ing firm of Jay Cooke & Company to undertake to finance the railroad. The Cooke Company then sent two parties over the route-the one from the western end, in charge of W. Milnor Roberts, who, in a short time became chief engineer, consisted of Roberts, Samuel Wilkeson, Rev. Mr. Claxton, William G. Moorehead, Jr., and a son of Engineer Johnson. These men, after visiting all the little towns on Puget Sound, went up the Columbia River, crossed overland from Wallula to Lake Pend d'Oreille, through the Bitter Root and Rocky mountains and eastward down the Missouri River. The report convinced Cooke & Co. of the value of the Northern Pacific land grant as a basis of credit and it agreed to assume the task of financing the road.

An accommodating Congress and public permitted the company to change its charter. The road was bonded for $100,000,000, the banking firm agreeing to sell the bonds at par and pay the railroad company 88 cents of each dollar received. In addition to this commission the bank was to receive $200 in stock with each $1,000 bond sold. A pool was formed and within thirty days Cooke & Co. sold $5,000,000 in bonds. The advertising campaign which it instituted for the Northern Pacific was the greatest the world had known. Almost every newspaper in the country printed the advertising; and stories telling of the wonderful business opportunities and fine farming lands to be found in the Northern Pacific country. Branch bond houses were established in Europe and the Northern Pacific was carried to a high place on a wave of wild and unreasonable speculation.

Active construction began in July, 1870, at Thompson's Junction, Minn. On the western end twenty-five miles of roadbed was graded that year. It extended from Kalama up the Cowlitz Valley and the next year rails were laid and two years later fifty miles more were completed. In the fall Gen. George Cass, Ogden, Billings, Canfield, Wright, Windom and Chief Engineer Roberts came to the Sound to select a terminus. They journeyed back and forth on the steamer North Pacific, were entertained at each of the many little towns with terminal ambitions and returned east without announcing a decision.

Olympia they found objectionable because of her "extensive tide flats." However, it was about this time that Ira Bradley Thomas suddenly died in an Olympia hotel. Early in the spring Thomas appeared in Olympia and began buying land along the eastern shore of one of the inlets. He bought several thousand acres. His death threw the whole matter into the probate courts and probating an estate is a matter requiring considerable time.

Thomas was an agent of the Lake Superior & Puget Sound Company, chartered under the laws of Maine. January 29, 1869, the Maine Legislature passed an act incorporating the Western Transportation & Mining Company, with Abner Coburn, Philander Coburn, Richard D. Rice and others, incorporators. March 23, 1870, the same Legislature passed an act permitting the Western Transportation & Mining Company to change its name to Lake Superior & Puget Sound Company. The change of name was made April 26th. November 27, 1871, the Legislature of Washington Territory passed an act requiring all foreign corporations doing business in the territory to appoint a resident agent. The Lake Superior & Puget Sound Company appointed as such agent John W. Sprague, his commission being signed by Thomas H. Canfield, president; and Samuel Wilkeson, secretary. At this time Rice was vice president; Canfield,

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TILDEN FOUNDATION

general manager; Sprague, superintendent, and Wilkeson, secretary, of the Northern Pacific Railroad Company. Ira Bradley Thomas was an agent of the Lake Superior & Puget Sound Company and his death tied up the lands bought at Olympia. Seattle was too much on the hillside; Steilacoom possessed an open roadstead instead of a harbor; Mukilteo was in much the same situation; Bellingham Bay was too far north; Tacoma was a little sawmill town, and the commissioners returned east.

The death of Thomas was the death of Olympia's "terminus" hopes-and they had been high hopes, too. Speculation had hoisted the price of land to a high level. The directors of the land company faced a serious dilemma. new terminus-one at which they could obtain land for city building-became necessary. From New York came Vice President J. D. Rice with instructions. to confer with J. C. Ainsworth and decide the matter. The two commissioners went to Steilacoom where they discussed the various sites, listened to the arguments of delegations from other towns, weighed the subsidies and decided that Tacoma was the proper place for the Puget Sound end of the line.

