Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 25.djvu/262

 226 FRANK B. GILL engineer of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company. This was apparently an outgrowth of the Chapman pro- ject, intended to take it up when his failure should ap- pear manifest, but nothing came of this company. Another competing scheme of similar purpose was the Columbia River Portage Railroad Company, incorporated August 25, 1878, by U. B. Scott, Z. J. Hatch and S. H. Brown, the two former being well known steamboat men. Oregon Portage Railroad Company, incorporated Septem- ber 24, 1878, was fathered by E. J. Jeffrey, Noah Lambert and P. G. Baker. Neither of these companies accomp- lished anything in the way of railroad construction. The Portland and Dalles Wagon Road Company, the project referred to in Chapman's-lengthy appeal, was more suc- cessful. It had a road built in 1874 by Orlando Humason between the upper and middle landings, two and three- quarters miles, and between the latter and the lower landing by John Cartwright, 60 with the help of the State under an Act of October 23, 1872. 61 This wagon road was referred to in the Portland Oregonian of August 6,1878, as completed an in use from The Dalles to a point one mile below Lower Cascades, and in the issue of that news- paper for January 6,1879, it was characterized as finished between The Dalles and Lower Cascades, and "good" from Portland to a point beyond the crossing of the Sandy river, but without any road at all for seventeen miles of the distance between the described sections. The Cascade Canal and Lock Company, incorporated on October 21, 1874, by Augustus C. Kinney, B. H. Bow- man and Ruf us Mallory was as its name indicates, a plan for a steamboat passage at the portage. A new corportion was almost immediately substituted when the Columbia River Improvement Company was incorporated on Nov- ember 3, 1874, by Augustus C. Kinney, Marshall J. Kin- 60 Portland Daily Oregonian, July 11, July 22, August 24, August 31, 1874. 61 Portland Daily Oregonian, October 1, 1874. VK