Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 20.pdf/231

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May 10 is the anniversary of the completion of the first transcontinental railroad-the Union Pacific-Central Pacific, the "last spike" of which was driven at Promontory Point, 53 miles northwest of Ogden, in 1869. The running time of passenger trains between San Francisco and Chicago thereafter was six and one-half days. This event is a momentous one in Pacific Coast progress. The second transcontinental railroad, the Southern Pacific-Texas & Pacific-was completed in 1882; the third, the Northern Pacific, in 1883. The "last spike" of the Northern Pacific, September 8, 1883, was a grand event for the Pacific Northwest, and great stores of expectation and realization attach to it.

Efforts to change the name of the snowpeak from Rainier to Tacoma are continuous in the city of Tacoma. The Portland Oregonian ventured to adjust the trouble by suggesting Mount Roosevelt, but the old name which Captain George Vancouver applied in 1792 seems as firmly fixed as ever Several years ago the Legislature of Oregon "changed" Mount Pitt to Mount McLoughlin, an act appropriate enough since Pitt means nothing and McLoughlin has lasting significance, but Mount Pitt remains in everyday speech around the peak. It is curious to contemplate the persistency of names and sounds in human speech. Science and history show that the sounds of words and the notes of animals are more durable even than mountains. Mount Tacoma is euphonious and appropriate, but when one contemplates the long list of ill-fitting geographical names the thought occurs, "Why stop with Mount Rainier" and then the task becomes insurmountable. Common agreement would establish Mount Tacoma, but that seems just as impossible now as during the many past years of the effort.