William Henry Ruffner

“ Taking both exports and imports, there is already a business of $80,000,000 done by the seven Pacific ports of entry. San Francisco is now far ahead of the others, and this city has nothing to fear from any other port except Puget Sound, which will gain upon her rapidly and ultimately surpass her. Washington Territory has all that California has on which to trade, and a great deal besides; and has the advantage of position. When our commercial statistics were made up, Puget Sound had no direct railroad communication with her own back country east, much less a transcontinental line. ”

“ There must be fifteen inches for wheat. Walla Walla has seventeen, and is productive. Nearer to the Blue Mountains the rainfall is thirty to thirty-five inches; here are the largest crops. Spokane Falls has twenty-one inches. Yet where else on the earth can such crops be raised even occasionally? I have been growing wheat for thirty-five years on good land in the Valley of Virginia, and I never could reach thirty bushels [Pg 83] to the acre on a single field; and I do not believe that my neighbors can do better than I do. We count twenty bushels an extra crop. ”

“ There are some areas of mill-timber on the east and southeast flanks of the Cascade Mountains.
The flora of the great plateau presents a strange appearance to the traveler. The vegetation is short and scanty, the chief growth being the "sage-brush," a dwarfish, dead-looking shrub, with a hard, crooked stem, of no value as forage, but which is sometimes used for fuel [Pg 69] when nothing else is to be had. There are said to be some medicinal, and also some edible, plants; but the only thing of any value is the dry, thin, short, bunch grass which furnishes a fattening food for horses and cattle ”

“ For this reason the plateau, as will also be the case with the great plains eastward, can never carry the number of cattle that can be grazed in a grass country. A farmer told me it required fifteen acres of bunch grass to support one horse or steer, whilst in a grass country three acres are ample, and on the best sods one acre is sufficient. Still, the bunch grass is, and ought to be, utilized. And the areas of unimproved land are so vast that the herds of cattle, horses and sheep which range upon them altogether constitute a large item of wealth. ”

“ Mineral coal, however, having been buried in water, mud, and sand, must, almost of necessity, have some mixture of foreign matter, either slate, which is simply hardened mud; silica, which may have been derived from sand; iron and sulphur, some [Pg 101] of which may have been in the wood, but most of it, probably, introduced in solutions; to which should be added, unexpelled oxygen, which is not only useless as fuel, but which combines with a portion of the contained hydrogen, and forms water in the substance of the coal. ”

“ I next show the advantages which this road will have in the development of the great magnetic iron-ore beds on both sides of the Cascade Mountains, and also the remarkable juxtaposition of ore, flux and fuel, which are found in the Snoqualmie Valley. Attention is also called to the business which is likely to arise from the limestones, marble and granite for building and monumental purposes. ”

“ It is not a coking coal, but has a wide and established reputation for grate, stove, and boiler uses. It is the typical "Seattle" coal, and is sold chiefly in Oregon and California. (To-day, owing to scarcity, it would bring $25 per ton in Los Angeles) . It has not the heating power of bituminous coal, but it is greatly superior to many of the lignitic coals. Many difficulties have been met with in the mining at Newcastle, the most of which seem to have been owing to the necessity for mining on the down grade, or [Pg 119] fall of the coal; and the mines being now 1,000 feet deep. ”

“ East Washington is a rectangular plateau, set in a frame of mountains, and drained by the Columbia River and its tributaries. The Cascade Range being the west side of the frame, the north side is formed by irregular spurs which run out at right angles from the Cascade Mountains along the Canada border, and connect with the Cabinet Mountains. The east side of the frame is in Idaho, and consists chiefly of the Cœur d'Alene Mountains. On the south lie the Blue Mountains, which are partly in Washington Territory, but chiefly in Oregon. ”

“ The former has the advantage of being the terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad, and of having large private capital to advance its interests. These have made the town all that it is. It is handsomely laid out, and well built. It has an elegant hotel, and a population said in Tacoma to be 12,000, and in Seattle to be 7,500. The harbor has water enough, but the landing is bad; there being no level ground available for wharves or business houses near the water. A mere roadway, cut out of the high bluff, furnishes the only line of communication. ”

“ Much land has been bought with a view to settlement as well as speculation, and this would be occupied and cultivated pari passu with the progress of the railroad, and there yet remains much good land which can be bought at low prices, say from one dollar to five dollars an acre, and will attract settlers. Farming lands here will have market at the mines north of the Columbia River, [Pg 190] at Spokane Falls, where there will be a large city, as well as large mills, and at Seattle, where there will be a large demand not only for the city, but for shipping. ”

