Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 25.djvu/309

OREGON AND CALIFORNIA RAHJROAD 271 tract within the allotted time was not as great as it might have been. All this time the company had been acting on the basis that they were the recipients of the land grant of Congress made June 25, 1866. After the contracts for construction had been let the legislature, as we have noted, had redesignated the recipient of the land grant and had given it to the East Side Company. But even yet the company did not lose heart. But S. G . Reed and Com- pany had entered into the contract on the basis of the land grant. When Congress intimated the upholding of the claim of the East Side Company, construction work ceased and on April 2, 1869, "J. E. Ainsworth of S. G . Reed and Company, Contractors, gave notice of having stopped work on their contract on March 31, 1869," 51 and on May 25,1869, was able to have the contract annulled. 52 Gaston was thus left with the project on his hands without the land grant for which he had striven so hard, and without the possibility of completing the road, since because of the loss of the land grant the company's bonds were not salable. But Gaston was a man of great perse- verance. He had nursed the company along since the time of its inception and would not see it fail now. The amendatory act of Congress to the land grant of 1866, as we have noted, still gave the company the possibility of gaining the grant should they complete twenty miles of their road before Holladay completed twenty miles on the East Side road. So Gaston applied for aid in Washington county. This county had subscribed to pay interest on $50,000 worth of l^onds so had some money in the treas- ury which had been saved for this purpose. Gaston ap- plied for this and upon obtaining it, graded the road dur- in the summer of 1869 as far as Hillsboro, 53 but even with 81 O.&C.R.R. vs. U.S., VolIX,page440. S2 Ibid, page 4401. TM Bancroft, Vol. II, page 702. "i