234 LESLIE M. SCOTT
Smith, Benjamin Young, E. A. Seeley (Oregonian, April 23, 1891). Surveys were made in August, 1891, by W. H. Ken- nedy, who estimated the cost of the line at $26,000 or $27,000 a mile, for fifty-eight miles (Oregonian, December 7, 1891), to connection with the Northern Pacific at Goble. The Northern Pacific line from Portland to Goble, built by Villard, had been opened in 1883. Citizens of Astoria now made up a subsidy of 1,000 acres of land. To build the line, the Astoria Improvement & Construction Company was organized July 23, by J. H. Smith, Ezra and Walter C. Smith, D. K. Warren, Benjamin Young, H. G. Van Dusen. This scheme also col- lapsed; negotiations with the Northern Pacific were fruitless, and very soon the Nehalem route was revived by C. W. Schofield and George Goss, of Salt Lake, early in 1892.
These men had been in the Gould service in the building of the Rio Grande System, and it was a natural guess that Gould was aiming at Astoria for a terminus. They were re- ceived with great enthusiasm at Astoria; a subsidy was pledged, $300,000 cash and lands for right of way and ter- minals to the probable additional value of $200,000. As the Astorians had more land than cash and land was easier to get for a subsidy, the bounty raisers formed a special company to take the land pledged for the Goble project and convert it into money The Astoria Subsidy Guarantee Company, in- corporated March 10, 1892, by C. R. Thompson, George Hill, J. A. Fulton, G. W. Sanborn, James W. Welch and F. L. Parker. To the new projectors was handed over the Seaside line, which had been sold by the sheriff February 26, 1892, for its debts, $55,550. These debts the new promoters as- sumed (Oregonian, May 4, 1892). A new company, The Astoria & Portland Railway, was incorporated at Portland, March 16, 1892, by Henry Failing, T. F. Osborn, J. Frank Watson, Charles H. Dodd, of Portland ; D. K. Warren, I. W. Case, M. M. Ketchum, of Astoria; J. M. Schultz and Thomas H. Tongue, of Hillsboro. Officers of the company were: John Sheehan, the New York Tammany leader, president;
