Steel Rails - Part 7

Originally published in the Hysham Echo on Dec. 30, 1926

(By Dan R. Conway)

Cont. from last week

Henry Villard

It was in 1881 that Henry Villard, who had previously become interested in railroad projects in Kansas and Oregon, representing large financial interests, gained control of the line. Villard became president of the road and his friend and associate, Thomas F. Oakes was elected vice president.

Mr. Villard was a German by birth who came to this country at the age of eighteen and who won considerable reputation as a newspaper correspondent during and after the Civil War.

Under Villard and Oakes, work on both ends of the Northern Pacific was prosecuted with great vigor during the years 1881, 1882 and 1883, until the ends of the “steel rails” advancing eastward and westward, met near the summit of the Rocky mountains in western Montana Territory.

Effort Made to Get Subsidy from State

Efforts to push the work of construction of this road through Montana were not without effort on the part of the promoters to force subsidies from the Montana Territorial legislature. In 1878, the promoters of the railroad had managed to complete their line as far as Bismarck, and Mr. Villard and his associates who were extending the line east and west made an effort to secure from the territory of Montana $3,000,000 to consideration of the extension of the line across this territory. The plan was well exploited by the railroad people, but it never found favor with the people of Montana, and Villard’s request was never seriously considered.

Some of the troubles these railroads brought upon themselves were due not so much to the lack of coveted subsidies, but rather to the arrant misconduct of those who were in the construction rings. The Northern Pacific was operated for years over long stretches of lines in Montana which were hopelessly distant from the state’s center of traffic and tonnage. That the road ultimately went into bankruptcy was not strange; rather the wonder that  it was able so long to keep its chin above the waters of disaster.

As for the state government, it had no obligations and was not even remotely related to the fortunes, good or ill, of the railroad’s treasury. There was a good-sized controversy of public moment, however, that was kept up for a long time. It involved the state’s title to the mineral domain. During several years this was a rather lively issue. Ultimately it reached the supreme court at Washington. The state won and thenceforth there were no quarrels over railroads in Montana.

Driving the “Golden Spike”

The last rail of the Northern Pacific railroad was laid with impressive ceremonies on the afternoon of September 8, 1883. There is perhaps, no event in the annals of Montana over which so much dispute has arisen than whether the spike was of “gold”or just plain iron. Many contend that the spike was driven by General Grant; others that H. C. Davis, assistant general passenger agent, swung the sledge; while still others mention the name of Villard as the honored man.

Leeson’s Account

Considering all of these contentions, I much prefer to give full credence to the writings of Mr. M. A. Leeson whose History of Montana was written and published in 1885 just two years following this epochal event.

Mr. Leeson says:
“The ‘golden spike’ was driven on the afternoon of September 8, 1883, at a point between Garrison and Gold Creek by Henry Villard. Three hundred men with brawny arms quickly laid the iron and drove the spikes on the 1,000 feet of uncompleted track, except the last spike. During the progress of the work which was witnessed by the foreigners with amazement, the band played and the people shouted. When nearly completed a cannon salute was fired by the detachment of the Fifth Infantry present. The last rail was attached to a Western Union wire running into the branch office at No. 8, Broad street, New York, and when President Villard was driving the ‘golden spike’ the blows of his silver sledgehammer were repeated in that city on the telegraph instrument. The last spike was finally driven home by H. C. Davis, assistant general passenger agent of the road, who drove the first spike on the opening of the road, and this spike was the same one first driven by him. The end was reached as the sun was setting behind the mountains. Representatives of the American people from Atlantic to the Pacific met there that day.”

It is my belief that many of the contentions relative to this event are true in some degree. Mr. Leeson states that the spike was driven by Villard and that it was finally driven home by Mr. Davis. It is easy to understand that perhaps several of the dignitaries had share in the honors, and that General Grant did wield the sledge, in his turn (the contentions of Oswald Garrison Villard, Notwithstanding).

So far as the spike itself is concerned, it matters little whether it was silver, gold, copper or iron. Whatever its substance, it linked the span of the “steel rails” across the continent from Pacific to Atlantic and along the northern route. I am, however, inclined to believe that the spike was an iron one. The term “golden spike” has become common through the years when reference is made to the completion of a rail line, and it may have thus been merely a newspaper term applied to the occasion.

Hon. W. M. Evarts was orator of the day and other speakers were anxious to have a part in the program were cut short by a general demand to hear General Grant, the military hero whom Montanans had gathered from miles around to see and hear. One writer says that the General responded with one of his characteristic speeches. He did not speak long but what he said his listeners thoroughly appreciated.

