Interstate History - transcription (part 5).

Abstract

"The government in 1864 gave an immense land grant to any one company that would build a railway from the mouth of the Snake river down the Columbia to the sea. To be a section of the transcontinental. Work was begun at a point one mile below the village of Columbus on the north side of the river. By reason of its rough topography that point is a strategic one in railroad building, a fact which strengthened the Northern Pacific's desire to occupy it at once."