Great Northern Railway

Great Northern Railway Depot in Harrington

By Team Shem Hanks and Tyler Robbins

     The rise and fall of railroads and railroad depots mirror the rise and fall of towns in the western United States. The town of Harrington, Washington was one of the many beneficiaries of the Great Northern Railway’s success. The Great Northern Railway stretches from Saint Paul, Minnesota to Seattle, Washington with numerous stops in between. It was in 1889 that railroad tycoon, James Hill, who was appropriately nicknamed the Empire Builder, purchased a small railroad company in Saint Paul and started his dream project of building a transcontinental railroad line to the Pacific Ocean. Four, relatively short, years later, his dream became a reality and Hill’s railroad became the first privately funded transcontinental railroad in United States history stretching 8,316 miles with its completion on January 6,^th 1893. Since Hill’s expenditure was privately financed, he looked to cut costs by using cheap immigrant labor, primarily men of Asian descent, to construct the rail line. The building of the Great Northern Railway is one of the great stories in railroad history, and this rail line became the catalyst for the economic expansion of small towns across the upper half of the country including Harrington.

     Harrington, a town founded predominately on wheat production, was instantly able to reap the financial rewards of having a train depot in their town. No longer did the farmers of this area have to transport their product to Sprague, Walla Walla, or Spokane to find a market.  The railroad made sending wheat to a port, such as the one in Seattle, a reality, therefore Harrington wheat was shipped across the Pacific to foreign markets. The depot in Harrington also served as a watering and coaling station for every train that passed through the area whether it was freight or passenger trains.

     During the construction of the railroad, Harrington was a classic wild west town. The year was 1892 and with hundreds of workers being forced to spend time in the area until the completion of the railroad, the town of Harrington sprang up with boarding houses, restaurants, saloons, dance halls, and gambling halls to support not only the workers, but also the eventual passenger trains that would be making its way through the depot. These passenger trains not only made it possible for farmers to escape their daily lives and take their family on a much needed weekend vacation after the wheat harvest, but it also made it possible for vacationers to stop in a quintessential Northwest wheat town and experience all the amenities that a town like Harrington supplies. Upon the railroad’s completion at Harrington in November of 1892, wheat solidified itself as the backbone of the local economy as farmers used the benefits of the railroad to make their fortunes.

     Once the depot located within this town was closed in the 1960's, Harrington, regrettably, became the victim of the decline that results when a railroad is removed from a hamlet such as this. There was already a decline in the population of Harrington due to the invention of farming machinery that reduced the need for manual labor, and with the depot closing, the town lost not only its passenger service, but it lost a profitable way to transport Harrington’s main cash crop. For years the depot stood as an unsettling reminder of the glory years of American westward expansion, then in the 1980’s, this monument to American innovation and willpower was torn down in Harrington. The depot for the Great Northern Railway was the reason Harrington was able to achieve success as a town since it created the economic factors that a farming city needs to be great.

Great Northern Railway logo. Image courtesy of GNR

Chinese Work Gang on the GNR. Image courtesy of
collectionscanada

GNR and Depot within the town of Harrington. Image courtesy of Harrington website

GNR Letter Head. Image courtesy of GNR

Construction of the GNR in Seattle. Image courtesy of
University of Washington University Library

The Civil War Journey Continues

This week, we continued to examine public history through the perspective of the Civil War. The class continued its reading of Tony Horwitz's "Confederates in the Attic," viewed a Ken Burns interview, and looked at some mobile history.

We pick up on Horwitz journey through Southern memory with him at the Foote of the Master. Shelby Foote, God rest his soul, may have been the greatest of the Civil War historians. His books travel from obscure battles, to the major conflicts that draw millions into the war. Horwitz discovers that this Civil War celebrity is incredibly easy to get in touch with and is able to schedule a meeting. At this meeting, Horwitz asks him a barrage of questions, all of which Foote is able to answer in a snarky way that resembles an angry grandfather. Horwitz asks him why the Civil War is such an enduring memory and Foote responds with, "If you look at American history as the life span of a man, the Civil War represents the great trauma of our adolescence. It's the sort of experience we never forget" (146).  On that same page, Foote relays that the reason why we never forget this experience is because as humans, we tend to remember the battles that we lost.

Under Foote's urging, Horwitz then goes to Shiloh on the early morning of the anniversary of the battle. His plan is to follow the battle through the course of the day and experience the power that such an endeavor could have. While he is there, he runs across a large cast of characters who show up at Shiloh for their own reasons and for their own quests for satisfaction. Horwitz observes that most Southerns view the Shiloh battlefield as a memorial to Yankee conquest and victory (171). This happens because the post-War South couldn't fund monuments on the scale and number as the Northern victor could. General Grant even said that Shiloh was the most misunderstood battle of the Civil War (179).

Victory Defeated by Death and Night. Shiloh Monument
For Southerns. Image courtesy of NPS

Once he was done with Shiloh, Horwitz took his next stop at Vicksburg. Vicksburg offered an example of people trying to mesh the past with a need for modern capitalism. The casinos of Vicksburg overwhelm the riverbank and offered a false example of the history that the Civil War provides. However, it is the first place that Coca-Cola was bottled, which I did not know. Horwitz seems to have a talent for finding interesting people in these stops that he makes. At Vicksburg, he talks to a museum curator who says, "...if it hadn't been for the Yankee occupation, we wouldn't have any good stories to tell" (201).

Victory Defeated by Death and Night. Shiloh Monument
For Southerns. Image courtesy of ShilohNick

In our final chapter of our reading, Horwitz goes back to Virginia to meet Robert Lee Hodge and some other members of the "hardcores." They go on the "Civil Wargasm." They spend a week going super speed through various battles and places that had significant meaning in the war. Something that is important to this class is when they make it to Manassas, he discusses Disney's plan and failure to establish a theme park honoring the American past. His opinion and writers voice are very much against this theme park. He states, "In the end, the park's foes prevailed in a rare triumph of high culture over low" (217).


The Ken Burn interview about his documentary series, The Civil War, brought to light the difficulty and painstaking hours it took to make something like that during a time with no internet. They had to photograph and record all of the photos that the nine part series used. These photographs were taken from archives, and even from some individual's personal collections. My favorite part was the comment section on Youtube where people were either incredible enthused by the documentary, or people were ranting about it being Northern propaganda, a controversy that Horwitz touches briefly in the Shelby Foote section.