The Oregonian, Portland, OR. December 3, 1902, page 11

THE KLICKITAT VALLEY
A Fine County Bounded by Mountain and Desert
WAITING FOR TRANSPORTATION
More Like Western Than Eastern Oregon in its Superficial Aspects -
Its Industrial Development Limited to a Few Products

By a Staff Writer - First Letter.
     GOLDENDALE, Wash., Dec. 2. - I am writing from the heart of the famous Klickitat Valley, a country at once very near and very far from Portland. It is near in point of geography, being but little more than a hundred miles away as the roads go, it is far in that a high and difficult mountain and a wide river intervene between its center, Goldendale, and the nearest railroad point. In truth, the Klickitat Valley, like Tillamook, Coos Bay, the Klamath region and the Nehalam Valley, is one of the practically remote and neglected parts of our country, firmly held in the bondage of a desperate isolation and hindered by it in all the impulses and motives of its many and potential resources. Measured by its purely local conditions - its extent of open and fertile land, its wealth of timber, its fortunate climate, its geographical proximity to the chief market of the Northwest -- it is a country which ought to be as populous and productive as Marion County; whereas, in fact, it is still in the pioneer stage of development, dependent upon two or three primary industries pursued under the embarrassments and restrictions of a country lacking the means of commercial transportation. Such a country is always interesting, and the Klickitat Valley is especially so at this time when, through an enterprise hereafter to be described in detail, it is upon the eve of a change which will give it the opportunity it has long waited for and which will permit it to enter into the general competitions of the country upon even terms.
     While the Klickitat Valley lies east of the Cascade Mountains and shares in the climate and many other of the general conditions of the eastern country, it has a local character entirely its own. The sage brush so universally present in other parts of the eastern region is lacking here; and the hilltops, elsewhere for the greater part treeless, and here covered with pine and fir, while a scattering growth of scrub oak patches over the hillsides and marks the lines of waterway in gulches. The soil, while essentially volcanic differs from the eastern soils in general is that it is dense and heavy, with points of likeness to the adobe lands so common in California. These differences and give to the Klickitat country and aspect of its own, rather closer in its outward resemblances to Western than to Eastern Oregon. But the physical kinship to Western Oregon is only on the surface, for in its elevation, in the quality of its atmosphere, in its scantier precipitation, in its later Spring and its earlier Fall, in the general characteristics of its climate and in the effects of climate upon animal energy and endurance, the Klickitat region manifests its affinity with the east-of-the-mountains country.
     The accidents of topography have served to cut off the Klickitat region from an immediate connection with the railroad systems of Oregon and Washington. In their march from east to west, the Washington railway lines have gone across country through the geographical middle of the state, while the Oregon line has followed the channel of the Columbia River. The Klickitat country lies between these systems and remote from both. It nearer in miles to the Oregon road, but is cut off from it by the mountain range which rises almost immediately from the north margin of the Columbia River to a general height of from three to five thousand feet; while from the more distant Washington lines on the north it is cut by the lofty Simcoe Mountain range. It is, literally, to borrow the description of an old settler with whom I talked today, "locked in on every side by mountain and desert," connected "at arms length with the world of commerce and "thwarted and hindered in all its energies."
     And yet, in spite of its disadvantages and hindrances, the Klickitat country has achieved a very considerable development. Its population, all told, is approximately 7500. It contributes annually to the world of commerce, after supplying its local needs, somewhere between 600,000 and 800,000 bushels of wheat; about 500,000 pounds of wool; between 4000 and 5000 hogs, and perhaps 2000 head of general livestock. Wheat, it will be seen, in its primary form or in the form of hog fat is the main product of the country, and in its production the Klickitat farmers have an advantage which helps to compensate the losses due to isolation. Either from the heaviness of the Klickitat soil or the elevation at which it is grown - or both -- the Klickitat wheat has a merit which the market recognizes to the extent of three cents per bushels - that is. Klickitat wheat brings 3 cents per bushel more than any other wheat in the Portland market. This is very far from putting the Klickitat farmer on a level with the farmer who lives within easy reach of a railroad station, but it helps; it has served another good purpose in giving the people courage in their long wait for the day when a railroad shall enable them to go into the market on even conditions.
