Pacific Northwest Quarterly Volume 2 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 Excerpt: ...country. For the establishment of a naval station, the harbors of St. Jean de Fuca and Puget's Sound, offer, as we have already seen, peculiar facilities for the erection of the works of a great maritime nation. The cost of the work is the next branch of inquiry that demands our attention. For a guide to an estimate of this we have the tabular statements of the American Rail-road Journal, (a reliable authority), which by a late computation, sets the aggregate number of miles of rail-way in this country at 5,000; the cost of which has been $125,000,000, or $25,000 per mile. As a portion of this expense is occasioned by land damages, or land for the track, most of which lies in thickly settled, and, consequently, valuable sections of the country, we are entitled to a deduction in favor of the work under consideration. The rate of this may be obtained from the example of the Boston and Lowell Rail-road, the land damages on which amounted to $2,842.47 per mile. We will apply this substraction to but 1500 miles of the proposed work, and also strike the amount down ro $2,500 a mile, to make a smoother computation. Thus we have 2,500 miles of road at the rate of $25,000 per mile $62,000,000 A deduction of $2,500 per mile from 1,500 miles 3,750,000 $58,250,000 Making an aggregate of fifty-eight millions and a quarter for the completion of a design which will render every nation on the globe our commercial tributaries. This, however, is a most extravagant estimate, and the cost will probably not amount to within several millions of that sum. The distance is very roughly calculated from the absence of accurate information on the subject, and the cost is purposely amplified to secure being on the safe side of the calculation. We are justified in the opinion that it wi...