Oregon Railway and Navigation Company

“ There he continued with varied success down to 1855 when he removed to Oregon and became a pioneer in the navigation of the Columbia river. With inadequate means he commenced the building of a railway at the Cascades and in the face of difficulties that would have appalled a less determined man, he persevered until the work he had undertaken was completed. During the three years commencing with 1857 he ran a line of steamers from Portland to The Dalles, and through this line laid the basis of his subsequent fortune. ”

“ Far from being rivals of the rail- way, they are really coadjutors in the work of transportation. Nowhere in the world has the development of the waterway injured the railway. On the contrary, experience shows that the improved waterway increases railway traffic. Rightly used, nothing seems to exercise such a powerful influence in increasing traffic of all kinds as does the waterway.
Consider the Rhine and the railroads which serve its valley and the cities on its banks. Before that river was improved for navigation there was but one railroad, the cities were small and the traffic was light. ”

“ Although the country, from the Missouri river to the Pacific, is quite as well adapted to the building of railroads—if we except the Nevada Mountains, and this exception would not apply to the Oregon route—as any of the eastern States, yet no private company can, or should be allowed to build such road, but it should be a national work, and subject to the regulation of the government, for the good of the people, when completed. ”

“ The canoe of Indians, explorers and fur traders, the row-boat of pioneer settlers, were relegated in 1850 by the river steamboat. Right afterward came the railroad idea but not the railroad for yet many a waiting year.
It seems natural enough now that the steam locomotive should follow the river to the ocean; one may wonder at the long delay. But railroads, like each other pioneer improvement in Oregon, grew slowly from their beginnings in 1868-9 ; the down-Columbia line reached Goble not until 1883; and halted there fifteen years before going on to Astoria, fifty-eight miles further. ”

“ After the suppression of the rebellion, he was engaged in constructing railroads and other public works for Peru and other South American states; until he came to Oregon in 1880 and took charge of the railroads being constructed by the Oregonian Railroad Company of Dundee, Scotland. Before going to South America, he constructed a railroad from Newark, New Jersey, to New York city, the whole distance on piling twenty feet above ground, where trains could make a mile a minute and not run over men or carriages. ”

“ It was not always that the people applied to were so enthusiastic. One prominent man declared that so far from the country being able to support a railroad, if one should be built the first train would carry all the freight in the country, the second all the passengers, and the third would pull up the track behind it and carry off the road itself. This same man, remarks Mr Gaston, managed to get into office in the first railroad company, and has enjoyed a good salary therein for 13 years. ”