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"Spokane and The Spokane Country - Pictorial and Biographical - Deluxe Supplement." Vol. II. The S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1912. (No author listed.) pgs. 10-15.
Starting out in life with less opportunity or equipment than the
average American boy, but evidently possessed of an optimism and determination
which enabled him to triumph over many adverse situations and discouragements,
Robert Edmund Strahorn has followed the lead of his opportunities, doing as
best he could anything that came to hand, and creating and seizing legitimate
advantages as they have arisen. He has never hesitated to take a forward step
when the way was open. Fortunate in possessing a degree of earnestness and
frankness that have inspired confidence in others, the simple weight of his
character and ability have carried him into important relations with large
interests and he is now the president of several important railway and other
corporations with headquarters in Spokane. important element in business
activity throughout the northwest. The North Coast Railroad project especially
owes its inception and prosecution to him and is constituting a most
Mr. Strahorn was born in Center county, Pennsylvania, May 15, 1852.
The family is of Scotch-Irish origin and the ancestry in America is traced
back to the great-grandfather of our subject, who in colonial days came from
Scotland to the new world and afterward aided in obtaining American liberty in
the Revolutionary war. He continued a resident of Union county, Pennsylvania,
until his death and his son, Samuel Strahorn, grandfather of our subject, also
made his home in that county. The father, Thomas F. Strahorn, there born and
reared, learned the trade of a millwright and machinist and in 1856 removed
from Center county, Pennsylvania, to Freeport, Illinois, and nine years later
became a resident of Sedalia, Missouri. In 1878 he crossed the Rockies,
following in the footsteps of his son who had preceded him in 1870, and after
residing for a time in Idaho and Montana, he became resident of Los Angeles,
California, where he passed away in 1883. His wife, who bore the maiden name
of Rebecca Emmert, was born in Center county, Pennsylvania, and was of Dutch
lineage, a daughter of John Emmert, who had come to this country from
Switzerland. The death of Mrs Strahorn occurred in 1861.
Robert E. Strahorn spent the first four years of his life in the state
of his nativity and was then taken by his parents to northern Illinois, where
the period of his youth was passed in village and farm life where his work was
of the hardest. His educational privileges were very limited, as he attended
school only until ten years of age. Private reading and study, however,
constantly broadened his knowledge and the studious habits of his youth have
made him a man of wide general information. In the school of experience, too,
he learned many valuable lessons which have proven of significant worth in his
advancement in the business world. In his boyhood days, after his life on the
farm, he first sold papers on the streets, and then began learning the
printer's trade Sedalia, Missouri, following that occupation for five years.
Subsequent to his removal to Denver, Colorado, in 1870, he was engaged in
newspaper work as reporter, editor and correspondent until 1877. During the
Sioux war of 1875-6 in Wyoming and Montana, he was with General Crook as
special correspondent of the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Denver News,
personally participating in the fighting in all of the engagements with the
Indians, the secretary of war commending him for his gallantry and helpfulness
to the government. Moreover, he wrote most interesting accounts of that
frontier warfare, which was needed in quelling the Indians in their hostile
resentment of the incoming civilization.
While pursuing the journalistic profession Mr. Strahorn became
interested in and to some extent identified with the railway business,
accompanying as correspondent several surveying parties and also performing
publicity work for the Denver & Rio Grande, the Colorado Central and the Union
Pacific Railroad Companies. This opened up to him the opportunity of entering
into active connection with railway interests and he organized and conducted
the publicity bureaus of the Union Pacific and Kansas Pacific Companies,
during which period, from 1877 until 1884, he resided much of the time in
Omaha and in Denver. He was also engaged in a confidential capacity in work
relating to the extension of lines for the Union Pacific, this carrying him by
stage, horseback and on foot into almost every county of every state and
territory west of the Missouri river and brought to him his wide knowledge of
the conditions and the opportunities of the west. His next step in the
business world brought him into intimate connection with town-site, irrigation
and power enterprises in Idaho, Oregon and Washington and when six years had
passed in that way he returned to the east, settling in Boston, Massachusetts,
in 1890. Through the succeeding eight years he devoted his attention to the
negotiation of municipal bonds but since 1898 has permanently resided in
Spokane, where he again became actively interested in development projects,
his special lines of operation being in connection with the construction and
operation of waterworks, power and electric plants and irrigation. Those
interests still claim his attention and energies to a considerable extent and
have constituted a significant force in the improvement and upbuilding of the
districts in which he has operated. His enterprise and executive ability in
recent years have, moreover, brought him into prominence in railway
connections as the promoter and builder of the North Coast Railroad. He
undertook to prosecute that project in the spring of 1905 with the result that
in the fall of that year a company was organized and the engineering and
construction work has since proceeded steadily. The system is designed to
bring Seattle, Tacoma and Portland on the west into direct connection with
Walla Walla and Spokane on the east and includes a new short line between
Spokane and Walla Walla and another between Spokane and Lewiston, Idaho, and
with its branches, is to have a total length of seven hundred and fifty miles.