     The so-called Klickitat Valley is not a valley in the exact sense, being a generally elevated country, made up of a series of closely related prairies, each with its distinct name and all, taken together, forming a district about 30 miles east and west and 20 miles north and south. At its western end it lies close against the Cascade Mountains, and the Klickitat River, which drains the north and western slopes of Mount Adams, much as Hood River drains the corresponding slopes of Mount Hood, passes through its western edge. A tributary stream, the Little Klickitat, which takes its rise in the Simcoe Mountains, runs through the middle of the Klickitat Valley, serving as its main channel of drainage. There streams, uniting about 15 miles north of the Columbia, flow into it, their channel forming a natural route to the river - the one opening in the chain of mountains which hedge the country in. It is through this opening that the Columbia River & Northern Railroad, whose operations are to be dealt with in another letter, proposes to make its entrance into the country.
     The hold of the range men upon the Klickitat Valley lasted until about 1880, when through a slow incoming movement, the agricultural population took final possession of the country and forced the stockmen to seek new pastures. By this time the Columbia River line of the O.R. & & N. Co. had been built to a point above The Dalles, affording some measure of relief from the absolute isolation under which the country had suffered. Across the Columbia River Mountain range by a direct southerly route from Goldendale it is only 12 miles to Grants Station; and while the trip calls for a climb over a very difficult mountain road and the passage of the river by ferry, it gave the country an outlet -- all it has had, in fact, from that date until now. It has after a fashion served the country, but in a very inadequate way, for by it every bushel of wheat sent out of the valley has had to pay a tax of approximately 12 cents for transportation from the field of the grower to the point of shipment on the railroad, while the cost of transporting more bulky freights has been relatively greater. Under this condition, of course, every productive industry has languished. Wheat and wool have been able to pay the heavy freight tariff, but this is true of no other farm products. Potatoes of the finest quality grow in all parts of the valley, but it is not profitable to haul them out to market excepting at times of very special demand, when prices go high enough to afford a margin after paying the freight rate. The annual potential product is considerable, but after the limited local market is supplied what remains goes for stock feed. While for the more delicate fruits the elevation is too great, the country is finely adapted to apple growing, the conditions being very similar to those at Hood River, on the Oregon side of the Columbia. But orchards are limited to domestic supply because there is no margin of profit after paying the wagon rate to the shipping point on the railroad.
     In these and a thousand other ways the productive energies of the country have indeed been hindered and thwarted; and as one looks into the local conditions the wondered is not that the country has been slow in its development, but that it has made any progress at all. Of very recent progress there has, indeed, been little. The country responded almost instantly to the opportunity which the building of the O.R. & N. Co.'s Columbia River line gave it nearly 20 years ago, but since that time there has been practically no change in the transportation conditions and heretofore almost no productive progress. There has been no lack of ambition on the part of the people and no defect in the intrinsic capabilities of the country, but development has been impossible because there has been no means of getting general products to market. The country has simply waited for a railroad. A.H.

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The Oregonian, Portland, OR., December 4, 1902, page 11

THE KLICKITAT ROAD
Through to Goldendale In About Ninety Days
STRICTLY A PORTLAND PROJECT
Full Warehouses Await Its Coming
Direct Communication With Portland by Navigation - Commands Its Own Terminals

By a Staff Writer - Second Letter.
     GOLDENENDALE, Wash., Dec. 3. - The Geographical relations of the Klickitat Valley are shown in the map which accompanies this letter. Its longest way is east west -- something like 30 miles - and it lies wedged in between the Simcoe Mountains on the north and the Columbia hills or mountains on the south. On the east it fades into a sagebrush desert, and on the west are the foothills of the Cascade Range. The only practicable opening in the line of mountains which hedge the country is in the canyon through which the Klickitat River, leaving the valley at its southwestern corner, cuts its way through to the Columbia River. Klickitat Valley it will be seen lies only a few miles north of the Columbia River, wholly east of the obstructions at The Dalles; but by a fortunate chance, the one feasible railroad route from it leads to a point on the river nine miles below The Dalles and therefore - since the opening of the barrier at the Cascades - within the basin of the Lower Columbia River and directly connected with Portland by navigation. This is the essential fact in the situation -- the fact upon which is based the railroad project mentioned in my letter of yesterday.