“ On the west edge of the Green River basin, say a mile west of Franklin, there is an outcrop of lignite. The coal of the Franklin and Black Diamond mines is bituminous lignite. The Kirke coal, or at least part of it, as judged by the eye, may be called bituminous coal, though not so much deoxidized as the Wilkeson. The coals mined in this basin are firm, black and shiny; they burn freely, and make but little dust. They have not, however, so far as tested, the heating power or coking qualities of the Wilkeson coal. Two seams are worked at Franklin, and three at Black Diamond. ”

“ The industries requiring most power are, in their order, as follows: lumber, flour, iron and steel, paper, woolen goods and worsted goods, with several industries consuming a comparatively small amount of power, not necessary to mention. Of the industries above named, all but the iron and steel industries can be followed at this point, and, in fact, the flouring, paper and woolen industries belong to this section of the country. ”

“ I am not sure that Professor Fraser's fuel ratio tables are a safe guide in any case. So far as now known, only a few of the Washington Territory coals can be made into good coke. On this point, however, we have only laboratory and rough field tests, excepting at the Wilkeson mines, where twenty-five ovens were turning out a superior quality of coke, as proved by every test save the use of it in high furnace stacks, in which there had been no opportunity for trial. [Pg 105] It is claimed by many persons that seams on Green River, Skagit, Yakima, and Snoqualmie will furnish good coking coal. ”

“ The narrow gauge road from Seattle now comes to the Franklin mines, and by continuing it a few miles to connect with the Northern Pacific there would be railroad connection to Seattle as well as to Tacoma. The river here cuts through the Coal Measures, leaving the less valuable part of the field on the south side. The area of this field is roughly estimated at fifty square miles. It contains all, or nearly all, the grades of coal from lignite to bituminous; the variety of coal depending upon the degree of local disturbance. ”

“ The cutting of the Suez Canal mended the hold of England and other [Pg 29] maritime European states on the Oriental market, in fact secured for them the advantage of a shorter line to the Southern Asiatic market as far as the Malay Peninsula; but as for the rest of that great market included in the Pacific Islands, the Chinese Empire, Japan and Siberia, the revolutionary movement has commenced, whereby the bulk of that trade will be taken from England and Holland by the merchants of San Francisco and Puget Sound. ”

“ England has but 25 inches rain per annum, but it comes at such times as makes it most effective. The rains on the Pacific Coast are not distributed in the most favorable way for agriculture—the summers being too dry. At San Diego there is less than one-third of an inch in the three summer months, and still less at San Francisco. On Puget Sound, for that time, the fall is 2.57. In Washington Territory the spring rains are as abundant as in the Atlantic States, and the summer breezes seem laden with moisture. ”

“ The industries of city and country are prosecuted with less interruption from weather than in any of the States east of the Rocky Mountains. The annual rainfall is not greater, not so great, indeed, as in some parts of the Atlantic seaboard. It is not so well distributed among the months as it is eastward; but outdoor work rarely stops on Puget Sound.
Good population.The population of Seattle struck me as exceedingly good. Her controlling classes are men of character, intelligence and substance. ”

“ The aesthetic side of railroading has undoubtedly a large commercial value, and in this instance it will be secured without additional expense. It will certainly prove a valuable factor in the obtainment of passenger traffic. From the city of Seattle to the Columbia River an ever changing succession of magnificent and surprising views will meet the eye of the traveler. ”

“ The mountains grew higher and higher, attended by intense heat in the axes of the ranges, and at different periods, down almost to the present, exhibiting volcanic action on an enormous scale. At other periods, a large portion of the region was visited by ice-floods, succeeded by water-floods, which top-dressed great areas with a mingled deposit of gravel, sand and mud, and carried away vast blocks of the rocky substance of the country, and cut deep channels in all the highlands. ”

“ This already immense market may and will be enlarged, especially in China, by means of railroad and steamboat connections, which will bring to the coast the products of the interior sections. Much of the China trade now goes overland into and through India, and also through Siberia, to be consumed by the way, or pushed through to the termini of European railroads and ship-lines which are reaching to get it. And, as the transportation becomes better, so will the production increase. ”

“ The only real competitor of Puget Sound on the American coast is British Columbia, but British Columbia cannot vie with Washington Territory in the production of the materials of commerce, and Canada at large furnishes no such background as the United States. ”

