Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/249

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The Yaquina Railroad
229

the Northwest Coast." Town lots at Newport were advertised in 1889 at $1500 and $2000 each, which in five years were to be worth between $25,000 and $50,000 (see advertisements in Oregonian, Sept. 2, 1889).

The company, Oregon Pacific Railroad, bonded for $15,000,000, went to ruin in 1890-94 and its property was sold at foreclosure December 22, 1894, for $100,000, after three successive receivers had tried vainly to earn sufficient revenue for operation, and after the sheriff had offered the road for sale at auction seven times previously. Not only did the original stock and bonds meet total loss, but wages and other debts of the receivership went unpaid or were scaled down to between three and ten cents on the dollar. Finally, the ill-starred road passed to the Southern Pacific (1907), which even to this day is unable to wipe out the continuous deficit, and which during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1914, suffered a loss, over operation cost, of $202,522 (Poor's Manual of Railroads).


I.

The Yaquina railroad originated in 1871-72 with Colonel T. Egenton Hogg, who expanded it through successive stages and finally passed out of its affairs March 4, 1893, when removed as Receiver. His bondholders were men of New York and Baltimore, among the most prominent being John I. Blair, James Blair, A. S. Barnes, F. W. Rhinelander, Joseph Wharton, Howland G. Hazard, George S. Coe, George S. Brown, Alexander Brown, J. J. Belden, Henry Martin, Sylvester Kneeland, Geo. de B. Keim, Lindley Smyth, Samuel S. Sands, Stephen H. Little, Samuel A. Stern. Many other names of bondholders appear in the mortuary relics of the Company.

The whole scheme was one of rosiest optimism. It was based on the mistaken notion that the traffic of the Columbia and Willamette Rivers could be diverted from its gravity water courses by railroad routes across mountains to a harbor that was too shallow for entrance of large ships (originally