| Freight Hopping, Trainspotting in Corvallis, Oregon |
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| The 'Hobo' |
Over the years, a number of passionate freight hopers have existed in Corvallis, and the inexperienced have, on occasion, paid with their legs.
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| View from the Boxcar, Oregon |
But some people will always love the idea of trains, and even more, years ago, than today. Abraham Lincoln was arguing for a railroad in Illinois, in 1832, before he'd ever seen one. Only one existed in the country and it was 1000 miles away.
Here, in Oregon, entire communities pitched in to make the grades, and even the tiny town of Dredge had to have a railroad, with a station.
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| Molly Irvin waits at the 'station' at Dredge. |
Where trains did not exist, rails were built for horse drawn carts. I
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| This horse-drawn railway wagon belonged to the Occidental Hotel in Corvallis. The Occidental advertised itself as having 'no China cooks', an irreverent reference to Chinese Americans. |
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| This 1890 horse drawn rail cart in Albany was replaced (below) in 1900 by a steam engine pulling the same cart, and then by an electric trolley. |
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Such public enthusiasm for railrways opened doors for abuse. Privately owned railroad corporations were never profitable, despite unimaginable federal subsidies. When Congress speaks today of privatizing the railroads, so they 'can be run like a business', any railroad historian would laugh him- or her- self silly.
Northern Pacific, for example, was given a land that stretched for 2000 miles long and was 100 miles wide. Nonetheless, the railroad went bankrupt many times. The average railroad lasted about 15 years in Oregon before sliding into foreclosure.
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| The dark area above is the land given the railroad corporations. Source: Library of Congress |
The Burlington and Quincy was given 2.8 million acres. 2 million were sold almost immediately to farmers, and nonetheless went under several times.
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| An ad from the Burlington and Quincy |
Over and over, every railroad failed, reopening under new names and reapplying for land grants.The Minnesota and Northwest became the Minnesota and Pacific then the St. Paul and Division and finally the Great Northern. The Willamette Valley and Coast Railroad became the Oregon and Pacific and then the Corvallis and Eastern.
Land was shorn of its timber by the railroads, who then lobbied to have the acreage declared a national park (click here) - which allowed the railroads to claim unlogged federal lands elsewhere. Both the Sounthern and nion Pacific owners used dummy corporations to hire themselves, and bribed Congress - including future President James Garfield (click here) - in a scandal which broke the Grant Administration Unearned acreage was used as collateral for bonds issued the public, and when next the railroad failed, these lost their capital. Many of these bondholders were local people. When the Avery-Hogg-Nash scam collapsed, the bank in Corvallis, which had bought the bonds and housed much of the community's capital, collapsed. A local depression followed.
Many bondholders lived abroad. Henry Villard (click here) started in railroads, investigating Corvallis' T. E. Hogg's scheme as well as the Oregon and California Railroad on behalf of investors in Germany.
Lord Airlie of Scotland came to investigate the misuse of British money and stayed to run it. The town between Adair and Monmouth was named after him - by him -, and he gave Dundee to the north, its Scottish name too. Eventually, Airlee left as well, refusing to put another shilling in.
Airlee's very honest conductor
would throw the fare money over the brake line. That which went to one side, he
gave to the rail road workers in partial payment for their wages, which were
always in arrears. That which fell to the other side, he sent to Britain.
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| Above: the Airlie Speeder in 1893/ Below: the schedule. Click on each for a larger view |
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Running a railroad is a complex and unlucrative business. In private hands, the railroads always lost money, as railroads. The profit was in tax breaks, land grabs and outright fraud. The worst was the Missourian Ben Holladay (click here), of the Oregon and California, which the state eventually seized.
Holladay was an accomplished extortionist, charging towns tens of thousands of dollars for running the publicly subsidized railroad into town. When the capitol, Salem, refused to fork over $30,000.00, he dropped the station miles from town.
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| Above: the "Salem" station. Below: Horse drawn carts operated between town and the station. Herbie Hoover , of Newberg, worked as a boy on one of these carts. The public would later come to see him as as a President even more inept than the two Bush Administrations, though Hoover was an engineer and was considerably better educated and smarter than either Bush. |
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| At nearby Silverton, the famous Oregon cartoonist, Homer Davenport (click here) worked as a youth at the railroad station, where he drew pictures on the walls of a shed to pass time. This picture of his dog Duff, was preserved by the stationmaster, Henry Condit, (shown here) for many years. |
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When the largest city in the state, Jacksonville, refused to give Holladay $100,000.00, he bypassed it altogether and dropped the station at a place he named Grant's Pass. It killed Jacksonville.
Closer to home, Theodor Kirchoff rode the O&C to Albany in 1871:
| "I was surprised that the station was a half—mile from the business district. I could see neither reason of terrain nor other cause. The head of the railroad, Ben Holiaday, wanted it there (I was told) because Albany would oniy subsidize it with $50,000. He expected $100,000 forr siting it at the logical spot. In this little Oregon town on that railroad, people spoke bitterly of that millionaire. They said he assessed every town for a station and then did what he chose with the money" |
| - Theodor Kirchhoff, Oregon East, Oregon West. Below: The Albany station. 1899 |
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Holladay's ethics were so notorious that the Sisters of Providence even rejected his offer to finance construction of St. Vincent Hospital in Portland (click here). He survived for some time because he used a part of his proceeds to buy political clout. "Whatever Ben Holladay wants, I want" said US Senator John Mitchell from Oregon (Mitchell later died en route to the penitentiary for his role in the school land frauds (click here).
It was Holladay and those like him who spawned the Grange movement (click here), originally called the Brotherhood of the Grange Against the Railroad Monopolies.
Eventually, however, he was driven under by Henry Villard, of Northern Pacific fame (click here). When he died, his obituary appeared in the Oregonian, unremarkable except that it appeared beneath another notice announcing the death of a resident who resided on Holladay Avenue, named after Holladay, in his heyday, by city politiicans.
Actually, there were many Ben Holladays. In Corvallis, the worst offenders were Joe Avery (click here), Wallis Nash (click here), and T.E. Hogg (click here).
Each financial collapse of a railroad meant disaster for those who worked for them, as well as for many investors, although the principals usually cared since they often managed to escape with fortunes relatively intact - like Kenneth Lay of Enron. Despite the repeated bankruptcy of Northern Pacific, for example, Henry Villard (click here) died with astronomical wealth. Leland Stanford (for whom Stanford University is named), whose instincts were as evil (click here) as Villard's were good, lived similarly.
Despite the low character of those involved in railroads - and maybe, just a bit, because of them - the Rails continue to fascinate a segment of the public. At Adair, we have a full-blown train club, with grown men dressing up in hats and costumery and excitedly shouting out train orders to locomotives no more than 4 inches high. I'm not sure there's a man alive who doesn't harbor some secret affection for little trains.
Others are mesmerized by the sound of the train itself, the 'rhythm of the rails' on the track. I myself accompanied a friend to Toledo atop a bark chip car, an exhilarating ride in the sunshine, and I will never forget a train ride with my mother across the entire country as a child. Today, trains are cheap to ride. $10 will buy a commuter's ticket to Portland. There are no parking fees, no gasoline to buy, no tires to replace. There's a club car, for mingling, and a little breakfast, and room to walk and stand and even dance. And there are the rails, the soft swish of the wheels from one section of track to the next, like the delicate brushing of an accomplished jazz drummer.
Freight Train Riders Association
Everybody Rides the Rails. ...even serial killers.l
Speeder Cars: Corvallis to Toledo
