSF has 35,000 employees, of track in 28 states, and nearly 8,000 locomotives. It has three transcontinental routes that ...

) March 2, 1970.

Notes

References

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Seattle Walla Walla Railroad Defunct Washington (state) railroads History of Seattle Predecessors of the Great Northern Railway (U.S.) Railway companies established in 1876 Railway companies disestablished in 1880 Narrow gauge railroads in Washington (state) 3 ft gauge railways in the United States 1876 establishments in Washington Territory American companies established in 1876

History

Seattle and Walla Walla

Pacific Coast Railroad Company

See also

Notes

References