“ A large number of claims have been worked into since the beginning in 1885, and the increase of mining population has been going on rapidly. Mr. Glidden thought that there were ten thousand people last fall in the Cœur d'Alene mining country. The veins are accessible and very thick, some of them as much as forty feet. The ores usually carry 40 to 60 per cent. of lead, 5 to 50 ounces of silver, and often about $3.00 in gold to the ton of ore. The veins are true fissures, and strike across the country rocks, which are principally porphyry and quartzite. ”

“ The growth of vegetables, especially of root crops, is something phenomenal on both sides of the Cascade Mountains, and will furnish a large item of commerce, as is shown already by the large shipments of potatoes from Seattle, and the multiplication of canneries. ”

“ I heard an intelligent gentleman, residing in Spokane Falls, say that he thought the Chinook was a disadvantage in winter, as it caused a disagreeable thaw, and so relaxed the human system as to render it more sensitive to cold ”

“ This coal property is also owned by the Seattle Coal and Iron Company. The principal mining camp is near the head of the valley, ten miles above Falls City, six miles above the line of railway. Here I saw the coal seams, which had been uncovered without having been cut into sufficiently to determine fully their character. One seam is open in a ravine, half way up the mountain, but most of them near the top, at an elevation of about 800 feet above the river. There are at least six seams, and if the one on the mountain side be a different seam, there are seven. ”

“ Certainly there is more smooth, comparatively level, fertile, productive, and easily cultivated land here in proportion to the whole area than I have ever seen elsewhere. The great plain of East Colorado is a vast and beautiful stretch of country, but it is unproductive without irrigation. Taking everything into consideration, the plateau of East Washington seems to me to be unequaled in combined extent and productiveness. ”

“ It is also a fact worthy of notice, for which geologists may find a reason, that nowhere in this country are our best steel-making ores found in proximity to mineral fuel, either anthracite or bituminous, while in some parts of the Lake Superior region, even timber suitable for the manufacture of charcoal is almost wholly wanting. ”

“ The remark may here be thrown in that this meeting of the two railroads in the Yakima valley will be no disadvantage to the Seattle road, as the distance to Puget Sound is about the same, and the incidental advantages are in favor of Seattle.
The Great Bend country.Crossing the Columbia River, the railway will enter the great plateau which has been so fully described, and if the passage should be made at Rock Island Rapids, it will cross the plateau at its widest part. Nothing more need be said as to the great agricultural capabilities of the plateau country. ”

“ Hops, barley and beer.The hop interest is a large one, but the low prices of the last year or two have checked the progress of this industry. Breweries have already been established at Seattle, and elsewhere on Puget Sound, and, as the chief materials for beer (barley and hops) are produced here so cheaply and abundantly, we may expect Puget Sound beer to become quite a large item of commerce. [Pg 187]
The Snoqualmie and Squak valleys have as yet but a scattered agricultural population, but ultimately farms will be opened along all the streams, and even high up on the Cascade Mountains. ”

“ At present we ship in about 500 tons per year of merchandise and supplies, and ship out, in the way of hops and other things, from 400 to 500 tons per year. This we could double if [Pg 185] we had railroad facilities for shipping. We employ during the winter—that is, in November, December and January—about forty men; the rest of the year, from 75 to 1,200 men and women. The keeping up of this supply of labor, which all comes from Seattle, would be quite an item to the traffic of a railroad. ”

“ Coal Creek to Squak Valley, five miles; Squak to Falls City, ten miles; [Pg 18] Falls City to Hop Ranch (or Snoqualmie) six miles; Hop Ranch to Engineers' Camp, twenty-six miles; Camp to Summit, five miles.
The railroad on which I left Seattle is a narrow-gauge coal road. Between its terminus and Squak Valley is a high mountain spur. The proportion of cleared land along this whole line is not large in comparison with the forests of evergreen timber, but there are many farms of great fertility, some of them large. The timber increases in quantity and size nearly to the top of the mountain. ”

“ But two entrances by land.There can be practically but two railroad entrances to Seattle, one from the south, and the other from the north, owing to the bluff ground on which the city is built, with Puget Sound in front and Lake Washington in the rear. The roads from the existing coal mines and from the Northern Pacific enter from the south; the Lake Shore road enters from the north. Suburban improvements will no doubt be extended both north and south. ”

“ Lincoln County.Lincoln County, through the length of which the road must pass, is universally admitted to be among the best agricultural counties on the plateau. It is also settling up rapidly, and has become a large producer of wheat, even at the disadvantage of a long haul in wagons. Mr. Curtis, who buys much of the Lincoln County wheat for his mill at Spokane Falls, says that the average yield of wheat is twenty-five bushels per acre, though in 1886 (the year of failure) it fell to sixteen and one-half bushels. ”