Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 25.djvu/296

 258 JOHN TELSON GANOE

"Instead of the times now fixed in said section, the first section of twenty miles of said railroad and telegraph shall be completed within eighteen months from the pass- age of this Act, and at least twenty miles in each two years thereafter and the whole on or before the first day of July, Anno Domini 1880." Both companies were again pitted against each other. Arguments were presented and pamphlets circulated. Congress was prone to consider the question one for the courts but amended the Act on April 10,1869, to read: "That section six be and the same is hereby amended so as to allow any Railroad Company heretofore, desig- nated by the Legislature of the State of Oregon, in ac- cordance with the first section of said act, to file its assent to such act in the Department of the Interior within one year from the date of the passage of this act, and such filing of its assent, if done within one year from the passage hereof, shall have the same force and effect to all intents and purposes as if such assent had been filed with- in one year after the passage of said act; provided that nothing herein shall impair any rights heretofore acquired by any Railroad Company under said act, nor shall said act or this Amendment be construed to entitle more than one Company to a grant of land; and providing further, that the lands granted by the act aforesaid shall be sold to actual settlers only in quantities not greater than one- quarter section to one purchaser, and for a price not ex- ceeding two dollars and fifty ecnts per acre." The East Side Company filed assent with the Depart- ment of the Interior in June, 1869, and in October, 1869, filed maps of the survey for the first sixty miles of road. The West Side Company did not construct any part of its road and waived all claims to the grant and turned their efforts to obtain another grant from Congress. In this they were successful. On May 4, 1870, Congress passed an act providing: 1. Right of way one hundred feet wide from Forest Grove to Astoria. 2. They were to have alternate sections of non-mineral •<l V+*.