Benton County, Oregon - Chapter 44: The Oregon and California Rail Ao Ad, 1885

Towards the end of the year 1866, the subject of railroads was the all-absorbing topic of conversation throughout t)regon, location being but a secondary consideration. What was wanted in the first instance was the dictum of the people that a road should be built; this conclusion arrived at then surveys could be made of the most feasible and practicable routes, be it on the east or west side of the Willamette river.

It was very naturally hoped by the people of Benton county that under any circumstances Corvallis, their county seat, would be tapped by the road, but with that strong sense of justice that has ever characterized that community, they were prepared to forego this manifest benefit rather than there should be no line at all built. Farmers, merchants, mechanics, in short all men with the interest of the county at heart, declared themselves willing to take stock in any company and give their greatest aid in pushing the matter to a speedy conclusion. This was the only method of waking the Willamette valley from the Rip Van Winkle sleep in which it had lain for so many years.

In the month of February 1867, the subject took definite shape and on the sixteenth the prospectus of the Oregon Central Railroad Company was published. In that document we find the names of the incorporators to be, R. R. Thompson, S. G. Reed, J. C. Ainsworth, M. M. Melvin, George L. Woods, F. A. Chenoweth, Joel Palmer, Edward R. Geary, 8. Ellsworth, J. H. Mitchell, H. W. Corbett, B. F. Brown, T. H. Cox and J. Gaston, secretary. It further states that it is not proposed to discuss the importance of this railroad enterprise to the people of Oregon, or to urge the importance of aiding it. That had been already very fully explained by official documents and the public press, and what had not been said would be urged on the attention of the public at a future time. It, however, could be stated that the enterprise had gained such strength and received such assurances of encouragement from practical railroad men and capitalists that the effort then made would certainly be crowned with success. All that was needed was patience, perseverance, in addition to what aid the farmers and business meu of the State would be able to give, in order to put the road through to the head of the Willamette valley.

But while the project was still in its infancy clouds commenced to darken the horizon and unpleasant feelings asserted themselves. Two companies, as will be shown, claimed the right and franchise given by congress and the legislature thus infusing a dampening effect upon the enterprise. The incorporators of the second company were, George L. Woods, John H. Moores, S. Ellsworth, Edwin A. Cooke, Isaac R. Moores, and Joseph S. Smith. What the feelings of the residents in this part of the State were will best be gathered from the following resolutions and proceedings of a meeting convened at McMinville, Yamhill county, May 18, 1867.

Whereas, The Congress of the United States has granted several millions of acres of land to aid in constructing a railroad through Oregon, and made it the duty of the Oregon Legislature to designate the company which should receive such land grant ; and

Whereas, The last Legislature did designate the Oregon Central Railroad, Company, a company then incorporated, and whose incorporators and articles of association were then before the Legislature and possessed its confidence ; and

Resolved, By this meeting: First - That we recognize in the said original organization of the Oregon Central Railroad Company the corporation which is entitled to the rights and franchises given by congress and our own legislature, and the company which should be supported and sustained by the people. Second - That we regret to see any citizen of Oregon endeavoring to get up new organizations in the original name, as any such counter movements can have no other effect than to produce discord, faction, litigation and embarrassment to a great public enterprise in which the whole State is interested. Third - That while we freely accord to capitalists and others located on the east side of the Willamette river, the right to honorably secure the location of the railroad upon their side of the river, we likewise think that, justice and fair-play would give us of the west side, at least an opportunity to present our claims, advantages and inducements before the road is located. Fourth - That it is the duty of every land-holder and citizen of Yamhill, Polk, Washington, Benton and Multnomah counties to render all the aid and encouragement in their power to any overture of the railroad company looking to a possible location of the road through said counties.

The residents of the east side of the Willamette would appear to have carried the day, for April 15, grouud was broken in East Portland for the commencement of the line, and on June the twenty-sixth the like operation was gone through at Corvallis, and the track of the Oregon Central Railroad (East Side) commenced to be graded towards the south line of the county, which, however was a small matter, save that it was an evidence to the people of the valley that the rival corporations were in earnest in the matter. But it is not with this line that our duty lies at present, sufficient be it here to state that, September 19, 1868, the public were made aware that a controlling interest of the Oregon Central had passed into the hands of Ben. Holladay and his associates.

