Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/98

86 prosperous community. Some three hundred thousand people lived in the valley of the Willamette and along the lower and upper Columbia. Evidences of a high degree of comfort, of large accumulations and of the great volume of commercial activity elicited remarks of astonishment from visitors to this isolated region that was then still practically without railroads. It is safe to say that no other river system since the era of general railway development served so fully the needs of transportation facilities as did this one of the Pacific Northwest.

But the inland waterways of the Pacific Northwest were like those of the other sections of the country destined to be relegated to a position secondary to that of the railways. Only the one-hundred-and-ten-mile stretch from Portland to the sea suffered no eclipse through being paralleled by a railroad. This section of river channel is, however, in its relation to navigation, to be regarded as an arm of the sea, or harbor passageway, rather than as an inland waterway. The general supersession of the waterway for the railway might seem to be significant of the greater all-around utility of the railway in this section, for it appeared to displace the well-established steamboat completely on certain routes and, for aught that appears on the surface, finally. But it is to be noted that the introduction of the railway into this section was not primarily to furnish facilities of a higher order than those of the existing waterways. They were built here not so much to supersede the unsatisfactory steamboat as they were to earn munificent grants of public domain and to supply the final links in the transcontinental lines giving connection with the East. For passenger and higher class freight service the railroad, here as elsewhere, had, of course, the advantage from the start. The railways along the Willamette and the Columbia won out so decisively, however, from quite extraneous reasons. The falls and formidable rapids in these rivers that made necessary short side canals or portage railways furnish the secret of this easy conquest on the part of the railways. These portage