Port of Portland

“ The Oregon Rail- road & Navigation Company will be obliged to run its train down the south bank of the river and do its shipping from Astoria or some point near that city. Both railroads will carry the grain of the Colum- bia basin to the mouth of the river for ex- port — not only that part now loaded into ships at Portland, but also the part that now goes through Puget Sound ports. The wheat trains will run through Portland and the stevedoring will be done at Astoria and on the opposite side of the river, but Port- land men and money will do the business. ”

“ It feels, however, the serious disadvantage of being, for five months in the year, blockaded, and made, to all intents and purposes, an inland city, by the closing of navigation during the winter. Then, by means of the Grand Trunk and other railways, it becomes tributary to Portland, Maine, and finds, at that [Pg 240] city, a port for its commerce. Its two miles of quays, including the locks and stone-cut wharves of the Lachine Canal, all built of solid limestone, would do credit to any city in the world ”

“ And these advantages of moving traffic both on the land side, as well as the sea side, are further greatly increased by Portland's very much larger freight producing territory in its immediate vicinity. San Francisco has the local sup- port of the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys and coast counties, aggregating about 90,000 square miles of productive territory. Seattle has, dividing with Tacoma, the Puget Sound basin, and coast counties and the Yakima valley basin, making not more all told than 40,000 square miles. ”

“ Portland is the overshadowing city of the Columbia basin, and has always handled most of its business, while on Puget Sound trade and commerce have been divided. It is all a vast harbor and its cities have had access almost equally to the sea. Seattle, Tacoma, Vancouver, Victoria, New Westminster, Everett, Bellingham, Anacortes, Olympia, and Port Townsend are credited with an aggregate of nearly three-quarters of a million of inhabitants. ”

“ Principal waterways are Columbia and Willamette Rivers. Portland, on the Willamette, is a regular port of call for coastwise vessels between Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle and for combination freight and passenger vessels to the Orient, and to South American, Atlantic Coast and European ports. ”

“ Of steamship lines there is one to San Francisco, one to Alaska, one to Puget Sound and British Columbia ports, one to the coast ports of Washington, and one projected and soon to be put in operation to Japan.
Portland is not eminent as a manufacturing city, although its domestic business is divided between eighty-eight kinds of manufactures and one hundred and fifty other lines of trade, which together employ between seven and eight thousand persons, the annual product of whose labor is estimated at twenty million one hundred and eighty-three thousand and forty-four dollars. ”

“ In Portland is the constant stir of progress and commercial development—it is in the air. With the completion of a forty-foot ship channel from the city to the sea, to which end surveys are being conducted by the government, the largest vessels will have no difficulty in making Portland. Business enterprises of all sorts thrive; the building up of attractive suburbs, and of seaside resorts such as Long Beach and Yaquina bay—all these mean that here is a city of 160,000 people that will bear watching. There is no use hurrying through Portland; there is too much to be seen and done ”

“ The Grand Trunk Railroad and six other lines terminate at Portland, and regular lines of steamers connect the city with New York, Boston and other points on the Atlantic coast. The harbor, which is defended by five forts, is deep enough for vessels of all sizes and is seldom frozen. A large foreign trade is carried on with the West Indies and with European and South American countries, the imports and exports amounting to $15,918,492 in 1906. Portland was permanently settled by an English colony in 1632. ”

“ Powerful and comfortable steamers stem the torrent of the mighty river and at the rapids of the Dalles, close to the mystical, mythical Bridge of the Gods, a system of locks has challenged and overcome Nature’s mastery of her aquatic highway. Portland is famous for its hotels and hospitality, its fine streets and buildings, its clubs, its schools and churches. ”

“ Kamm was the first and only man to put steamboat transportation on, the upper Snake river. Fle was the sole owner of the ocean steamer, George S. Wright, which he ran from Portland to Victoria, Sitka and Alaska, being the only capitalist Portland had that would make a fight to hold that trade to this city. In later years, he organized the Vancouver Transportation Company, and put on the steamers Lurline and Undine. His work in building up the city is incalculable. ”

“ The road into Portland is across a bridge built in 1839, the first to connect the island-peninsula with the mainland. Then follows a long two miles of monotony along the eastern end of Chesil Beach, and the most ardent pedestrian will prefer to take to the railway at least as far as Portland station if not to the terminus at Easton. The lonely stretch of West Bay, in sharp contrast to the animation of the Roads, cannot be seen unless the high bank of shingle on the right is ascended. Portland Castle is on the nearest point of the island to the mainland. ”

“ Up this deep, quiet stream you glide twelve miles, when you step ashore at Portland and make yourself at home at any one of a dozen hotels that promise at least all they perform. There is also a daily line of stages and steamboats leaving Portland for the south—the former going up the Wallamet river from sixty to one hundred and fifty miles, owing to the season of the year, and the latter running to the Sacramento valley, and thence connecting by railway and steamboats with San Francisco. ”

“ The spending of twenty million dollars to build the North Bank Road and its Columbia- Vancouver bridge by the enemies of Portland, and their hauling their Puget Sound lumber trains two hundred miles to reach the Portland gateway, is an object-lesson that forever silences all doubts or questions of Portland's surpassing advantages and ability to secure and control not only the commerce of the Columbia river basin, but also the transcontinental commerce to China, Japan and the Indies. ”

“ Just round the Nothe, the green and jutting headland between which and the pier the entrance to Weymouth Harbour lies, are Portland Roads, the magnificent harbour in171 which, when not at sea, the Home fleet frequently anchors. To every one who has yachted along the south coast, or gone down the Channel into the outer seas, this roadstead, and the Isle of Portland—which is in reality no island at all, but a peninsula—are perfectly familiar. ”