Oregon and California Railroad - West Side Divlsion. - The Oregon Central Railroad Company - West Side of the Willamette river - was originated during the session of the Oregon Legislature of 1866 and when the special message of the Governor on the subject of railroads was read before the house it was referred to a committee of five, who, after a consultation on the subject, reported a joint resolution designating that company to receive the land granted by Congress, and also reported a bill granting the company certain aid in the way of interest on bonds. In May, 1867, the "acceptance " of the land grant, as expressed by the incorporators, was filed with the Secretary of the Interior, which " acceptance " the Secretary held to be insufficient, and instructed the then acting Secretary of the company how and in what manner the " acceptance " of the land grant must be made by a board of directors. The necessary steps were then immediately taken to file the company's assent as directed and on July 1, 1867, the " acceptance " of this company was duly filed by the Secretary of the Interior and the company officially recognized as entitled to the land granted by Congress. On July 23, 1867, the Secretary of the Interior, a second time notified the company that its papers are all duly filed, etc.; so that the company became legally entitled to the land, subject to the conditions of the grant.

As soon as the company had ascertained that its papers were dully filed and its rights to the land officially recognized, it proceeded to the work of surveys and location, preparatory to filing a map with the Secretary of the Interior of its actual survey, as required by the land grant. Canvassing for subscriptions to the stock of the company was also commenced and that work was continually prosecuted from the first day of October. By the month of December, the sum of over two hundred thousand dollars was secured in Washington and Yamhill counties, while the appeal to the people was energetically pushed in the other counties through which it was contemplated the line should pass.

In December, 1867, upon the invitation of leading citizens of Portland, the officers of the company visited that city and after explaining their purposes and the condition of the corporation to the people and the City Council, the latter ivnanimously passed an ordinance, favored by more than a thousand voters and tax-payers, obligating the city of Portland to pay seven per cent, interest, in gold, on two hundred and fifty thousand dollars of the company's bonds for twenty years.

At the March term of the County Court for Washington county, application was made for aid similar to that rendered by the city of Portland, and after a full investigation of the matter, the county authorities granted the prayer in the petition of the farmers of the county and entered into a contract with the company to pay similar interest to the above on fifty thousand dollars of the company's bonds.

These aids were available to the corporation as follows : When five miles of the road was graded from its terminus in the city of Portland, one hundred thousand dollars of the Portland aid bonds were to be handed over by the city authorities to W. 8. Ladd, who acted as trustee in their disposal for the company; and when five miles more were graded seventy-five thousand dollars of the bonds were to be delivered ; and when ten miles more were graded a like sum was to be forthcoming. The Washington county aid bonds were deliverable in sums of five thousand at a time, as fast as that amount was expended within the county ; while, in addition to these, the company had received subscriptions and donations of cash and land in Multnomah, Washington and Yamhill counties aggregating in value to nearly three hundred thousand dollars. These aids were afterwards held to be invalid and the company received no benefit therefrom.

The original intention was that the line should traverse the counties of Washington, Yamhill, Polk and Benton to Eugene City in Lane county and thence south to Jacksonville, while, according to the contract with the city of Portland and Washington county the portion of the road between Portland and Hillsboro should be put in operation before the close of the year 1869.

On the first day of May, 1868, ground was broken in Portland and the work of grading there aud then commenced, the contract being awarded to S. G. Reed & Co.

On June 16, 1868, the Commissioners' Court of Yamhill decided to assume for the county the interest on seventy-five thousand dollars of the company's bonds at the rate of seven per cent, per annum, in gold, for twenty years, the details of the contract as agreed upon being that the coupons should be signed immediately and the interest run from July 1, 1868, the bonds to be placed in the hands of W. S. Ladd, as trustee, who was to collect the interest and keep the bonds till the road should be in operation to the Yamhill river, at which time all the bonds, coupons and accumulated interest should be delivered to the Railroad company. The county, in consideration of the aid, reserving the right to use the company's bridges in Yamhill county free for the benefit of the public.

