Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/128

122 the people of Washington County $25,000, and the people of Yamhill County about $20,000.

The coming of Henry Villard to Oregon in 1874 was the fact of largest importance to the development of the Northwest. Mr. Villard had been by his friends in Germany placed in charge of their interests in the Kansas Pacific Railroad, and had proved so faithful and capable in managing his trust that when similar investments in Oregon had been jeopardized by Ben Holladay he was sent here to make a report and right all wrongs. On his first visit to Oregon I accompanied him on a trip throughout the Willamette Valley and discovered that he had thoughts, if not plans, for a field of action far beyond the confines of the State. Quickly getting under his full control the existing Oregon roads, he went straight at the work of his vast plan of an Oregon railroad system having a transcontinental power and influence. And as one step rapidly followed another in the unfolding of his scheme, it was seen that Henry Villard was not an ordinary railroad promoter, but a veritable empire builder. His genius for grand plans of developing great States was fully equaled by his ability to raise the means to successfully carry them into effect.

Upon the completion of the Union Pacific Railroad to Salt Lake, that interest had sent surveying parties to look out a route for the extension of their road to Oregon. That exploration, made in the year 1868, was known as "the Hudnutt survey." An Oregon man, Col. W. W. Chapman, one of the founders of the City of Portland, took up and exploited the idea of a "Portland, Dalles & Salt Lake Railroad," on the route proposed by Hudnutt. Colonel Chapman worked upon this scheme from 1870 to 1876, attending the sessions of Congress in each year and vainly