Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/326

316 December, 1863, organized and put in the field a party of engineers to survey a railroad line from the state boundary north to the Columbia River through the Rogue River, Umpqua, and Willamette valleys. Gaston assumed all responsibility for the undertaking, furnished the outfit, raised the means to pay and subsist the party, wrote and printed the report of the engineers, paid for the maps, procured and sent hundreds of petitions to the legislature, and memorials to Congress, in favor of the land grant, conducted all the correspondence, answered all the objections, and devoted his time for three years to the undertaking, and was recognized by the congressional delegations from both Oregon and California as the guiding and responsible promoter of an Oregon and California railroad on behalf of the State of Oregon. The act of Congress provided that so far as the grant related to Oregon, the lands should go to such corporation as the legislative assembly of Oregon should designate. At the ensuing session of the Oregon legislature, after the passage of the act granting the lands, Gaston prepared and had signed articles of incorporation, incorporating "The Oregon Central Railroad Company," which were read and discussed before the legislature, and filed according to law, and the legislature then passed a resolution designating the Oregon Central Railroad Company to receive the granted lands in Oregon, which resolution was afterwards filed with the Secretary of the Interior at Washington City, which officer recognized said company as entitled to the land grant in Oregon. The legislature went farther, and passed an act pledging the state to pay seven per cent interest on $1,000,000 of the company's first mortgage bonds to aid in construction of the road.

Up to the date of these acts of the legislature, and for six months thereafter, no one questioned the proceedings of Gaston or the legality of his company; but now sud-