158 A HISTORY OF AMERICA IN 100 MAPS
In the 1840s and 1850s the railroads were regarded
as an astonishing technological feat that had the
potential to integrate the nation and extend its
commercial power. They were, in short, a sign of
wonder, progress, and promise. That perception
shifted dramatically in subsequent decades.
By the 1860s the federal government had granted
the railroad companies 130 million acres of
western land to encourage the construction of
transcontinental routes.
No company benefited more than the Northern
Pacific Railway, which received 40 million acres to
subsidize construction of a route from Lake Superior
to the Puget Sound—much of it across Native
American land. This was the largest single land
subsidy to any railroad, and included grants in the
western territories that were twice the size of those
given to the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific.
Overnight, the NP became the nation’s most powerful
private landlord.
This federal largesse enabled the railroads to
influence not just patterns of settlement but the
government itself. Members of Congress who sat
on the board of the NP ensured that the company
survived despite consistent losses, corruption, and
ineptitude. Several western railroads manipulated the
terms of their land grants to secure their economic
position, a strategy mastered by Henry Villard.
In 1881 Villard quietly began to amass shares
to control the Northern Pacific out of concern that
it might compete with the Columbia River route
operated by his own Oregon Railroad & Navigation
Company. By the next year, Villard had secured
control of both railroads. This allowed the NP to claim
that it had “completed” the transcontinental route,
for which it received those extensive land grants. That
enraged the public and rival railroads, both of whom
saw the Northern Pacific as the owner of “unearned
lands” in Washington Territory. The company failed
to construct the promised final leg of the route to
the Pacific, yet it remained the largest landholder
in the territory.
The partial completion of the Northern Pacific
only demonstrated how little demand there was for
that route. In the headlong rush to construct the
STRANGLED BY THE RAILROADS
“Under a Black Cloud!,” 1883