Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/417

Rh in excess of the exact amount; $7.00 per acre would probably be more accurate.

ACRES.

Lands patented under East Side grant 2,765,597.13 Lands patented under West Side grant 128,618.13 Total lands patented, both grants 2,894,215.26 Lands claimed but not yet patented, approximately 293,000.00 Total 3,187,215.26 Total lands sold 819,927.94

Balance remaining unsold and involved in land grant suit 2,367,287.32

The United States is now seeking to recover these 2,367,287 acres by a suit in equity for violation of the provisions of the law granting the lands; and estimates these lands to be of the value of fifty million dollars. The lands already sold probably produced fifteen million dollars to the purchasers from the railroad companies. All of these lands were secured for railroad purposes by the direct efforts of Joseph Gaston, and their value to the companies is some evidence of the value of Gaston's services in the railroad development of the state.

THE WORK OF WILIAM REID.

In 1880 the narrow gauge road built by Mr. Gaston in Yamhill and Polk counties was sold to capitalists in Dundee, Scotland, who, through their agent in Oregon, William Reid of Portland, extended the lines on the west side of the Willamette river to Airlie in Polk county, and to Dundee, Yamhill county, with an east side of the river branch from Dundee crossing the river at Ray's Landing, thence to Woodburn, Silverton, Scio, and on to Coburg in Lane county. Mr. Villard leased this system (about 200 miles) in 1880; and Mr. Reid, on his own capital, subsequently extended the Hne from Dundee to Portland via Newberg; and the whole road thus built was soon after incorporated in the standard gauge system up the Willamette valley.

It was during Mr. Reid's administration of this enterprise that the great fight about the "public levee" in Portland took place. As it was "public" ground, it seemed to Reid's attorneys that the railroad had as much right to land on top of the levee as the steamboats had to tie up at the front of the same ground. And so the superintendent of Reid's road commenced improving the levee for a railroad track. Whereupon Mayor D. P. Thompson ordered the chief of police to arrest the railroad laborers and put them in the city jail, which was done. But as fast as one man was carried away, another man was put in his place, and he in turn arrested until the chief of police had got eightyfive big husky fellows in the city jail for grading and cleaning up the levee. It had become a farce, and the chief of police threw open the doors of his prison and told the men to go—which they did.

From the levee the matter was transferred to the legislature at Salem. The mayor, the Oregonian, and a lot of rich men of Portland were against Reid, but' the farmers were all in his favor. The legislature promptly passed an act to give Reid's road terminal privileges on the levee. Governor Thayer vetoed the bill, and then the legislature passed it over the governor's veto—and two railroads are now using that public levee for terminal grounds. Mr. Reid subsequently took up the proposition of building a railroad from Astoria to Portland. On this work he expended many thousand dollars in surveys and in grading the line from Seaside eastwardly into the heavily timbered region of Saddle mountain. But the financial depression of 1893 coming on put a stop