The Northern Pacific was chartered in 1864 as the second of the
transcontinental railroads, and had been fighting its way west ever
since the 1870s. Its main line, completed in 1883, used a roundabout
route to get from the Great Lakes to Puget Sound. This including running
from the present day Tri-Cities area of eastern Washington westward on
Navigation’s rails along the south bank of the Columbia into Portland,
Oregon. From there it traveled over a portion of the future Spokane
Portland and Seattle Railway’s Astoria Line to a point in Oregon
directly opposite Kalama, Washington. The Northern Pacific then jumped
the Columbia River on a ferry and rode north into Tacoma, its western
terminus, through Centralia, Tenino, and Yelm.
In 1888, the Puget Sound & Grays Harbor (PS&GH) railroad was organized by the owners of the Port Blakely Mill company. This line was projected to run from Kamilche on the southern tip of Puget Sound to Grays Harbor passing through Elma and Montesano. By 1889 the PS&GH stretched from Kamilche to Montesano, thus placing the railroad within ten miles of Grays Harbor.
The PS&GH was a small, primarily logging, railroad with 5
locomotives, 3 passenger cars, 8 general freight cars, and 72 logging
cars. Much of it's right of way followed a route to Grays Harbor
that the NP desired.
In 1890, the Tacoma, Olympia & Grays Harbor (TO&GH) was formed as a
subsidiary of the Northern Pacific. The goal of the
TO&GH was to reach Grays Harbor from the NP's Pacific terminus in
Tacoma. Shortly after it's formation, the TO&GH purchased the
portion of the PS&GH between Elma and Montesano. By late 1891 the
TO&GH was operating trains between Tacoma and Montesano, and reached
the south side of Gray's Harbor at Ocosta-by-the-Sea in 1892.
Also in 1889, the Tacoma, Olympia, & Pacific (TO&P) was organized by another group of investors. The publicly-stated goal of this company was to build a rail line from the NP terminus in Tacoma to Ocosta. Realistically, this company, along with several other 'paper' railroads of the day, was formed to provide an attractive package to the NP. The TO&P was indeed attractive to the NP. Shortly after the NP formed the TO&GH, the TO&P holdings in Ocosta were purchased. Tacoma, Olympia and Gray's Harbor bridged the Chehalis River at Junction City in 1891.
The Ocala location proved to be a poor choice since the harbor was quite shallow and silt-filled in this area. The other side of the harbor, where the towns of Aberdeen and Hoquiam were already established, had much better natural shipping lanes. The NP offered,
on September 24, 1891, to build a line into Aberdeen if the city would
donate depot ground, build a depot costing no less than $2500 and donate
the right of way through streets and private property. The city did not
accept the offer.
In 1893, after a devastating
financial panic, the NP was back in Aberdeen with
another offer to build a spur into the town. However this time the NP
had just floated a $12,000,000 bond issue under the terms of an
agreement that there would be no new construction. The NP asked Aberdeen to pay the cost of building the line,
for which the NP would reimburse those who
provided the financing with a 50% rebate on freight charges. The city
met to consider the offer but decided that it could not raise the money
and once again turned down the proposal.
The citizens of Aberdeen instead decided to build the spur into Aberdeen themselves. When completed they planned to turn the line over to the NP. Three local mill owners, Weatherwax, West and Wilson, donated ties and the town's founder, Samuel Benn, donated building lots to any man who would give 10 days labor or ten days pay at two dollars per day. Accounts of this construction tell of a town driven to succeed. Young men were given time off from school to work on the line and the whole town would turn out on weekends. The line was completed to the east edge of Aberdeen in early 1895.
Nearly four years later, on October 21, 1898, the NP extended the line over the Wishkah river, through central Aberdeen and on to Hoquiam. The 4.6 mile extension largely replacing the plank road that had been built between 1888 and 1890. The Hoquiam extension was financed with a construction loan from the Grays Harbor Company.
Construction continued through Hoquiam towards the Pacific. In 1905 the line terminated in Moclips, a small beach resort, which became a moderately successful summer vacation spot for people in the larger cities on Puget Sound. In addition to the tourist traffic, this 27.8 mile extension, carried logs to the harbor mills from areas which could not be reached via rivers. This became the Northern Pacific's Tacoma Division’s Sixteenth Sub-Division, or Gray’s Harbor Branch. The southerly fork to Ocosta and Markham became the Twentieth Sub-Division, or Ocosta Branch.
Reference
Grays Harbor Railroads by Mike Davidson http://www.wagenweb.org/graysharbor/railroads/ghrr.html
Tempest in the Timber by J. A. Phillips, III http://pw2.netcom.com/~whstlpnk/harbor.html
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