Throughout practically the whole existence of the company Mr. Strahorn has
been its president and active manager. The value of the project is recognized
by every business man of this section and its worth as a developing factor of
Washington can scarcely be overestimated. In connection with this, Mr.
Strahorn has organized the Spokane Union Terminal project which will center
five railways in one grand passenger terminal and provide for their
concentration along one central zone through the heart of the city, with all
surface or grade crossings eliminated. In working this out he overcame
obstacles which in the aggregate were almost appalling.
The North Coast Railroad project has sometimes been called the railway
romance of our time and our subject, its central figure, the "Sphinx" and "Man
of Mystery" because of the very unusual and unique manner of its financing and
building, involving many millions of dollars, without the identity of Mr.
Strahorn's financial backers becoming known. The war made upon him by rival
railway interests and others bent upon unmasking and defeating him has been a
sensation of large magnitude in the Pacific northwest, and probably more than
any other of Mr. Strahorn's undertakings has emphasized his fine poise,
unfaltering pursuit of an undertaking once decided upon and his undying
devotion to any trust imposed in him, as well as his modesty in success. Late
in the year 1910, when the larger matters desired had been accomplished, this
ban of secrecy was removed and it developed that Mr. Strahorn had been the
confidential agent of Mr. Harriman from the first and the North Coast Railroad
enterprise was consolidated with other Harriman lines in the northwest under
the name of the Oregon-Washington Railroad & Navigation Company, and Mr.
Strahorn made vice-president of the larger corporation.
In order to appreciate some of the accomplishments of this great
railroad builder be it stated that several hundred miles of road surveyed and
in part constructed have been paid for, to the extent of several million
dollars, by the personal check of Mr. Strahorn. A thousand miles of surveyed
lines, a hundred miles completed in the Yakima valley, trains operating on
portions of road, are a few of the things that have been accomplished in an
incredibly short time and in the face of tremendous odds and opposition.
There has been built one bridge two thousand nine hundred feet long spanning
the Columbia; another over the Snake will be four thousand and seventy feet
long and two hundred and seventy-five feet high, probably the highest over any
large river in the United States, and this bridge will have ten million pounds
of steel used in its construction. Mr. Strahorn will erect in the city of
Spokane alone one bridge one hundred and sixty-five feet high and three
thousand feet long; another one hundred and seventy-five feet high and one
thousand feet long, and both to be marvelous engineering feats.
More recently these interests have organized the West Coast Railway
designed to do important construction across the Cascade mountains, with Mr.
Strahorn as president, and also the Yakima Valley Transportation Company,
which is building important electric railway lines under his direction. Among
his many important personal enterprises are the Northwest Light & Water
Company, owning waterpower, electric lighting and waterworks plants in various
cities of Oregon, Washington and Idaho; the Yakima Valley Power Company, which
has built electric transmission lines one hundred and ten miles in length,
connecting up and furnishing electric power to all the cities of the Yakima
valley and Pasco; and the Pasco Reclamation Company, which is irrigating and
otherwise developing large areas of orchard lands surrounding the city of
Pasco. Besides financing and being president and manager of these and other
companies, Mr. Strahorn has found time to engage in many other activities in
connection with commercial organizations throughout the northwest.
On the 19th of September, 1877, Mr. Strahorn was married to Miss
Carrie Adell Green, a daughter of Dr. J.W. Green, of Marengo, Illinois, whose
social graces and literary attainments (the latter best evidenced by her
authorship of the popular volume "Fifteen thousand miles by stage") are
eloquent testimonials to credit her husband so freely accords her for a large
measure of his success (See also her biography and photo).
Mr. Strahorn is a valued member of several social organizations,
including the Spokane Club, Spokane Athletic Club, the Inland Club and the
Spokane Country Club, and for several years he has been a trustee of the
Spokane Chamber of Commerce, cooperation in all of its practical plans for
the development of the city. His genial nature, ever-ready helpfulness and
philanthropy have given him a large place in the hearts of his fellow
citizens. Mr. Strahorn is a man of well balanced capacities and powers,
without any of that genius which is liable to produce erratic movements
resulting in unwarranted risk and failure. He is eminently a man of business
sense, of well balanced mind, even temper and conservative habits, and
possesses that kind of enterprise that leads to great accomplishments and
benefits other more than himself.
Submitted by: Nancy Pratt Melton
* * * * Notice: These biographies were transcribed for the Washington Biographies Project. Unless otherwise stated, no further information is available on the individuals featured in the biographies.