Vancouver is a Walled City.
By Marshall M. Dana
The Oregon Sunday Journal
May 16, 1915

It is walled by the railroads from the open river. A railroad dock and a street car ferry slip are absolutely the only ways the trade of the town and its people have of getting to the Columbia. And when Vancouver goes down to the ferry, Vancouver must bow low and duck under a railroad viaduct. Every pound of Vancouver freight delivered from or to a steamboat must depend on railroad service. 

Toll to the railroads must be paid by the boat lines for all the Vancouver dockage they get, The railroad "wall" is a substantial embankment between town and river. The wall rises high above and cuts off short nearly all streets that lead to the river. On it are the tracks of the S. P. & S. and south of it are yet other tracks and spurs. On the river side of the railroads, where the property is privately owned, such corporations as the Pittock and Leadbetter Lumber company have occupied street ends with impunity. 

But from looking one could never tell which were street ends and which is private property, and the whole is a howling wilderness of brush and snaggy piles with a lifeless mill as foreground. The worst of it is that in Vancouver the railroads entrench against water competition by uncompensated use of public property.

Public Levee Once Dedicated.

A frontage of more than 1,300 feet, and of considerable depth, was dedicated as a public levee by Esther Short in the plat of West Vancouver, dated 1855. The entire property, with the exception of 360 feet on the upper side, was leased to the Vancouver, Klickitat & Yakima railroad, February 6, 1889. The lease was for 60 years. It expires in 1939. It was given by the then Vancouver city council without suggestion of fee and almost without reservation of any public right.

A 50 year lease for the remainder of the tract was granted to the Portland, Vancouver & Yakima Railway company, October 4, 1898. In this instance also, no fee was suggested, but the railroad was required to erect a dock costing not less than $5,000. Both leases were assigned to the Northern Pacific railroad, with the formal sanction of the Vancouver city fathers January 4, 1905.

The city of Vancouver in 1906 bought from the state the shore land in front of the public levee, paying the nominal sum of $872.53. The Northern Pacific at  once got a lease on this foreshore. But because the "Washington legislature had passed a measure restricting the life of all leases of public frontage to 10 years, Vancouver will recover the right to use the foreshore next year.

Then Vancouver, still divided from the river by railroad occupancy of public property, will have her first chance to construct a public dock on her shore land and invite genuine water competition. No city has greater apparent opportunity for port and trade development, than Vancouver. Practically all the railroads that serve Portland serve Vancouver. The Vancouver harbor is closer to the ocean than the Portland harbor.

Only about four miles separate Vancouver from the 30 foot ship channel in use between Portland and the sea. Vancouver is focal point for the commodity movement of eastern and southwestern Washington. Open river traffic must pass directly by Vancouver.

Vancouver's Commercial Plight.

Columbia river communities already are striving to secure benefits from the opening of the Columbia to uninterrupted navigation from the Pacific ocean to Lewiston, Idaho, by the completed Celilo canal a commerce and development factor of immeasurable importance. Natural location suggests that Vancouver should be among the first to realize benefits from the open river, but under present conditions she might as well be miles distant.

Eight thousand dollars have been spent by Vancouver in building jetties that concentrate the current below town. Already these jetties have made their influence felt in channel deepening. Application has been made, now, to the government for a dredge to cut the channel to a minimum depth of 25 feet which the jetties are expected to maintain. All of this is very interesting and valuable but of what particular use is a  channel when the only water terminal facilities are a railroad dock and a street car ferry slip?

Vancouver's remarkable situation is to be seen from a number of viewpoints. It is the business of the railroads to get business and to subdue competition. Who can wonder if they took advantage of Vancouver's early eagerness for railroad transportation not only to establish themselves; but with the same grant of right to entrench against a future water competition? But on the other hand, it is the obligation of a city to secure for its citizens the opportunity of competitive transportation and to preserve inviolate the right of free public access to the waterfront. Criticism cannot change the acts of the past. 