     The first interest in the Klickitat Valley just now is the coming railroad; and very naturally so, for it is bound in the nature of things to revolutionize all the conditions of the local life. It is, too, a consummation not very remote. Of the 42 miles between Lyle, the point from which the road starts on the Columbia River, to its terminus at Goldendale, 36 miles are practically ready for the track, and it is promised by the builders that trains will running regularly by next March. The rolling stock stands on a spur of the O.R. & N. track directly across the river from Lyle, awaiting transfer; the steam-boat line by which connection is to be made between Lyle and Portland is already in operation; the dock facilities at Lyle are practically complete; ties and steel rails for the whole mileage are on the ground at Lyle.
     The course of the railroad line, which may be traced on the accompanying map, proceeds northeasterly from Lyle up the canyon of the Klickitat River, a distance of about 15 miles, thence southerly through the canyon of Swale Creek for about eight miles, thence northerly up Swale Creek to and across the valley to Goldendale. The route is neither a very easy nor a very difficult one. There are several heavy cuts in the canyon, but in the main the work has met with no serious obstructions and the grade when completed will be uniform and very easy of operation. Compared with the line of the Columbia & Southern on the south side of the river, this road to Goldendale is easy both in the points of construction and operation.
     The readiness of the country for railroad transportation is illustrated by the fact that a very large amount of freight is already in warehouse waiting upon the coming of freight trains. The ordinary practice of the country has been to freight its grain and wool product by wagon over the high Columbia River mountains to the O.R. & N. line at Grants, and this for a considerable share of the season's products has taken the usual course; but buyers with capital enabling them to wait upon the railroad were found for much of the season's crop, and something more than half a million bushels of wheat is stored along the line of the coming road. There is presented the unique spectacle of a series of bright new railroad warehouses full of freight at various places, with no rail-road track in sight, and, in fact, none within a distance of 40 miles.
     But there is hardly a doubt that the road will be completed in March or sooner. The amount of grading remaining to be done is trifling; the bridges are almost completed and all the material for construction is in readiness. Tracklaying is a rapid and easy business and the most serious part of the work to be done is that of ballasting or getting the road in condition for the operation of loaded trains. If there were no difficulty in getting men in sufficient numbers the road could be open for traffic by February 1. But the labor market is crowded with seekers for help and it is found impossible to keep the working parties filled to the maximum, so it may be well into March before the first trainload of Klickitat wheat will find its way down to the point of shipment on the river.
     How eagerly the country is waiting to hear the whistle of the locomotive scarcely needs to be said. For the most part the Valley population is made up of persons who have long lived here, and to whom the coming of a railroad has been a protracted day dream - not wholly a dream, to be sure, for there has been almost agitation of the subject for 25 years. The present project comes as the culmination of earnest and repeated efforts, being the sixth or seventh to which the Klickitat people have given continence and aid. Their story of plans and hopes defeated and deferred is a long one. It began with an effort to induce the Northern Pacific to pass through the Klickitat Valley on its way to the seaboard 30 years ago, and it has caught at every chance straw of opportunity from that day until now. Again and again the people of Goldendale and of the Valley have assessed themselves to make surveys; pledged themselves to secure right of way; pleaded with railroad magnates to no purpose, and now, with manifold evidences of the coming road in sight, it is difficult for them to take it in that the day of deliverance is really at hand.
     In the present project they have borne a liberal part, securing, at a cost of several thousands of dollars, the right-of-way for the whole length of the road, and in addition, giving ample terminal grounds in the City of Goldendale. Their interest and their sympathies are bound up with the project - so much so, that a very recent movement on the part of the Northern Pacific threatening rivalry with the local line - the Columbia Northern - is looked upon as an unwarranted interference with the effort of the Valley community to help itself.
