Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/320

260 were reorganised under Mr. Holladay's control as the Oregon and California Railroad.

Meanwhile the air was full of discussion of a transcontinental line to the Pacific Northwest. The conception of a Northern Pacific railroad was nothing new. Away back in 1853, Governor I. I. Stevens and Captain George B. McClellan had made a reconnaissance across the Rocky and Cascade Mountains and over the great plains of the Columbia, for the purpose of ascertaining a route for a northern line. They pronounced the route feasible, but the time had not yet come for such an undertaking. In a letter to McClellan of April 5, 1853, Governor Stevens states the route to be from St. Paul to Puget Sound by the great bend of the Missouri River. It is interesting to note that this is nearly the course afterwards followed.

Work on the Northern Pacific was begun in the vicinity of Kalama on the Columbia in 1870. The financial panic of 1873 resulted in the failure of Jay Cooke & Company, the backers of the enterprise, and for several years railroad work was at a standstill.

In 1879 there came to Oregon the greatest railroad builder of that era, Henry Villard. He was a true financial genius, daring, far-seeing, persistent, and self-reliant. With the quick grasp of a statesman, Mr. Villard perceived that the Columbia River was the key to a boundless opportunity. He saw that a central line up the Columbia with branches north, east, and south-east, might be thrust like a wedge between the Northern Pacific and the Union Pacific and control both. In pursuance of this conception he made three rapid moves. The first was the