HISTORY OF ASTORIA RAILROAD 225
"East Side" and the "West Side" railroad companies, to each of which was assigned one of these two land grants. In this controversy Astoria citizens took active part. They hoped that the second grant would enable them to secure connections with the Central Pacific, from Winnemucca via Klamath Lakes, Pengra Pass, Eugene and McMinnville. They incor- porated the Astoria & Winnemucca Railroad in 1870, to con- nect with the Pengra route (Oregon Branch Pacific Rail- road) and began surveys (Oregonian, May 17, 1898). But they were doomed to disappointment. The East Side Com- pany, controlled by Ben Holladay, absorbed the West Side Company (August 15, 1870), thus bottling up the West Side Astoria project ; later in the year, the Astoria effort for a land grant between Eugene and Winnemucca (Oregon Branch Pacific Railroad) was foiled in Congress by Senator George H. Williams, who caused the proposed land grant route to be directed via Rogue River; whereupon the whole scheme in Congress and elsewhere collapsed. Senator Williams' rea- sons were two : First, the Astoria-Eugene- Winnemucca route, he thought, would damage or ruin the Holladay line, then building toward California, for which much money had been expended (finished from Portland to Salem September 28, 1870) ; second, he believed that, if successful, the new project would certainly halt the Holladay road at Eugene, thus depriv- ing Umpqua and Rogue River valleys populous areas of railroad connections. Moreover, the Legislature in 1870, by joint resolution, called upon Congress to sustain the Rogue River routing and the "Williams Amendment" (Session Laws, p. 180.)
Much bitterness, political and persona!, followed this action of Senator Williams. Joseph Gaston, leading promoter of the West Side-Astoria- Winnemucca route, insisted up to the last days of his life that, but for this action, his railroad would certainly have been built, that Oregon would have had short connections with the Union Pacific, instead of by Holladay's round-about line to Sacramento, that Astoria would have had a railroad twenty years sooner, and that Oregon would have