     For years the Northern Pacific has been appealed to in vain in behalf of the Klickitat Valley. But just as there enters the valley an independent road, it has put into the field a company of surveyors and is running a line from a point on the Northern Pacific main line in the Yakima country over the Simcoe Pass and down through the Klickitat Valley to the Columbia River, not merely paralleling, but at many points planting its stakes on the grade of the Columbia Northern. This movement, like many another made by the Northern Pacific, is no doubt a mere bluff designed to intimidate the Columbia Northern people. At least, this is the most natural presumption, though, of course, it may have behind it a genuine business purpose. It may be that the Northern Pacific, it its desire to reach the Lower Columbia River, is planning to come by way of the Klickitat Valley, though this is hardly believable in view of the altitude of the Simcoe Pass, which is about 3000 feet and easily avoided by a line running down the Columbia River from a point opposite Pasco, where the Northern Pacific enters the state of Washington. But, railroads sometimes do unaccountable things, and it would be a curious illustration of this vagarious habit if, after long years of neglect, the Klickitat Valley should find itself with not merely one road, but two.
     One of the most interesting facts connected with the Columbia Northern is that it is an independent and wholly a home enterprise. Every dollar of its cost, in addition to the gift of Goldendale above referred to, has been contributed by Portland men. No bonds have been sold, excepting to its own stockholders, and no debt has been created. Just what sum has been put into the project is not given out, but it must run somewhere close upon a million dollars, for it includes the construction of 42 miles of road, the purchase of a complete equipment of rolling stock, the creation of terminal facilities at Lyle, and Goldendale, and the establishment of a line of steamboats operating on the Columbia and Willamette rivers. It is far and away the largest direct enterprise outside of the immediate municipal field recently undertaken by Portland men; and, as usual, where Portland takes an active hand, the work has been done without noise or bluster, and has been handled on its own financial side from the start until now, when its finished is in sight, without any passing of the hat or appeal to the financial centers at the East. No single great capitalist has provided the funds for this enterprise, for while the names of Portland's most solid men stand on the stock books of the company -- while they stand positively pledged to the enterprise -- a very large part of the fund has come from active business men of relatively moderate means eager by the extension of transportation facilities to develop the field of which Portland is the natural center, and to which, in a sense, she owes the aid that a rich city may give it to its tributary country.
     The president of the Columbia Northern is Rufus Mallory; vice-president, Henry L. Pittock; secretary, Elmer Mallory; general manager, H.C. Campbell; directors, H.W. Corbett, Henry L. Pittock, C.F. Swigert, W.H. Ayer, C.A. Cogswell and Milton Smith.
     The company was organized January 23, current year, and its practical operations began immediately thereafter. From the start the most active man in the enterprise has been Manager Campbell, who is entitled to be called its founder. He it was who conceived the project, effected arrangements with the people of Goldendale for the right of way and terminal grounds and interested in it those who later gave it its effective financial backing.
     The special advantage of the Columbian Northern over all other minor lines of railroad which have been built or projected in the Pacific Northwest is that it is dependent upon nobody for terminal facilities. The Astoria road is dependent upon the Northern Pacific for the means of getting into Portland and upon arrangements with the Terminal Company for yard room and other facilities essential to its operation. The Corvallis road is dependent upon the Southern Pacific for pretty much everything that makes its operation possible. The old Hunt road in Southeastern Washington was forced to the wall because it was built between nowhere and nowhere and stood at the mercy of roads which looked upon it as a rival and had unlimited financial power in dealing with it. The Columbia Southern running from Biggs, on the Columbia River, to Shaniko, in Central Oregon, is wholly dependent upon a connection with the O.R. & N., which has a whip ready in hand for use whenever it may serve its purpose.
