Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/324

300 The achievements of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company from the time it was organized until it was finally merged into the Oregon Railroad & Navigation Company, form an important portion of the marine history of the Northwest. They took a few small and practically insignificant steamboats and other accommodations equally deficient and with such beginnings they formed a large and well-equipped system of transportation all along the line of the great water route of the Northwest. They built great warehouses at Portland, The Dalles and Umatilla and other stopping points; they improved the portages; they extended their lines into undeveloped country. They built the best equipped steamers possible and in every way provided for good, reliable service. They started with an original investment of $172,500.00 and put $3,000,000.00 more into improvements alone, which shows their willingness to meet the demands of the country as placed upon them. No private individual could have stood the expense of opening up new branches and taken the lead in developing new parts of the country. This company filled in a natural gap between the coming of the pioneers and the railroads. In the shipment of wheat it aided in the development of that country beyond the Cascade Range, known as the Inland Empire. This company at an early date got control of the portages on the Columbia River and thus effectually blocked all chances of competition. This control of the portages was the chief cause of bringing the company to the notice of Congress. Here discussions arose concerning the locks at the Cascades and a canal or a portage railway at The Dalles rapids, which led to the improvement of the Columbia at these points.

Thus the growth and mission of this company were practically the growth of the Inland Empire up to 1880. It carried thither the miner and farmer to prospect and develop it and in turn, as its legitimate reward, returned to its headquarters in Portland the wealth it had absorbed, and it made upon the Northwest Coast in the State of Oregon, a metropolis second only to San Francisco. Through its agency, Portland