Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 25.djvu/231



It is unfortunate that when the railroad was at last ready for use, no newspaper men were present to record the initiation of steam transportation by railroad north of the California state line. The writer has in fact found no account of this first beginning, as we may say of the Union Pacific System except an article published in the Sunday Oregonian of July 23, 1905, at the time of the Lewis and Clark fair. It contains minor inaccuracies, as will be noted, but is of great value as an account at first hand. With slight omissions not of interest in this narrative this contribution follows:

Out in the transportation department of the Machinery building at the Fair grounds stands a queer little locomotive of an ancient type, with these words painted on it in big letters: "Oregon Pony 1862-1905 ." * * * [It] was the first locomotive ever run over the first railroad ever built in the State of Oregon. It ran on a portage road between Brownsville [Bonneville] and the Cascades over wooden rails overlaid with strap iron. * * * Sometimes the Fair visitor who chances to pass the little engine will notice an old man with snowy white hair and beard, but with a springy step and the eyes of youth, who hovers around as though loath to depart from some dear treasure. And then if the visitor manifests any interest in the "Pony" * * * "This was the first locomotive ever run in Oregon," he says, "and I was the man who built and ran it," * * * The man is Mr. Theodore A. Goffe, and he has been a machinist and an engineer all his life. * * * *

The Oregon Pony was built in 1862 by the Vulcan Iron Works of San Francisco for Colonel Ruckle [Ruckel] of the old Oregon Steam Navigation Co., the predecessor of the present O. R. & N. Co., and the line which did so much to build up Oregon. Mr. Goffe was working in San Francisco at that time and had charge of its construction. Upon its completion it was shipped to Portland, still under his charge, on the steamer Pacific. After an exceedingly rough passage, in the course of which they were driven as far out of their course as Victoria [Victoria was a scheduled port of call], they finally made this port in the latter part of March, 1862. The Pony was landed at the old