Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/130

124 first move in his great scheme of concentrating the trade of all the region west of the Rocky Mountains and north of California at Portland, Oregon. He presented the proposition first to Jay Gould and other large stockholders in the Union Pacific Railroad, with a view to constructing a branch of the Union Pacific from Salt Lake to Portland on the Chapman route. After considering this for months the Gould party declined to go into the scheme, and Villard at once organized the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company, raised the money to take up the Ainsworth option, and immediately commenced the construction of the road eastwardly from Portland. To this bold movement of Villard, wholly unexpected by the Union Pacific people, they promptly replied by organizing the Oregon Short Line Company, to build a road from the Union Pacific line to the Columbia River, and at once commenced construction. Villard had thrown down a challenge for possession of the Short Line route, it had been promptly accepted, and now the race was on as to see which of these parties should win the game. It was the first great test of Henry Villard's ability as a financier. He was opposed by Gould, Morgan, and some of the ablest and wealthiest capitalists in the world, and yet his talents and energy were such that he pushed his road eastwardly with such force and rapidity as to meet his rivals at Huntington, near the eastern boundary of the State, and effectually hold his chosen field of enterprise.

But brilliant in conception and rapid in construction as had been the great road to control the Columbia River Valley, Mr. Villard had in his fertile brain a still greater scheme of finance and development to astonish the railroad world. The Northern Pacific Railway, with the largest bounty of public lands ever granted in aid of the construction of any road, had been making but a snail's pace in spanning the continent with money raised on