     But the Columbia Northern is under no such embarrassment. Its little line of road is its own and free from debt; it owns a line of steamboats operating between Portland and The Dalles - the well-known Regulator Line -- and any part of the Portland city front is available to it. It has, too, the strength which comes from the backing of an entire community for as a Portland project it commands the support of every business man loyal to the interests of the city. No situation can be conceived in which it could be brought under the power of a more wealthy rival and forced to "knock under" as some other small roads have had to do. It is in every instance the power which rests upon ownership of terminals that plays the mischief with minor railroads, and in this case there is no dependence upon anybody for terminal facilities. A.H.

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The Oregonian, Portland, OR., December 5, 1902, page 12

EXPECTED BENEFITS
Klickitat Looks for Advantages by Transportation
BID PRODUCTION - MORE PROFIT
The County Is Essentially Oregonian in Its Character and in Its Business Relations - Oregon's Duty

By a Staff Writer - Third Letter
     GOLDENDALE, Wash., Dec. 4. - The Klickitat people are expecting great things from the coming railroad. "First," said a prominent citizen of Goldendale with whom I talked at length this morning, "we look for the advantage which comes with a market for general products. One-half of our potential resource has been lost because we have had no market. Wool and wheat being the only a product able, though their ratio of value to bulk, to pay the wagon rate to the railroad, have naturally been the only things we could produce for sale outside our immediate home neighborhood. With the railroad we hope to produce wool and wheat as heretofore, and we hope also to so widen the lines of our productive effort as to include barley and other feed crops, potatoes, apples and the hundred and one things which make the profit of a general farming business. One specific example will illustrate how great this advantage will be: It is profitable under normal conditions to 'rotate' wheat fields with feed crops such as barley, but it has not been practicable with us in the past because it will not pay to haul barley out to market, and the local demand is not large enough to consume very much of it. But only yesterday a stranger, attracted here by the coming rowed, informed me and others that if he could arrange with our farmers to produce a sufficient supply of barley he could contract to put in a feed mill of large capacity. This enterprise would of course be an impossibility but for the railroad, which will enable the millman to ship his product to market. It opens up a wholly new lines of production for our people and will give us a start toward that secondary industry which does so much to give a variety to the life of a community and to increase its prosperity. I mention this enterprise as an instance illustrating what we expect from the coming road in relation to our immediate industrial fortunes."
     "Second," continued the speaker, "we hope, through the facilities which the railroad will give us to get more for what we sell and to pay less for what we buy. The wagon and freight of anywhere from 8 to 22 cents per 100 pounds has cut us at both ends; and in proportion as the railroad rate shall be cheaper than the freighter's rate, we hope to profit. It stands to reason that what we save in freights will be ours, and that it will be added to the permanent wealth of the country. But if as a community we shall spend instead of saving this increased income, it will at least have served a good purpose in giving us a larger and better life. The people of Klickitat have always had a rude plenty, but they have never themselves lived a restricted life. Everything, especially everything and the way of luxuries, has been high, and we have had to do without much which would have made life more generous and a pleasanter thing. The houses of the country, for example, are commonly poor because in spite of our vast supply of fine timber lumber has been high - high because of the heavy cost of transporting it. When lumber has to be hauled from 18 to 25 miles by wagon a prudent man thinks twice when planning his house, and in nine cases of ten he contrives to live in small quarters. We have, too, been a stay-at-home people, because it has been a difficult and costly thing to get out into the world, and so have missed much which contributes to individual entertainment and to the charm of life. With the facility which the railroad will give us we shall be comparatively near Portland and will be able to gain more or less from neighborship with the city. Our women will be able to go down now and then and see what the new fashions are and take in the theater; so, if we spend every cent which the railroad will save for us, we shall be the gainer in that we shall have something for our money."
     I asked what effect the railroad was expected to have a up on that local business conditions, and the reply was prompt: "Whatever will give our people more money cannot fail both in the long run - or the short run - to be a benefit to local trade. We have not for several years past gained anything through incoming of new population, for with all the natural advantages of the country we have had little to offer newcomers. Furthermore, being off the line of travel, nobody has come here excepting for some specific purpose. With the railroad we shall be on the list of available and progressive communities, and immigrants will come here precisely as they go into other parts of the country, and this alone will contribute to the activities of business. Why already, upon the mere prospect of the railroad, there have been more doing in the way of sales of farm land than in any other five seasons since the country has been in the possession of white men.