When Mr. Villard succeeded in rounding up his herd of counts and barons - they were continually missing trains and getting left en route - when they were rescued Mr. Villard had much to show his guests. They represented the German capital that he had interested in the road and it was important that they should be favorably impressed by the country which the new railroad traversed. There were all sorts of side jaunts arranged for their edification. Many western Montanans will recall the ascent of Mount McDonald in the Mission range. Mr. Villard had built a wagon road well up this famous peak and he took his guests up there on the Flathead Indian reservation.

Mr. Villard Withdraws

The extraordinary decline in the market value of railroad securities which began in the fall of 1883 prevented a full realization of the plans formed by Mr. Villard, and he resigned the presidency of the Northern Pacific, and also of the Oregon Railway & Navigation company and the Oregon & Trans-continental company, so there was no longer a community of interests between those companies. Later the Union Pacific leased the entire system of the Oregon Railway & Navigation company. Villard was succeeded as president by Robert Harris, and the general management of the road was undertaken by Vice-President Thomas F. Oakes.

The Northern Pacific proceeded with great energy to build its short line up the Yakima valley, from Pasco, at the junction of the Columbia and Snake rivers, and across the Cascade mountains to Tacoma in order to secure access to tidewater without being dependent on the line of the Oregon Railway & Navigation company. The new road was opened to travel in the summer of 1887, using a high-grade switchback line across the Stampeded Pass of the Cascade mountains pending the completion of a great tunnel, two miles in length.

The switchback was a daring piece of engineering skill and was successfully operated for nearly a year without accident.
In the summer of 1888 the tunnel was pierced and one of the greatest mountain roads in America from both an engineering and a picturesque point of view, was completed.

Villard Comes Back

In 1887 Henry Villard returned to the directorate of the Northern Pacific, having fully recovered his former financial strength and acting as the representative of a very large amount of German capital. In 1888 he declined the nomination to the presidency of the railroad whereupon Vice President Oakes was chosen president and general manager.

At this time the main line of the northern Pacific extended as at present through Helena, and Butte was reached only by a branch known as the Montana Union railroad from Garrison to Butte, a distance of 51 miles. However another branch line was then under construction from the station at Gallatin, at the Three Forks of the Missouri, to Butte, the two branches being subsequently connected in Butte and developed into a secondary main line through that great copper camp.
And so it was until the coast was reached, and when it was all over, so the story goes, the German counts and barons telegraphed home orders to sell all their Northern Pacific stock.

Space does not permit a tracing of the vicissitudes of the Northern Pacific throughout the recent years. It is sufficient to here state that the line today is one of the very best pieces of railroad property in the West, or the nation; despite the skepticism of Henry Villard’s coterie of German counts and barons. The developments that have come to Montana because of its institution are almost incomprehensible; the cities, towns and communities which owe their very being to the line are numerous.
Then, let it be said and let it be appreciated in these later days of prosperity, that, in spite of his alleged peculiarities, this commonwealth, called Montana, owes much to this same Henry Villard and the associates who worked with him in bringing about the completion of Montana’s first transcontinental railroad - the Northern Pacific.

Improvements and extensions which date back over the past three decades have carried the rails of the Northern Pacific railroad to remote communities, until today, it has many branches and feeders tapping resourceful territories.
Two new extensions have been announced during the past few weeks, work upon which has already been inaugurated. One of these will enter virgin and productive territory in eastern Montana, while the other will wend its way up the Bitter Root river in the western part of the state.

New Towns!!!

Apropos of the building of this road and its effect upon the settlement of the central belt of Montana from east to west, the following story is told as related by a locomotive engineer:
“One day I was driving my engine over the prairie at the rate of forty miles an hour, without a house in sight, and supposing the nearest town to be thirty miles distant. But as I glanced ahead I was astonished to see that I was approaching a large city, I rubbed my eyes, thinking it was a mirage.

‘Jim,’ says I to the fireman, ’what’s this place?’
‘Blamed if I know!’ says Jim, staring out of the cab, ‘I declare, if there ain’t a new town growed up here since we went over the line yesterday!”
‘So I slowed up, and we puled into a depot, where more’n five hundred people were waiting to see the first train come into the place. The conductor learned the name of the town, put it down on the schedule, and we went on.
‘Jim,’ says I, as we pulled out, ‘keep your eyes open for new towns. First thing you know we’ll be running by some strange place.’
‘That’s so!’ says Jim, ‘An’ hadn’t we better git one of the brakemen to watch out on the rear platform for towns that spring up after the engine gets by?”

(Cont. next week)

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