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236 LESLIE M. SCOTT

road from Salem to Flavel via Sheridan and Tillamook; also to sell town lots on the peninsula adjoining Fort Stevens, where the Hill roads are now building a terminal for connections with their fast new steamships soon to ply to and from San Francisco. Flavel, from that day to this, has been an ambi- tious rival of Astoria, without as yet, however, upbuilding itself or trenching upon Astoria. Here the townsite company laid big plans for railroad terminals and shipping. Astoria was to be but a way-station. In 1897 a fine hotel was opened there, which was attended during the summer of that year by the "society" elite of Portland.

After the Schofield^Goss fiasco, Astoria reverted to the Gpble route. G. L. Blackman and W. H. Milliken appeared and then vanished; ditto a so-called Astoria & Eastern Rail- way, incorporated November 10, 1892, capitalization $3,000,000.

A new pair of promoters arrived at Astoria, January 19, 1893 P. P. Dickinson and R. B. Hammond, of New York, accompanied by their attorney, Milliken. Hammond was said to be president of the New York & Long Island Railroad. On December 15, 1892, these men entered into a contract with the Subsidy Guarantee Company to begin construction of the Goble road before April 1, 1892, and to finish the fifty-eight- mile road before October 1, 1892. They were to receive a bonus of 2,000 acres of land at Astoria (Oregonian, January 14, 1893). The estimated cost of the line was $1,500,000. They were also to build from Goble to Portland, the cost of which division was estimated at $2,000,000 additional. Their supposed backers were William H. Stein way, of New York, the piano manufacturer, and John Hudson, a London capitalist. But like its predecessors, this project fell by the wayside and Astoria had to forget these promoters also.

Two months later William H. Remington and W. H. Wattis arrived at Astoria from Salt Lake (April 25, 1893) in quest of the golden fleece. Their backer was the same Hudson who had favored Dickinson and Hammond; it was even guessed that Gould had sent forth these two latest Jasons. Their scheme was to finish the old project of the Astoria and South