About Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway
Ghost Corp Apparel — resurrecting iconic corporate ghosts.
The Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway Company began life as the Portland & Seattle Railway in 1905, a jointly backed Great Northern and Northern Pacific project designed to crack the Columbia River corridor and deliver Portland access to James J. Hill’s rail empire. Its Portland headquarters made perfect sense: this was a Northwest railroad with its eye firmly on the city at the end of the line.
In January 1908, “Spokane” was added to the name—despite the deliciously misleading fact that the railway never reached Seattle. Construction along the Columbia’s north bank culminated in a golden-spike ceremony on March 11, 1908, and regular freight and passenger service into Portland began that November.
Known as the “North Bank Road” and later “The Northwest’s Own Railway,” SP&S connected Portland, Oregon, and Spokane, Washington, while building and acquiring additional Oregon routes. Its comparatively gentle water-level alignment hauled the region’s lumber, agricultural products, passengers, and general freight with less mountain melodrama than many western rivals could manage.
On March 3, 1970, SP&S became part of Burlington Northern alongside Great Northern, Northern Pacific, Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, and Pacific Coast Railroad interests. The railroad’s separate operating identity ended, though the corporation lingered on paper until 1979. Our Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway collection celebrates the stubbornly elegant underdog that put Seattle on the letterhead, skipped Seattle entirely, and still became a Pacific Northwest legend.