Colfax history - railroad arrives

COLFAX — On Nov. 10, 1883, the first Columbia and Palouse Railroad train arrived in Colfax. By 1916, three rail lines (the Northern Pacific, Oregon-Washington Railroad and Navigation Company, and Union Pacific) served Colfax.

As quoted in a book by Thomas Hillenbrant, Palouse Rails Granger Railroads of the Inland Northwest:.

“The Oregon Railway and Navigation Co. (OR&N) took its first steps into the Palouse when surveyors arrived at Texas Ferry in August 1879.”

There was line laid northward, which followed Alkali Flat Creek up a hollow reaching the Palouse Plateau rim. Hillebrant writes that “once at the top, near present-day LaCrosse, Washington, the route struck out east toward the growing community of Colfax, located at the forks of the Palouse River’s two branches. Incorporated in 1873, Colfax was the first and largest center of commerce in the Palouse region, making it an obvious destination for the first railroad to serve the Palouse.”

On Nov. 17, 1877, The Palouse Gazette published an article about the Palouse Valley Railroad. “A railroad from a point on Snake river near Pine Tree Rapids through the center of Whitman County to the valuable pin and cedar timber at the head of the Palouse river, is sure to be built, and that at no distant day. With all schemes and speculations as to the most feasible and sensible avenue for eastern Washington, the Palouse Valley Railroad will ultimately be deemed the most practical.”

The article explains that at the time Whitman County was a vast agricultural country, and was seeking to expand.

The rail would begin at Pine Tree Rapids and follow the main Palouse to Colfax, and up the north fork to the mountains. Covering a distance around a hundred miles.

The only thing to get in the way of the railroad was the falls, but they said that it was easily overcome at the time. The railroad was expected to “make a market to seaboard at all seasons of the year for eastern Washington,” said the Palouse Gazette of 1877.

The Railroad was expected to pay a large sum of money from the time it was made. The article goes onto say that experienced railroad men estimated the road could be built and equipped for ten thousand dollars per mile.

At the time the only objection made to this part of the country was there not being enough market to the seaboard, but according to the Palouse Gazette “unless the judgement of well informed men is greatly in error, the iron horse will traverse this county by the way we have mentioned, and we can place our grain at the hands of consumers.”

Leading to the rich agricultural history that Colfax speaks to now. Whitman County being the nation's top wheat producer since 1978.

— Look for Part 3 in the June 30 edition of The Gazette.