The forward look alone is possible. What may be done to apply a remedy? I have questioned public agencies to learn. George McCoy, president of the Vancouver port commission, said: "We want first to get a minimum channel depth of 25 feet. Then we will take up the question of public docks. We ought to get to the question in a year or two." Regulation of and reduction in rail rates because of open river competition are expected by Columbia basin communities.

But no city placed as is Vancouver, with limited, railroad controlled water terminals should expect to command reductions, no matter how fine the channel. Wheels alone do not make a locomotive. After a certain meeting attended by citizens in Vancouver a few weeks ago when C. S. Jackson described the difficulty of developing port business without public water terminals, the city council instructed George B. Simpson, city attorney, to investigate and learn if Pittock & Leadbetter's occupancy of street ends with their personal property had endangered the city's title to the street ends. He is preparing a report.

Validity of Lease Questioned.

He has not been instructed and is not ascertaining what are Vancouver's possible rights in recovering use of the public levee before expiration of the railroad lease, but he questions whether the city had constitutional right to lease away the public property when it was dedicated for an absolutely opposite use. After talks with the legal and other railroad representatives at Vancouver, I came away with the impression that the railroads are deriving so little benefit from the lease that they would  not struggle greatly against its revocation.

I do not make this statement as a prediction, however. A virile commercial organization can work miracles in community improvement. W. P. Connaway; president of the Vancouver Commercial club, said; "We have 84 members, and we should have 250. We meet twice a month and average 30 at a meeting. The dues are $12 a year or $10 in advance. We are giving particular attention to the location of industries here. 

In this we are working quietly and without the publicity which would give undue information to those who would work adversely to sour interests. We are not working on any public dock plan, but we should be doing so in the near future." The Vancouver port commission, under the Washington law has complete authority to develop a plan upon which the people have voted generally. W. J, Kinney, president of the Commercial club last year, proposed that a public dock system should be included in the channel improvement, plan, but nothing was done.

As to securing industries, I learned from sources not mentioned that when public announcement of a proposed industrial establishment has been made in the past, active real estate interests were in the habit of securing options on the property involved or that immediately adjacent to it, prices would go soaring and the industry would go seeking another town. This, of course, was all done without recognition of, the broader principle that it is not the money paid for real estate by an industry that profits a town, but its employing of people and distribution of payrolls.

These last comments may seem apart from the waterfront subject but they are not. If Vancouver desires industries, Vancouver should be able to say to all prospects, "We have railroad and steamship transportation; rail and river competition, excellent service and low rates. Now turn attention to the railroad dock whose landward sign reveals the comprehensive railroad partnership to suppress water competition. 

The agent, J. G. Edwards, secretively assured me he had no "paper information" to give about rates and income and tonnage handled. But a glance at the water side showed just how much this dock counts from that viewpoint. Fender piles for the new ferry slip to be used when, interstate construction is farther advanced had been driven southward from the line of the dock. 

The Bailey Gatzert came along as I was looking. To make a landing she had to slide in broadside, after delays and difficulties. Failing to secure information from the railroad source, I inquired of the boat lines, and they coincided in reporting that the Vancouver boat business scarcely amounts to anything. "Nor will the Vancouver boat tonnage amount to anything so long as we have to operate over a railroad dock," said one of the steamboat owners.

The assessment on the Vancouver waterfront seems to average about $28 a front foot on a 50% basis. Its real value in use seems Intangible. I only discovered two active industries along it; one, the Dubois Brothers mill near the railroad bridge; the other, the Minsinger sand and gravel dump at the foot of and partially occupying Main street. On Washington street in Vancouver, near the ferry slip and just beyond the railroad viaduct, this sign has been strung in red letters across the street; 

"Vancouver; Ship Your Wheat Where Rail and River Meet." Not yet Vancouver! Signs do not build cities. Rail and river will not meet until you nullify the railroad wall that keeps your town from the river and gives it over to the purposes of the railroads!