Under the direction of the court-appointed bankruptcy receivers Ladd and Tilton Bank of Portland, Oregon, new life was breathed into the railroad. To facilitate the rehabilitation of the railroad, the bank turned to Michigan entrepreneur John Bagley. Bagley had owned and operated logging companies, sawmills, railroads, and a hotel. In 1899, the year that Mount Rainier National Park was established, Bagley was made president of the Tacoma Eastern and ambitiously set out to push the railroad another 60 miles to Ashford, Washington, the western gateway to the park. With construction financing covertly provided by the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railway, construction activities began in earnest. Unlike the stories of transcontinental railroad construction in America, the Tacoma Eastern Railroad was built with common labor provided mostly by Japanese, not Chinese immigrants. The last spike on the passenger line was driven at Ashford in the fall of 1904. However, the main freight line diverged away to the south and would not be completed until it pushed into Morton, Washington in 1910, another 15 miles away.