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Steam Navigation Company, to build and operate boats on the successive reaches of the Columbia River divided from one another by portages. Around the principal portages, like the Cascades and the Dalles to Celilo Falls, this company had built railways and these were the earliest railways in Oregon. Villard organized, with these men, a new company called the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, which absorbed the Portage railways and other properties of the Navigation Company, and constructed a continuous line from Portland eastward to Baker City in Powder River Valley. Afterwards this road was continued, practically on the line of the old emigrant route, to Granger, Wyoming, where it connected with the Union Pacific.

Villard saves the Northern Pacific Railroad. Villard, meantime, was called upon to save the Northern Pacific Railway which had encountered great financial difficulties and, after a period of intense building activity, this line was completed in September, 1883, giving the Northwest at last a direct line of rail communication with the Mississippi Valley and the East. The celebration of the event, September 8, 1883, when Mr. Villard drove the last spike at a place in Western Montana, was similar to the Driving of the Golden Spike on the Union Pacific at Promontory Point, Utah, fourteen years earlier. Throngs of visitors from both sides of the continent had been gathered there and were being cared for as guests of the company. A number of distinguished Europeans were