Millions of newcomers from throughout Europe sought out new homes in the West in the nineteenth century, especially in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana. The railroad was sometimes how they came or why they came.

European presence in the West started in the seventeenth century. Spanish colonizers set up missions in the upper Rio Grande Valley in what is now Texas and New Mexico. Two hundred years later Europeans kept up their western movement, seeking cheap land, better economic opportunity, or religious freedom. Development of railroads spurred this western migration by offering easier transportation and new job opportunities.

As the chart below shows, a significant percentage of the populations of the four Northwest states were of European origin at the beginning of the twentieth century.1 Many were farmers who turned open prairie into farmland. Others were laborers, working in the coal and copper mines or on the transcontinental railroads. Others still settled in cities, from German Jews who set up shops in Portland to Swedish fishermen in Seattle.2

European Immigration to Northwest as percentage of total population in 1900.