Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 15.djvu/242



230 LESLIE M. SCOTT

So they formed the Astoria & South Coast Railway in August, 1888; incorporators, M. J. Kinney, W. W. Parker, J. W. Conn, E. A. Noyes, M. C. Crosby, H. B. Parker and James Taylor. Branches were to run to Tillamook, perhaps to Salem or Albeny ; connections were proposed with an ambi- tious company known as Salem, Tillamook & Astoria Railroad, incorporated January 9, 1889, by John G. Wright, I. A. Man- ning, W. F. Boothby, B. S. Cook, J. W. Maxwell. Astoria pledged a bonus of $175,000. The route was to run southward along Clatsop Beach, up Lewis and Clark River, across the mountain divide to Nehalem River, thence to Forest Grove or Hillsboro. The Astoria & South Coast drove its "first spike" at Skipanon May 11, 1889.

The Astorians were delighted, at this juncture, to receive, as their builder and financier, the man who had constructed the "narrow gauge" for the Dundee capitalists, and who had almost brought Huntington in 1881 into the Winnemucca- Astoria scheme William Reid. They made him president of their company, forthwith, in June, 1889. By this time ten miles of roadbed was graded south of Spikanon, under Henry B. Thielsen, engineer (Oregonian, May 26; June 7, 1889). The road was to be finished by September 15, 1891, to a junc- tion with the Southern Pacific, in Washington or Yamhill County (Oregonian, June 15, 1889). Reid selected Hillsboro as the junction point (Oregonian, September 6, 1889; October 11, 1889). His engineers were E. E. Cooper and R. A. Haber- sham. Construction began at Hillsboro in November, 1889, and at Astoria in December, 1889. Reid was supposed to have the support of Huntington, and as Reid later wrote in The Oregonian (June 27, 1891). Reid supposed so, too. The pro- ject was stimulated by possibility of an alliance with the Oregon Pacific (Yaquina Railroad, then building in Cascade Moun- tains toward Eastern Oregon, through Santiam Pass) and some transcontinental line either Union Pacific or Northern Pacific, which were in sharp rivalry. The Astorians hoped to connect with this parent railroad of the Yaquina line. They were encouraged also by incorporation of several companies