Hillyard: The Railroad Town Built by an Empire Builder
Pull up a crate, friend. Tonight I'll tell you of a town that got its name by accident, and kept it out of pure stubbornness. You've heard me speak of Jim Hill — the one-eyed Empire Builder who ran his Great Northern across the whole top of the country, and whose men crossed Marias Pass behind John Stevens. Well, Hill built a railroad, and a railroad needs a place to mend its engines. That place was a stretch of dry prairie northeast of Spokane Falls.
A Prairie Called Wild Horse
Before the iron came, the fur traders called that flat ground Horse Plains, or Wild Horse Prairie, and not much happened there but wind. Then in 1892 the Great Northern pushed into Spokane, and the company platted a townsite beside its new yards. The workers had a plain way of speaking. It was Hill's yard, so they called it Hill's Yard, and run together over a few years it turned into Hillyard.
The old man never asked for his name on that prairie, but a railroad town takes the name of whoever owns the rails.
The shops grew quick. By 1895 there was a twenty-stall engine house, a paint shop, a car shop, a blacksmith shop and a machine shop, and by 1900 about three hundred and fifty men drew Great Northern pay there. Houses went up in rows to hold them, and by 1916 the town counted some four thousand souls.
The Town That Crossed Its Own Landlord
Now here is a bit I like. Hillyard voted to incorporate in 1895, and it passed by the skin of its teeth, forty-five to forty-four. Hill did not take kindly to a town taxing his property, and he let it be known what he'd do about that. The citizens dissolved their city in less than a year. When they tried again in 1904, they drew the lines so the rail yards sat outside the city limits. A town can learn, given time and a firm talking-to. In 1924 Hillyard was folded into Spokane, by a vote of 808 to 681, though many folks there still call themselves Hillyard folk first.
Iron Made by Hand
The shops were no mere repair barn. The Hillyard men rebuilt and refurbished engines for decades, and starting in 1927 they turned out Great Northern's R-1 class Mallet articulated locomotives, at least twenty-six of them, the first steaming out that November. These were the big mountain-grade pushers meant for hauling trains up the likes of the Cascades, where the switchbacks and Stampede and the long climb to the Cascade Tunnel had taught the railroad what grades cost. I'll not swear to the old boast that they were the mightiest anywhere, but they were mighty enough.
Steam gave way to diesel, and in 1954 Hillyard became a major diesel repair facility. Then the mergers came, the Great Northern became part of Burlington Northern, and the work moved off to Yardley. By 1982 the last remnants of the yards were closed, and the whistle that ran the neighborhood's days went quiet.
What Really Happened
Hillyard was platted in 1892 when the Great Northern Railway reached Spokane, and was named for James J. Hill (“Hill's Yard”). The town incorporated in 1895 by a 45–44 vote, dissolved within a year after Hill objected, re-incorporated in 1904 with the rail yards outside the city limits, and was annexed by Spokane in September 1924 (808–681). The shops grew from a 20-stall engine house and associated shops in 1895 to a major repair and construction facility; at least 26 R-1 Mallet locomotives were built there beginning in November 1927. In 1954 the shops converted to diesel repair, and the final remnants of the rail yards closed in 1982. The claim that these were the “most powerful” locomotives is not verified here. The frontier dialect and lantern-keeper framing are storytelling; dates, votes, and figures come from the sources below.