     "But most of all we hope to gain in a local business way through the development of resources which now lie dormant. Take our timber fields, for example. They yield us nothing now, for nothing is being done with them; but with facilities for getting timber products out to market there is bound to be an enormous development of lumbering. Indeed, it has already begun in view of the prospect which the railroader holds out to us. Within the past few months two large companies of capitalists, one made up of W.B. Ayer, Allen Lewis, M.F. Henderson, Wells Gilbert, and other Portland man with Eastern associates, and the other of Eastern men alone, have come into the field and have acquired wide areas of timber lands, preparatory to manufacturing lumber on a large scale. The Klickitat White Pine Company, of which Mr. Henderson is president and Mr. Gilbert the resident manager, has bought the local mills in the mountain district adjacent to Goldendale, and is now getting in machinery looking to the enlargement of their productive capacity. All this, which has come directly as a consequence of the railroad, is bound to make business for Goldendale - indeed, it is already making it, for business has never in the history of the town been so generally good as it has been during the past few months."
     I have given a very full report of this talk because it sums up with singular completeness the things which Goldendale has the right to expect, and does expect, as the result of the connection so soon to be established between the Valley and the outer world. Another very probable effect, I think, will be the break-up of the big ranches which, while well suited to an era of exclusive grain farming, are too large for the best results under a diversified farming practice. Still another effect will be the productive development of outlying districts within the Klickitat basin, but under present conditions too remote for profitable production. Under anything approaching a close system of farming the productive power of the Klickitat Valley would be five times multiplied, and with the incentive which transportation will give it, it can hardly fail of a development which will carry it very far ahead of its present conditions.
     Animal husbandry, which up to this time has been almost unknown - excepting in the form of stock-ranging - will growers to great proportions in a country which has every native capability for the production of feed and which can be put its product from field and feeding pen to the packing-house in a few hours.
     Although the Klickitat country lies within the State of Washington, it is essentially Oregonian in its domestic character. Its original settlement was by people who moved in from the Willamette Valley and the connection has never been lost. There is hardly to be found a man or woman whose family tradition does not trace back to Webfoot. Every man I have talked with, excepting three, were either born in Oregon, or lived there before he found his way to Klickitat. I had not been in town half an hour before I heard a yarn in which Dan Haydn and his whimsicality of character and habit were the basis. Many conditions combine to maintain the Oregon connection. The business relations of the country are wholly with Portland and The Oregonian is its daily newspaper - as universally read as it is in the towns of the Willamette Valley. And right here I will pause for a little brog, which I hope will be regarded as excusable. It is in connection with the record of Klickitat and the other Columbia River counties of Washington during the years when the silver and other Populist crazes were rife in the country. Without exception these counties - which daily received and read The Oregonian - maintained their sanity and kept their record clean, while the other counties of Washington fell into the mire of the current political heresies and delusion. The Oregonian cannot justly claim to have provided these people with the sound common sense which through a series of trying years kept them in a straight and wise course, but it can congratulate itself that it was the source through which they received the facts and arguments from which their own good judgment made selection of what was true and wholesome.
     A fact which curiously illustrates the close relationship between the Klickitat country and Oregon is, that in going or coming from any other part of his own state of Washington by any of the established routes of travel, the Klickitater must pass through Oregon territory. This necessity has sometimes been the occasion of serious embarrassment, as when, not a long time back, the Klickitat contingent of the Washington National Guard was compelled to pass through Oregon under arms to reach its rendezvous in the Puget Sound region. This close connection with and dependence upon Oregon is bound in the very nature of things to be permanent, and it will be increased rather than diminished by the railroad movements now in progress. Topography it is a more effective factor than the state line; and the relationship of the Klickitat Valley to Portland is written in the mountain summits which separate it from the life of its own state and in the down-hill path which connects it with the region of the Willamette.
