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About The west shore. (Portland, Or.) 1875-1891 | View Entire Issue (June 28, 1890)
820 WEST SHORE. along the river bottoms furnishes an abundance of food for stock the entire year. Blaine was incorporated the thirteenth of last month. It has between 1,200 and 1,500 inhabitants. One national bank, with a capitalization of $50,000, is now doing business there, and steps are being taken for opening another banking house. The town has two weekly papers, two public school houses and three churches. A water woiki plant is being put in at a coBt of $25,000. An electric light service will be established within sixty days. A street car franchise from the railway depat to the wharf has been granted upon the assurance that the line will be constructed at once. A large number of business build ings and reHidences are being erected. Two more large wharves are also under construction. Real estate is active and prices are steadily advancing. Five thousand dollars are to be ex pended on street this year. A new school house is to be con structed. The town has excellent hotel facilities and it makes a strong bid for the tourist trade. Blaine is progressing along conservative lines and is sure to be a town of commercial im portance. THE CITY OF CHEHALI3. One of the instances of a town being established contrary to the wishes of a railroad company is Chehalis, Lewis county, Washington. The Northern Facific railway had a station a few miles farther down the line that it wished to make a city of. But the farmers of that country persistently refused to haul their produce to that station and continued to deliver their goods at Chehalis where the railroad company finally conclud ed to receive them. Then the town of Chehalis began its pros perous growth, which has continued to the present time, in creasing as the tributary section became more thickly settled and the output of products gained in volume. It was made the county seat. It was incorporated in 1883, but to remedy some defect in that act it has just been re-incorporated. The reason for the location of the town at that point lies in the configuration of the country. It is at the junction of two of the richest valleys of the state the Newaukum and the Che halis. It was the most accessible point for the settlers of both valleys and they naturally gravitated there to trade. Ware houses and stores were built and lumber and flour mills erect ed and put in operation. While farmers and stock raisers were improving the bottom lands of the valley lumbermen went cruising in the hills and prospectors went poking about suspicious-looking ledges and outcroppings of minerals. A num ber of surveys to determine the feasibility of railway construc tion across the Cascades were made. So in time that region became fairly well known. Gradually relations were estab lished overland with the coast country and now there is con siderable travel and a remunerative trade conducted over that route. A Btage line now runs between Chehalis and Willapa harbor. A railway company was recently organized to build a line to be called the Pacific, Chehalis A Eastern, from Willapa harbor east through Pacific, Lewis and Yakima counties to North Yakima on the east side of the mountains. The gener al direction of this line will be due east and west. Willapa harbor is the northeastern extremity of Shoalwater bay, and, contrary to the popular impression (obtained, probably from the name " Shoalwater ") it offers the best of advantages for a tide water terminus. The harbor is navigable for large craft and safe from itorms. The country to be traversed by this road contains heavy timber and fine prospect of coal and iron. It would open a section now for the most part unoccupied. It would be the shortest line to the seaboard for a large and im portant portion of the inland empire. The mountain pass is at a lower altitude than those to the northward, hence the opera tion of the road over the mountains will be less expensive. The main office of the new company is at Chehalis. Herman Trott, of St. Paul, an experienced railroad man, is president and general manager of the Pacific, Chehalis & Eastern ; John A. Chandler vice president, and John Dobson treasurer. The capitalization is $1,000,000. The first object ia to connect Sea haven, on Willapa harbor, with Chehalis. Subsequently the line will be pushed eastward beyond the mountains. There are a number of other railroad schemes in which Che halis is interested. The Northern Pacific is understood to be surveying a line from North Yakima to Shoalwater bay via Chehalis. ' The Hunt road (Oregon & Washington Territory) is under construction to Gray's harbor down the Chebalis river. The Union Pacific will be running trains through Chehalis on its line from Portland to the sound before the end of this year. The Northern Pacific now runs an extra passenger train be tween Seattle and Chehalis. There is no other agent that wields so important an in fluence in the development of a country as the railroads. And where railroads are built with any reference to local traffic it is reliable evidence of the worth of the country's resources. Rail roads are not built for fun. The men who build them first make a very careful examination of the section to be traversed and become convinced of the merit of the enterprise before they spend much money on it. The Chehalis valley now pre sents greater activity in railway construction than any other similar area in the United States. A year hence the industrial aspect will be greatly changed by the operation of these roads. Are there no millers or flouring mill men seeking business locations in Washington? If so, will they visit the agricult ural region of which Waterville is the business center and say they could ask a grander field? Within a radius of forty miles of Waterville we believe there will be raised this year nearly a million bushels of grain, mostly wheat and barley. A flouring mill at Waterville would be the natural supply point for Doug las and Okanogan and a part of Kittitas and Stevens counties, including the Okanogan mining district, the Methow and Che lan region, together with several tribes of Indians to the north and west of us. Two linea of railroad are now contemplating making Waterville an objective point, and there is now no room for doubt but it will be the principal city between Spo kane Falls and the sound. The flour for this region of a hun dred miles around is freighted from Ellensburgh, Sprague, Deep Creek Falls, a distance of from Beventy-five to 140 miles. A finer business location one that is. as sure to prove successful and profitable will never be known in the state of Washington or anywhere else. All the people of Waterville and Douglas county aek is that a practical flouring mill man with sufficient capital come and examine the field for himself. Who will take advantage of this opportunity?- Bend Empire. Tin ore has been discovered twenty-five miles southwest of Bozeman, Montana. It is found in ordinary quartz, is dark brown, and somewhat resembles iron ore mixed with mica. It is in well-defined ledges, which in places crop out to the sur face. Several assays have been made from the outcroppings which gave very encouraging results, one sample yielding two and one-half and another five per cent, tin. It is believed the ore can be concentrated close to the ledges and that the con centrates can then be shipped for reduction at a handsome profit. By those who are familiar with the characteristics of the tin ore of the Black hills of South Dakota, this deposit is said to resemble it very much.