Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/296



A careful review of the facts, and the men will show that the future of the city, and its permanent and substantial success dates back to this period, and practically to a group of about a dozen leading men, who were compelled, from the very nature of the case to pull together for self-preservation. Much has been said and written from time to time about the want of unanimity and harmonious enterprise among the rich men of Portland. And while there has been often outward manifestations of a want of harmony if not secret opposi- tion to each other, yet altogether the evolutionary progress of the city has com- pelled inharmonious elements to work and labor for the common good. Incom- ing business men were loth to open their purses to make improvements which they thought added more to the prosperity of the townsite owners than their own. And some of these same business men were so stiff upon this point that they_ would not buy town lots at a low price which would have made them wealthy while they waited for profits from other sources. But altogether the logic of events compelled all of them, in one way or the other, to contribute their time, energies, and money to indirectly built a city which made all of them rich.

Counting in the original townsite proprietors. Coffin, Chapman, and Lowns- dale, we can add to their efforts, those of Captain J. C. Ainsworth, Jacob Kamm, Henry W. Corbett, W. S. Ladd, Henry Failing, C. H. Lewis, Captain John H. Couch, Captain George H. Flanders, Simeon G. Reed and R. R. Thompson, to whose brains and energy Portland is indebted for its present masterful position in the commerce and general prosperity of the country. And it can be easily seen from time to time in the history of the city, how these men co-operated, even when apparently acting independent of each other, to bring about great results in building up the city and securing its great future.

Captain Ainsworth had settled first at Oregon city, and with his brother-in-law, Dierdorff, had been carrying on a general store and trading establishment at that point. But seeing the natural advantages of Portland, and early getting into the steamboat business, so shaped his affairs as to transfer all his interests to this point, and as the transportation on the Columbia river developed, became the executive head of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company — the first large trans- portation company of the north Pacific coast. Ainsworth's last work on behalf of the city, was in extending transportation to eastern Oregon, building the portage railways at the Cascades and the Dalles, and in exploring the Columbia to its headwaters and into Kootenai lake, where vast mineral wealth has followed the discoveries made by Ainsworth's exploring parties. And while Ainsworth added vastly to the fortvme of himself, Reed and Thompson by the sale of the property of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company to the Northern Pacific Railway Company, that transaction enabled Henry Villard to get such control of the railroads leading to the great Columbia basin, as to hold the transcontinental business to Portland long enough to demonstrate its superior and exclusive advan- tages as the gateway to the Pacific; and thus eventually, as has now been established, control the heavy transportation between the coast of Oregon, and Washington and the Atlantic states.

Of this group of men, Jacob Kamm is entitled to be ranked the first in steamboat development. Before Lot Whitcomb could build the first steamboat, he was compelled to bring Mr. Kamm from California to superintend the con- struction. In this pioneer work, a great work for this city, Mr. Kamm, with his own hands put all the machinery together even down to riveting the boiler sheets. From this beginning, Jacob Kamm went on with work on other steamers, and had supervision as master mechanic, chief engineer and part owner, of the steamboats Jennie Clark, Carrie Ladd, Mountain Buck, Senorita, the Mary, Hassalo, Rival, Surprise and Elk. Mr. Kamm was the first and only man to put steamboat transportation on, the upper Snake river. Fle was the sole owner of the ocean steamer, George S. Wright, which he ran from Portland to Victoria, Sitka and Alaska, being the only capitalist Portland had that would make a fight