Northern Pacific Railroad Company

These documents are duplicate copies from the papers of George A. Brackett, now part of the Northern Pacific Railroad collection at the Minnesota Historical Society.

Isaac "Ike" Gravelle was born in Canada in October 1871. He came to the United States in 1886. He was sent to the Montana State Prison in May 1891 on a conviction for horse stealing. After his release in 1893 he worked as a butcher in the Priest Pass and Clancy areas. He was again sent to prison in 1897 for illegally butchering two cows, and served 6 years. In 1903 he attempted to extort money from the Northern Pacific Railway, by threatening to bomb a train. He placed a dynamite charge on several sections of track over several months. After an extensive manhunt he was discovered in Helena, and committed suicide in August 1904.

As the Northern Pacific Railroad Company built its Cascade Division from Pasco through the Yakima Valley to Ellensburg, W.T., in 1884, it encountered difficulty in locating railroad facilities at Yakima City (now Union Gap). The reasons given by the company for its decision to abandon Yakima City as a station were its inability to negotiate favorable terms with land owners and the lack of available property for the establishment of adequate railroad support facilities. The actual cause was the railroad's lack of ownership of property at Yakima City. It had extensive holdings of grant lands in the vicinity of North Yakima, giving the railroad control of that townsite. The railroad offered to underwrite all expenses of moving any business from Yakima City to North Yakima and also providing lots in the new town to those businesses. During 1885, there was an exodus from Yakima City as buildings were moved the four miles to North Yakima. Yakima City languished without even a depot until a lawsuit awarded them a depot a few years later. North Yakima prospered and became the county seat, changing its name to Yakima in 1917.