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CHAPTER XVII

THE AGE OF RAILWAYS

The Inland Empire was not alone in demanding railroad facilities at this time. As yet the entire Pacific Northwest was lacking in this essential means of development, and the people everywhere were insisting that railways be built.

Pioneer projects for railroads to the Pacific. Shortly before the settlement of the Oregon country by the pioneers during the 'forties, railways had become an assured success in the eastern portions of the United States. Twenty years earlier, when Congress was engaged in discussing the prospect of planting a future American colony near the Pacific, Mr. Floyd conceived of a communication, by steamboat and wagon, between the mouth of the Missouri and the mouth of the Columbia. The transition was easy from such a conception to that of a steamboat and railway communication, and this was suggested as soon as railway building in the United States had made some progress. In 1836 Levi Beardsley, speaking in the New York State Senate on a bill for completing the New York and Erie Railroad, said: "Is it extravagant to believe that before another thirty-six years expire we shall not only have an