     And since Klickitat is to be Oregon country in spite of state lines we ought to recognize the fact and by our attention to its interests make up to it what it loses by practical separation from its own state. Our community of business and capital at Portland is doing its part in the construction of a railroad which will break the isolation so long suffered. Our representation at Washington would do well to heed this example and give attention to the interests of the Klickitat people who are measurably dependent upon Oregon assistance. I have been pleased in the course of my visit to find that this has been the almost uniform practice of Oregon representatives in times past, and that the service is truly appreciated by the Klickitat people. A.H.

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The Oregonian, Portland, OR., December 6, 1902, page 6

KLICKITAT RIVER
Called the Cataract River by Lewis and Clark
SEAT OF A POWERFUL TRIBE
The City of Goldendale - Its Past and Future - An Extraordinary Indian Collection

By a Staff Writer - Fourth Letter
     GOLDENDALE, Wash., Dec. 5 - New as it is, this country of the Klickitat is not without interesting traditional and historical associations. The Klickitat River is mentioned in the report of Lewis and Clark, who camped at its junction with the Columbia and had some traffic with the Indians. The name of Cataract River was applied to it by the explorers, and very properly, since for several miles upward from its mouth it is a series of tumbling and foaming rapids. At one point about three miles north of Lyle this stream, ordinarily 75 to 100 feet wide, flows through a rock channel less than ten feet across and of practically unfathomable depth, and such, curiously, is the configuration of the banks that it has been found necessary, in order to carry the railroad track across this narrow space, to build a bridge one hundred and seventy and some odd feet long. And in the making of this bridge, as in other features of the work, the purpose of the management is manifest, for the construction is of the best with concrete foundations and piers designed to last for all time. Thoroughness at every point marks the work, and it is plain that the road has been built with and eye to permanence and serviceability.
     The Klickitat Indians who inhabited the canyon of the Klickitat River and the valley beyond were distinguished among the aboriginal tribes as travelers and traders. It was their habit to accumulate great stories of dried salmon - caught in The Dalles rapids, which were within their territory - of dried roots and other commodities valued by the Indians and to send out caravans or tracking parties who ranged the country between the coast and the Blue Mountains, and from the Siskiyous on the south to Puget Sound on the north. In this traffic, long maintained, they became shrewd and intelligent, and grew to be great fighters. They were constantly at war with the tribes close about them and held through ages, if the native traditions can be believed, something like a hereditary feud with a Yakimas, who lived immediately north in the territory beyond the Simcoe Mountains. It was for this reason that the Klickitats protested against the settlement which, after the Indian War of 1855, undertook to establish them on the Yakima reservation. They stood so firmly by their purpose and presented their case with such force that the government finally consented to the settlement in severalty upon lands in their own country; and to this day a remnant of the famous Klickitat nation lingers in the Klickitat Canyon and on the western borders of the valley. In its course up the canyon the railroad grade passes through several tracts of land owned and occupied by Indians, and it was no easy feat of diplomacy to make them understand what was wanted and to obtain a cession from them of right of way.
     One old patriarch, Skookum by name, who has acquired something of the white man's habit, was inconsolable for the loss of his domestic isolation and quiet, and at the same time disposed to make as good a bargain as possible. His presentation of his case before the officials of the railroad company in their office at Lyle was at once shrewd, amusing and pathetic. He came to the meeting with his family about him, bearing samples of the products of his lands to illustrate their value, and made a speech in which his fears of injury for himself and his children and the despair of his race in its losing fight with civilization were curiously and almost painfully reflected. A sum of money, several times enough to compensate him for any possible damage to his property, with a perpetual pass over the railroad for himself, his wife and his papooses, finally won him over, and today old Skookum is a firm friend of progress - though disposed to get out of it all that may be diverted to his own pocket.