During the progress of the lines on the east and west sides of the Willamette river, a bitter war was waged and sides taken by opposing factions with considerable warmth, and, as a natural consequence, wranglings, divisions and jealousies ensued, the cause whereof was as follows ; A suit was instituted by the West Side Company praying for an injunction to restrain the use of the name "Oregon Central Railroad Company " by that operating on the East Side, to which complaint a demurrer was interposed which the Court overruled, holding that there was enough in the complaint to require an answer ; whereupon the attorneys for the West Side Company asked leave to file an amended complaint in ten days's time, which was granted ; the Court also giving the East Side Company forty days to plead to such amended complaint. All that was desired, therefore, so far as any reference is concerned, was that the plaintiff had presented a complaint that could not be thrown out of court simply by demurrer, but that an answer should be filed in order that the case might be tried on facts. The learned Judge, however, did decide in the case and it was one of the law questions raised by the demurrer, that the act of the Legislature of the State of Oregon, passed in October, 1866, guaranteeing the payment of interest on one million dollars of the bonds of the Oregon Central Railroad Company, and which aid was claimed solely by the West Side Company was unconstitutional and therefore void and that the franchise and aid claimed by the West Side Company, by virtue of such acts, amounted to nothing, for the reasons stated.

With the uncertainty hanging over the grants of land it became necessary to make an appeal to Washington. On April 29, 1870, the West Side Railroad bill passed both Houses of Congress after a long struggle of nine weeks to reach a vote on the measure. We cannot refrain from quoting the graphic description of an eye-witness of the final scene in the House :

" For nine long weeks we have labored to reach a vote on the measure in the House and the success with which we have been held back by the, enemies of land grants, shows their strength. But the accumulating forces to-day bore down opposition and reached the bill on the 4 Table.' Holman, Democrat, of Indiana, had the floor and with Fernando Wood, used up their hour in set speeches, violating their agreement to let Mr. Smith have time to explain the bill. By arrangement Fitch, of Nevada, was to make the leading speech in favor of the land grant policy, which he did eloquently and ably, speaking forty minutes. The floor was then given first to McCormick, Democrat, of Missouri, for three minutes to state the position of the land committee in favor of the bill ; then ten minutes to Smith to answer questions. It being near five o'clock when Smith got the floor and the House becoming impatient, although by general consent he was authorized to take his own time to explain, yet feeling the great importance of reaching a vote before an adjournment, which would have defeated us, he called the previous question. Speaker Blaine rapidly pressed the vote, first by acclamation, then by ' divisions/ then by ' tellers ' and finally by the ayes and noes, and when it was finally apparent that we had the House, then commenced the side-fights. Greater excitement had never been seen on the floor before and no words of mine can portray the intense feeling of nearly two hundred members, all talking, most of them on their feet, and many in hot blood. The irrepressible Ingersoll was pitching into Sam Cox; Beck was pitching into Trumble, his colleague; Wilson, of Minnesota, was firing away at Holman ; Smith, of Iowa, was teariug away at Hawley, of Illinois (both members of the land committee); Maynard was gesticulating mildly at the whole Democratic side ; Sargent was firing away at all opposition generally ; and Root, of Arkansas, was rallying his Southern friends ; while Eldridge, of Wisconsin, with oaths, both loud and deep, and clenched fists, was denouncing his Democratic friends as ' miserable factionists.' It was plain that the West Side bill was not on trial, but the two hundred other land grant bills, donating one hundred million acres for twenty thousand miles of railroad, and looking to the investment of a thousand millions of dollars, regarding this as a test vote, had precipitated all their force and fire into the contest. But the battle was brief under the operations of the previous question and the Speaker soon announced the final result - ninety-seven for the bill and sixty-nine against it."

In July, 1874, the representatives of the German Mortgagees of the West Side Railroad spent a day in passing over the line and examining the country along the route from St. Joe to Junction City. They expressed themselves satisfied with the territory through which the line would pass, going so far as to say that it was by all odds the most beautiful section of Oregon that they had seen and that it appeared to be the most likely to furnish a paying business. Mr. Villard (whose name has since become a household word in Oregon,) the agent and attorney of the German interests in the road, met a large number of the citizens of Corvallis and talked freely about the prospects of the road ; and before leaving declared his intention of trying to raise enough money in Germany to finish the road to Junction City, if the people on the line would give the right of way and do the grading in the level districts of country ; and left the United States with high hope of success. But on returning to Germany he found it so difficult to secure any farther advances to American railroads, even to save such investments as were already made in the West Side road, he modified his appeal to his friends for aid to this road to the extent of getting enough iron and cash to lay the track as far as Corvallis, which was an extension of fortyseven miles, depending on the stockholders and people here to get the ties and do some of the grading, there being scarcely any need for more rolling stock than they had on the road.

