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 stead may have made to make void their agreement with Bradford & Co., but the subject came up again, as we shall see. In order that the reader may grasp the situation, it should be explained that when Bradford & Co. sold the charter and survey of the Cascades Railroad Company to the Oregon Steam Navigation Company in May, 1862, they also sold their mule-power wooden track railroad, but as to the latter, with the provision that the sale was not effective until May 1, 1865. As this earliest railroad on the Pacific Coast was then out of use and about to be abandoned, the only object in Bradford & Co's retaining it, must have been to secure to them for three years more the seven-twelfths of the earnings accruing to the upper portion of the portage under the 1860 agreement with Olmstead and Ruckel.

It was, of course, the building of the first class railroad across the river that prompted Harrison Olmstead, on behalf of the owners of the Oregon Portage to propose to the directors of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company on October 24,1862, that they purchase the property On the same day Ruckel, Harrison Olmstead and D. H. Olmstead signed articles of incorporation of Oregon Cascade Rail Road Company which were filed in Oregon three days later, on October 27, 1862; this was probably a protective measure on the part of Ruckel and Olmstead which proved unnecessary through the sale of the property, as the corporation never acquired title to the Oregon Portage Railroad,was apparently never organized, and if so never really possessed a legal existence.

The purchase of the portage was considered at a directors' meeting held October 25, 1862, and Harrison Olmstead was invited to come down for a conference with president Ainsworth. Ruckel was also asked by Ains-