Page:Last Stop for Ferry No. 2.djvu/1

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End of the run for Ferry No. 2, later the Vallejo, is a berth in an arm of San Francisco bay. Artist residents added windows.

Jean Varda stands before stone and concrete fireplace he built himself for his ferryboat residence. It is inlaid with bottles.

AILING INTO an arm of San Francisco bay just north of Sausalito and the Golden Gate bridge a few years ago, a Greek-born artist and two friends spotted an ancient, work-out ferryboat, the Vallejo, tied to the shore.

The old hull was "impressive," the artist, Jean Varda, wrote recently. He did not know at the time that it was part of Portland's most colorful past.

"We immediately accosted her," he wrote, "and were roaming about and inspecting her when a voice full of suspicion called from the shore.

"'Hey, you guys, what are you doing there?' it said.

"There was only one way out of an embarrassing situation. We answered: 'Is this boat for sale?'

"When we learned that she was, we looked at each other struck by the same idea. What a magnificent studio it would make!

"Two days later we were wedlocked to her for good or for worse."

So now the 74-year-old Vallejo is a part of San Francisco bay's Bohemian colony, the home of two artists who have made themselves comfortable by fitting up quarters in cabins which for many years carried travelers and shipyard workers.

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.

Launched as the O&CRR Ferry No. 2, she was operated for nearly ten years across the harbor between the Oregon & California R. R. terminal on the east bank, just south of the end of the present Steel bridge, and the west bank at the foot of F street, now N. W. Flanders street.

At the time the ferry was built, Henry Villard was in control of the O&CRR and most of the other railroads of Oregon. He succeeded Ben Holladay, who rose to fame about ten years earlier, and began the state's first extensive railroad development. Holladay had built a smaller ferry in 1870 for the cross river link in his system, and the new one replaced the original vessel.

The hull of Ferry No. 2 was said to have been made of Swedish wrought iron, prefabricated in Philadelphia and brought around Cape Horn by ship to be assembled in East Portland. The vessel was 123 feet long, 31 feet wide and 10 feet deep, with steam driven side wheels and boilers that burned cordwood.

As units in his railroad ferry system, Holladay erected waiting stations on both banks of the river. On the hill overlooking the east side terminal was his three story hotel, Holladay House, torn down three years ago to make way for new approaches to the Steel bridge.

The west side waiting station was a small, three-sided, two story frame building at the foot of F street, also removed to make way for bridge approaches. It was known years ago as the Boss saloon and more recently as Boss lunch.

The enterprising Holladay established Portland's first horse car line to connect the ferry at Front and F streets with downtown Portland. It was a mule-drawn car, worn out from long usage in San Francisco before Holladay brought it to Portland, and it was pulled over iron rails from the turntable at Front and G streets down through town to Carruthers street, in South Portland, where another turntable was located.

The three sided waiting station became notorious as a saloon and sailors' hiring hall, with offices upstairs. It was said that Jim Turk and Mysterious Billy Smith used it as a base, or "crimp joint," for shanghaiing sailors for the grain ships that loaded at nearby wharves.

Old timers, in fact, still repeat stories that Smith's son or Turk's son, or both, were among the men who mysteriously disappeared from the place in the dead of night and later found themselves recovering from knock out drops on ships at sea.

This building was said to be the birthplace of the Portland Merchants Exchange. It had its inception when a bartender, tired of answering questions, put up a blackboard behind his bar to list incoming ships and their berths for the information of sailors and waterfront gentry.

The exchange was organized and incorporated in 1879, the same year the O&CRR Ferry No. 2 was launched, and moved "uptown" to First and Ankeny streets.

Near at hand was the Alaska dock, the heart of Portland shipping, and down river were most of the grain docks. Square riggers by the score anchored in the harbor to await their turns at loading berths.

Across the harbor, on the east bank, was the old hop dock, located just south of the present Steel bridge. It was a part of the O&CRR system, erected to receive hops by river boat and railroad from the Willamette valley, and to serve as a storage and shipping point.

The Portland days of the O&CRR Ferry No. 2 were numbered, however. People were tiring of having to cross the river by ferry between the city and the countryside of East Portland, and enterprising citizens finally built the first Morrison street bridge of timbers in 1887.

Then the owners of the Union Pacific railroad, who The Sunday Oregonian