     The presence of this native remnant still gives to Klickitat Valley something of the character of an Indian country. The blanketed redskin with his accompaniment of burden-bearing squaws is a common figure on the streets of Goldendale; and there is in the local practice of the merchants in displaying their goods an obvious appeal to the savage taste for gaudy colors. All this gives a not unpleasing touch of the picturesque to the town and makes it a resort for the searcher after Indian curiosities who has come to be common of late years.
     The treasures of the Klickitat Valley in this line were many and very curiously they have been very largely saved from destruction by the enthusiasm and liberality of Dr. R.E. Stewart, a well-known citizen of Goldendale. Coming to the valley some 12 years ago at a time when every Indian lodge was still a treasure-house of native manufacturers, he had once set about the business of making an Indian collection. His office in Goldendale became known as a market for everything characteristic of the Indian life, and as he paid with a liberal hand and has never ceased to be a buyer, his collection has come to be a thing of amazing variety and interest. It includes several hundred examples of heavy stone work, a great assemblage of blankets, ornaments, weapons, utensils, costumes, charms, tickets and novelties of every sort. But above all it is rich in its store of arrow heads, aggregating in numbers some 47,000 specimens. And in some respects this collection surpasses any other in existence. That of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington comes nearer to it than any other, but it is far behind in the matter of arrow heads, both in number and variety. Powers of description fail when it comes to treating of Dr. Stewart's store of treasures. They represent every principle of Indian workmanship, every form, every species of flint, every color and every age. In their beauty and variety they are bewildering, while in their prodigious number they give one a new impression of the extent of the Indian arrow industry. If these many have been saved by a mere remnant of the Klickitat nation until long after the period of their practical utility, what must have been the store of the nation in its fighting age? And one marvels at the patience and skill which, with imperfect and barbarous instruments, wrought such marvels of precision and delicacy, and at the taste which selected for special forms the rarest tones of color and shading. This collection is not only highly interesting in itself, but it has a special local interest as connected with the aboriginal life of the country, for it is an exposition essentially of prehistoric Klickitat workmanship. It belongs to the country, and it is to be hoped that it will never be dissipated or permitted to leave the Klickitat Valley.
     Goldendale is a thrifty-looking town of about ten or twelve hundred people, the natural center of the country. It grew from a ranch station to a town through natural causes, and its future is in the nature of things bound up with the fortunes of the country. In its earlier career it was a sort of gateway to Central Washington, the lines id ingress and egress into that country being through The Dalles via Goldendale. But with the construction of the Northern Pacific Railroad 20 years ago its general relations ceased and it fell back upon its immediate resource as the chief center of the Klickitat country; and that is what it is today and will always be.
     Goldendale is pleasantly situated in the northern part of the valley, near enough to the mountains to enjoy fine views and to have somewhat in its superficial aspects of the character of a foothill town. The Little Klickitat River runs through it, affording water power for a considerable mill, and assisting the local drainage. The streets are wide and bordered with imposing shade trees; its stores are numerous and appeared to be well stocked. In every respect the town seems awake and thriving. It has the open and hearty ways of a pioneer life and I can personally bear witness to its cordial and hospitable habit.
     But the town has one marked the deficiency, namely, the lack of a hotel. Some months ago its one good hotel burned to the ground, and up to this time no practical step has been taken to reproduce it. The opportunity is of a very special kind; the opening is one in which a practical man with a little ready capital may easily make a fortune. There is no trouble about the business; it is here and in sufficient volume to assure success.
     The Klickitat country is just now at the end of its pioneer era - an era which has been long delayed by the special circumstances of isolation in which it has stood. With the railroad, which another 90 days will give it, it will be "in the running" with the other productive districts of the country. It will, of course, gain much for its system of production is bound to expand in response to meet the new condition; its population is bound to increase; its connection with the world of active life is bound to become closer; its special and neighborhood characteristics are bound to be lost or modified in the rush of the new and larger life. And I am wondering if, when I shall come again, save five or 10 years from now, I may not find a little group of old-timers, wearing each a touch more of gray in his hair than now, who will say to me; "Well, the old times before the railroad when there were only a few of us - and when we were all more or less poor together - were the best times after all." A.H.

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©  Jeffrey L. Elmer