“ Although one hundred miles from the coast, Portland, like London, Rotterdam and Antwerp, is virtually a seaport, and its growth and progress are based upon the solid foundations of its natural advantages. Loading at its wharves, or riding at anchor on the broad bosom of the river, may be seen, not only river craft of all sorts and sizes, but ocean-going vessels of 3,000 tons. When the great wheat crop of Oregon is in course of shipment to Europe, there may be seen a fleet of as fine merchantmen as can be found in the world. ”

“ As this book is written, a great contest goes on, whether the land traffic across the bridges shall give way to the river traffic passing through the open draws. The statistics above were taken to settle that question.
The river traffic is enormous, and the U. S. army officers favor the river traffic.
In 1864, when there were no bridges, the largest freighter was the sailing vessel Jane A. Falkinberg, carrying 600 tons ; and she was a wonder in Portland harbor. ”

“ There are plenty of fish and wild life abounds. There are many canoe clubs at Portland and during the summer the Willamette is crowded with the fleet of light craft while trips up and down the river are in great favor, sometimes extending for days and covering a voyage of one hundred miles, the distance by river between Portland and Albany. From Portland to Salem the capital city, a steamer plies the fifty miles of waterway. House boats, often of luxurious design, are in high favor on the quieter reaches. ”

“ This was the first ocean going steamship that ever tied up at Portland wharf. It was in fact a gold hunter, and was for sale. Immediately every friend of Portland got busy. Hope and enthusiasm took the place of anxiety and fear in the faces of the townspeople, and courage once more filled up the shrinking purse. The price and terms for the ship were ascertained. Sixty thousand dollars would purchase a controlling interest in the ship, and run her between Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco. ”

“ Time will show whether the sanguine hopes of the Portland people that their city will hold the virtual monopoly of the trade of the Northwest are well founded or not. There can, in my mind, be little doubt that she will have a very formidable rival in the city on Puget Sound which will spring up, as by magic, when the Northern Pacific Railroad there receives and discharges passengers and freight. It will be an evil day for Portland when the wharves at Tacoma find the grain-ships alongside, and the cars pouring in the grain of Eastern Oregon and Washington Territory. ”

“ The estimated outlay of the Terminal Company was nearly $3,000,000, which was provided for by the issue of bonds to be guaranteed by the three railroad companies. As Portland did not have a single decent hotel at the time, Mr. Villard also purchased a suitable site for a large modern one, and gave a leading firm of New York architects charge of its erection. Its completion was delayed for some years, but "The Portland" stands to-day, as planned by him, the finest establishment of the kind on the Pacific coast north of San Francisco. ”

“ Ferry Assembled in East Portland
The Vallejo harkens back to Portland's exciting days of the railroad builders, Ben Holladay and Henry Villard, for she was put together in 1879 on the east bank of the Willamette river in what then was known as East Portland. She became a vital link in the railroad connections between the growing city and the Willamette valley before there were any bridges in Portland. ”

“ The trade of the far west, which had been the most attractive lure, did not come in any great amount for the first twenty years. Differences of gauge, lack of permanent connections at Chicago, lack of return freight, rate wars with the American roads which had been built west at the same time or later, the inferiority of Montreal to New York as of old in harbour facilities and {84} ocean service, the failure of Portland to become a great commercial centre—all meant hope and dividends deferred. ”

“ So that, after all, sovereigns are not more free from the discomforts of life than are other people!
We heard these anecdotes as we were standing towards Portland Harbour, formed by a magnificent breakwater of granite, which runs out from the shore to the east, and then circles round with an opening about the centre. It was built to form a harbour of refuge, as no other exists along the coast which can be entered at all times between the Needles and Plymouth. ”

“ Intercourse with your fellow-men in such a milieu is the best discipline I know of for a man—except that of political life,” he added, with his droll smile.
Of course Mr. Reed is interested in the welfare of Portland, and he cherishes the idea that some day the city of his birth will become one of the great cities of the continent. “Portland harbor is one of the finest on the Atlantic coast. It is at least two days nearer Europe than New York, and one day nearer Europe than Boston. ”

“ As for the last of the three Ports, or Portland, it is getting too prosperous to be as attractive as its less northerly neighbors. Meant for a fine old town, to ripen like a Cheshire cheese within its walls of ancient rind, burrowed by crooked alleys and mottled with venerable mould, it seems likely to sacrifice its mellow future to a vulgar material prosperity. ”

“ The opening of the Northern Pacific in the autumn of 1883 began to tell upon the rather phenomenal prosperity of Portland from 1873 to 1883, much of the wholesale trade of the upper country being transferred to the east. The improvements made by the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company have, however, been of much permanent benefit to Portland, one of the most important being the dry-dock, over 400 feet long, over 100 feet wide, and 50 feet deep, for the construction and repair of sea-going vessels. ”

“ Wilson was attracted to the Pacific coast by the great gold discovery in California, coming around Cape Horn in a sailing vessel. On reaching San Francisco, he engaged in practice for six months and then took service as ship surgeon on the steamship Gold Hunter plying between San Francisco and the Columbia river, coming to Portland in December, 1850. Being firmly convinced that Portland was to be the great city, the officers of the ship so strongly advised Dr. Wilson to settle here, that he resigned his position on the steamer and cast anchor in Portland, Oregon. ”

“ The advantage gained by the owners of the Oregon Portage through their having a railroad from end to end of the Cascades rapids, drawing the steamboat cargoes over its full extent with but two transfers, one from boat to cars, and one from cars to boat, must have induced the owners of the Bradford portage to seek an alliance with Captain J. C. Ainsworth and associates who were building a larger and more powerful steamboat than had yet operated out of Portland. ”