Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/106

94 must be taken into consideration that some of this and in widely separated sections is selling at $1,200 an acre. The additional value that will be given to this vast area by an "open river" will make the cost of the improvements of the Columbia seem very small. That improvement will call into active operation many industries that wait only for the presence of reasonable transportation facilities to spring into life. The extension of irrigation enterprises will only equalize the flow of the streams in a salutary way for the interests of navigation. With the waterways of the Columbia basin open, as the expenditure of a reasonable sum will suffice to improve them, the Pacific Northwest will probably equal in wealth any other most favored section of like area in the country.

With the projected improvements completed, and a few more minor ones on the upper Columbia, the Pacific Northwest would have transportation facilities comparable with those that will be possessed by the Trunk line territory when New York's project for making a ship-channel of the Erie Canal is completed. What the Pacific Northwest system would lack in the size of cargo it could float it would make up in being a more direct route and in being available during more months of the year.