The legislation meant that the railroad’s property extended for twenty miles on either side of the tracks in states and for forty miles on either side in the territories. The summit of Mount St. Helens was thirty-five miles from the Northern Pacific line built from the Columbia River to Tacoma in the 1870s, when Washington was still a territory. That’s why, when the mountain began to shake in 1980, the top of the volcano was owned by the Burlington Northern Railroad.