This proposition was about being closed at the beginning of the Legislature of 1874, so that the iron would have reached Portland in the spring and the cars would have been running to Corvallis by the fourth of July, when information of the unfriendly legislation proposed in the Legislature, and especially the proposition to cover the same -ground with the route of the Winnemucca road being telegraphed to Frankfort, the whole negotiations were suddenly stopped and postponed until it could be seen what the Legislature would do.

On October 30, 1874, Messrs. Gaston and Peebles, the latter a representative of the English Capitalists interested in the Oregon Central Railroad, passed through Corvallis, the object of the visit being, as that of Mr. Villard in July, to gain information relative to the road.

Meanwhile Mr. R. Koehler was summoned, in May, 1878, to Germany to report upon the advisability of getting closer connection regarding the ownership of the two lines, and in consequence of that report the German bondholders acquired the interests of the English parties in the Oregon Central Railroad, raised the money for the extension of the line from St. Joe to Corvallis, and commenced the work immediatelv after the return of Mr. Koehler in January, 1879, all of which gave general satisfaction to the people of Benton county.

The next step taken by the projectors of the West Side road was the filing of articles of incorporation of the Western Oregon Railroad Company with Joseph Brandt, Jr., P. Schultz and J. N. Dolph as incorporators, the capital stock being placed at two millions of dollars, the business of the corporation being to construct and equip railroads and telegraph lines from Portland by or near McMinnville, Amity and Corvallis to or near Junction City ; also a branch from, at or near St. Joseph to a point on the Oregon and California Railroad between Salem and Oregon City, and also a branch from Forest Grove to Astoria.

At the same time R* Koehler, I* R. Moores and Joseph Simon incorporated the Northwestern Construction Company, with a capital stock of five hundred thousand dollars, the business being the construction and equipment of railroads, etc.

The residents of Corvallis now began to see clearly the approach of the longlooked-for railroad. They held a meeting, August 23, 1879, when the right of way along Sixth street, depot grounds and a switch to the river was granted, which selection, however, would appear not to have been in accord with those of the railroad authorities, therefore, the City Council, at a session had September 8, 1879, appointed Hon. John Burnett, E, B. McElroy and E. Woodward, property holders and prominent citizens, to correspond with Mr* Koehler relative to the selection of a route through, and depot grounds in, the city of Corvallis ; and also to invite him at his earliest convenience to meet the Council, in order that some terms should be agreed upon, mutually satisfactory to the railroad management and the citizens of Corvallis. The work was accomplished with perfect harmony, and January 19, 1880, the first construction train of the West Side Railroad entered the coporative limits of Corvallis, . after awaiting its arrival for twenty-seven long years.

The following day (Tuesday) R. Koehler, Vice-President and J. Brandt, Jr., Superintendent examined the road. On the twenty-fourth a public meeting was convened in Corvallis for the purpose of considering what steps should be taken to recognize suitably the reception of the first passenger train on the road, Judge Chenoweth, Judge Burnett, Dr. Bayley, J. W. Rayburn and Sol. King being appointed a committee by His Honor Mayor Jacobs to effect the celebration. At half-past nine o'clock in the evening of January 28, 1880, the first passenger train came into Corvallis, among those being Hon. J. N. Dolph, Vice President of the Western Oregon Railroad Company; Paul Schultz, Land Agent; T. De Clarke, Superintendent of construction; Harry Habbersett, Road-master; the train being in charge of Conductor A. K. Colburn, with Jack Evans as Engineer from Independence. A large crowd, numbering about eight hundred, awaited the arrival at the depot, about half a mile from the center of the town. A loud cheer went up from the assemblage as the train pulled up : Messrs. Dolph and Schultz were met by the committee and escorted to the City Hall, where more than half the inhabitants of the town were assembled. The band discoursed sweet music, Dr. Bayley called the meeting to order and introduced Judge Chenoweth, who addressed Mr. Dolph in a lengthy and appropriate speech of much eloquence.

It should be here mentioned that the name borne by the company at the present time was assumed upon the transfer of the property of the Oregon Central, and Western Oregon Railroad Companies to the Oregon and California Railroad Company in the year 1880.