Old Fight is Renewed
Kelso Tries to get County Seat From Kalama
Controversy Started Half Century Ago and attributed to Railroad is on Again

The Sunday Oregonian
November 4, 1922

When one speaks of hives he thinks of bees and business. Kelso today is chockfull of business and might be described as a hive of industry. It is a city without a spare bed. But with all its activity, which Kelso firmly believes will make it the prime industrial city of the Columbia, next to Portland, the bees in this busy, little hive have not discarded their stingers. For nearly half a century they have treasured a grudge against Kalama, the county seat.

According to the history of the long enduring battle, the Northern Pacific was one of the first parties. Railroads are usually blamed for a great deal of low-down diplomacy when they invade a district. Kelso claims that the county records tell the entire story; how the Northern Pacific wanted to move the county seat from Monticello, now non-existent except for a few ruins, and how they framed an election. 

The Cowlitz river, that fecund source of countless smelt runs, has now engulfed the site of the former county seat, Monticello, but Kelso persists in keeping the fight against Kalama alive. They certainly treasure grudges in this neck of the woods. The story goes that in 1873 the Northern Pacific sent trains of flat cars out on its construction line, marshaled its workmen, took them to Kalama and voted them en masse to move the county seat. 

Then the railroad sold Cowlitz county an old hotel building they were through with, a huge, rambling frame structure for a county courthouse. The flat cars with their crews, this time in the role of workmen, not voters, again made the journey to Monticello and loaded the county records aboard and took them to the new county seat. You'd think that in 50 years there would be some who would forget this, but not in Kelso. 

Every four years it seems their memory becomes newly refreshed and they try again to snatch the county seat away from Kalama. They have tried regularly since 1906 and next Tuesday will make yet another attempt. This makes five times in succession. "Eventually if not now" seems to be the Kelso motto, and they keep up their regular drives against their arch enemy Kalama. The state law provides that three-fifths of the voters of a county must favor county seat removals, and in 1918 Kelso lost its fight, "for Cowlitz county," as she calls it, by 29 votes.

In the last few years Kelso has grown amazingly. First it took in Catlin, the twin town across the river. Then came the Long-Bell Lumber company with its gigantic development projects, right in Kelso's back yard, and a dream of 20,000 population within five years does not seem too far fetched. Anyhow, right now Kelso is the only city in Cowlitz county, and it naturally feels, as the proper tribute to its greatness, that it should have the county seat. And Kalama, which has been growing, also, until it may rightfully claim something like 1,300 souls in contrast to Kelso's 6,000, is just as determined that the county seat shall not move. 

This fight promises to make history, but if Kelso does not win, why, then, it'll be at it again in 1926.