Norman Smith the Port
Angeles Promoter
 Hundreds
of the colonists [of the failed Puget Sound Cooperative Colony]
had come to love Port Angeles and stayed on, their hopes rising
and falling with the rumors of the coming of the railroad. Most of
these rumors centered around the activities of a handsome,
pink-bearded surveyor, Norman R. Smith, son of Victor, heir to a
tradition.
After his father's death Norman had been taken East. He went to
school in Ohio. He served for a time as a page boy in Congress. He
went to California and learned surveying under the redoubtable
George Davidson - the same Davidson who, as a youth, had surveyed
Juan de Fuca Strait. Then young Smith returned to Port Angeles.
He
showed his father's energy, his father's impatience, his father's
judgment, and great personal charm. He was elected mayor and,
while mayor, wooed and won away judge George Venable Smith's young
wife - a marriage that rocked the community. He was sent east to
try to retrieve for Port Angeles the position of port of entry,
which Port Townsend had stolen back, and he returned with a
government promise to rate Port Angeles as a sub-port, which was
something.
It
was after this trip that Smith, who liked to think in terms of
millions and was forgetful of his small creditors, encountered his
tailor on Front Street. As the tailor approached, obviously
intending to raise the subject of his bill, Smith pivoted
gracefully and began an earnest conversation with a storekeeper.
Timing his movements by the tailor's reflection in the store
window, he managed to keep his back firmly to his creditor, who,
in extremity, drew from a sheath his tailor's scissors and with a
flourish trimmed off Smith's coattails.
Norman
Smith was convinced that the Union Pacific would approach Port
Angeles from the west, coming in between the mountain and Lake
Crescent. So to gain control of the right of way he bought one
iron rail, sawed it in two, and had it packed up to the pass,
where he personally spiked it to the ties, becoming the proprietor
of the Shortest Railroad in the World. No one ever tried to buy it
from him, though.
In
1893 a railroad to connect Port Angeles with Everett was proposed.
The sponsors brushed aside the objection that lying between the
two ports was a lot of salt water. That, they said, could be
solved by a rail ferry. But, they admitted, there was one little
difficulty - money. It would help considerably if, as a token of
good faith and sincere interest in the Port Angeles & Everett
railroad, the people of Port Angeles, who would benefit immensely,
would raise, say, $350,000.
A
mass meeting was held and the money pledged, with Smith making
spectacular offers which some say totaled more than fifty thousand
dollars. He didn't have fifty thousand dollars, nor did many of
the others have the amounts they subscribed, except in land, the
value of which the owners were inclined to overestimate. But it
didn't matter. The railroad was never started, and no one lost the
money he didn't have.
So
it went, with the Oregon Railroad & Navigation not building a
railroad in 1895; the East Clallam & Forks not building in
1896; and a putative syndicate of Chicago millionaires taking out
a franchise and hiring a local man as engineer in 1898, but
neglecting to supply him with locomotive or track.
In
1903 it was Smith's turn again. He interested Eastern capital in
the Port Angeles Pacific, which was to run to Grays Harbor -
incorporating the Shortest Railroad in the World as part of its
track, Smith said. The company got a franchise. It got a right of
way through town. It cut ties and it laid track as far as the city
limits.
It
sent an engine - the Norman Number One, it was called - and it
sent a flatcar, on which Norman Smith placed bleachers and took
some fifty friends for a triumphant ride. Then it went broke.
Smith hurried East, came back with a promise from an insurance
company for two million dollars, and was hailed yet again as
invincible. But the two million dollars never materialized, the
receivers did, and Smith gave up. He moved to California, where he
died in 1954, at Crescent City, not far from the reef where his
father had gone down on the Brother Jonathan.
|