Before announcing their decision Rice and Ainsworth sent the following telegram to President Cass at New York:

"The situation is substantially this: At Tacoma the Puget Sound Company have about 1,100 acres by purchase; bonded donations to Puget Sound Company about 1,500 acres; bonded to purchase sixty acres mill property for $100,000 gold. This whole territory in solid body amounts to about twenty-seven hundred acres with unbroken waterfront of over two miles and riparian rights to tide flats of, say, 600 acres, to which can be added company lands in vicinity including natural parks with beautiful lakes enough to swell amount to, say, 10,000

acres.

"Seattle offers about 2,500 acres and 450 lots in city limits, some 6,500 acres in vicinity, $60,000 cash, 4,800 feet front on navigable water and release of riparian rights of tide flats near city, title to pass on completion of road to that point. City limits large. To carry out our plan of a city company on $2,000,000 basis with any prospect of success, as now advised, shall unhesitatingly decide in favor of Tacoma. The mill property to be purchased cost them more than is asked for it, but it is vital to success of enterprise as it covers half mile of best waterfront. Please answer.

"J. D. RICE,
"J. C. AINSWORTH."

Cass replied that the executive committee "coincide in opinion with you," and on July 14, 1873, Rice and Ainsworth, at Kalama, announced the selection of Tacoma. While on his western trip Cass was elected to the presidency of the railroad company. He refused to endorse the Lake Superior & Puget Sound Company and its plans for townsite promoting, a compromise was brought about and arrangements made for organizing a new company under the name, "Tacoma Land Company."

CHAPTER XXVI

FIRST BUSINESS DIRECTORY OF WASHINGTON IS ISSUED IN 1872-MORTIMER MURPHY, AFTERWARD OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, AND FATHER P. F. HYLEBOS THE EDITORS-SCHOLARLY REVIEWS OF STATE'S RESOURCESSEATTLE AND OLYMPIA ARE RIVALS, WITH SEATTLE CREEPING AHEAD PREDICTIONS AS TO STEILACOOM'S FUTURE.

In 1872 Mortimer Murphy, scientist and writer, engaged Father P. F. Hylebos to assist in preparing the "Puget Sound Business Directory and Guide to Washington Territory." Tacoma then had only about one hundred inhabitants and was classified among the mill towns, without further detail or ceremony. Seattle was something of a town, having about 1,800 inhabitants and slowly creeping ahead of Olympia. Seattle and Steilacoom both had roller-skating rinks, but Steilacoom even then was betraying that sleepy-eyed vision of distant possibilities which caused the directory writers to predict that its future lay in the domain of pleasure-making and tourist-entertaining rather than in commercial or industrial channels. The writers foresaw it as "the Newport of the Northwest."

The directory's survey of the Northwest covered its flora and fauna, to some extent its geology, its geography and its general characteristics with such literary mastery that the book enjoyed a considerable demand.

Here are a few paragraphs from its able pages:

"Western Washington includes that, portion lying between the Cascade Mountains on the east, the Pacific Ocean on the west, the Columbia River on the south and British Columbia on the north. It extends about four degrees of latitude and three of longitude. Its northern limits extend to the forty-ninth parallel, which bisects the Straits of Juan de Fuca midway, and its southern limits terminate in the mid-channel of the Columbia River in latitude 45 deg. 33 min. It has an area of about thirty thousand square miles, the principal portion of which is heavily timbered with magnificent forests of fir, pine and cedar.

"Like the eastern portion of the territory, the western has also a great maritime and commercial artery in Puget Sound, the finest body of water in the world, which lies midway between the Cascade Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Strictly speaking, the Sound is a small body of water extending from Point Defiance to Olympia, a distance of forty miles, and composed of a number of inlets, but the name is now applied to the waters extending from the Straits of Juan de Fuca to the head of Budd's Inlet. The Sound covers an area of 2,000 square miles. It has a coast line of 1,600 miles, and is 120 miles in length. Every mile is navigable for ships of the largest model, there being neither rocks nor shoals from one end to the other. Vessels can find anchorage within a few hundred feet of the shore in from five to twenty fathoms of water.