Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/431

Rh ham, Glass and other public-spirited citizens raised a purse, bought out "Old Joe's" road, and tore up the old tracks and abolished the nuisance.

The first practical efforts to introduce street railroad service was in 1880, when Tyler Woodward, Benton Killin and others got a franchise to construct the line on Third street turning west on G street. This was from the first a very well constructed and well managed property. The next line was projected from First street west on Washington street to the Gambrinus Brewery at 23d street. Mr. D. E. Budd was the promoter of this line, and the late Amos N. King the principal capitalist. Both these lines were horse-car lines, and as good as any horse-car line could be. To get up the hill at Market street on Third, a boy was stationed with an extra horse to help out the single nag that trotted along with the tender little cars holding a dozen passengers at best. The Washington street line put on considerable airs from the very start, had a pair of horses, regular flyers from King's big stock ranch in Lake county, and they changed teams every three hours, made fast time on the street, and in fact started the boom in buildings and prices on Washington street which has been kept going ever since.

The first real sensation Portland experienced in street car development was when a Philadelphia lawyer named J. Carroll McCaffery started in to build the cable road from the Union depot up Fifth street to Jefferson, west on Jefferson to Chapman, south on Chapman to Spring street on Portland Heights, and north on Spring to the present site of the Portland Heights club house. McCaffery came to Portland as the loan agent of the Lawyers' Trust and Loan Company of Philadelphia, innocently supposing that the verdant Oregonians would confide in a Lawyers' Loan and Trust Co. (especially the "trust" part of it). He soon discovered that this was not a good field for his clients, and then took up the cable road idea to develop Portland Heights real estate about the year 1889. Residence lots that are now selling on the Heights for $5,000 apiece, could be purchased at that time for two hundred and fifty dollars each. McCaffery obtained a franchise from the city council, and everybody laughed at the impossible proposition of running a railroad car up the steep ascent of five hundred feet from Market street to Spring street. But McCaffery was not a "quitter" and he scurried around and obtained subscriptions tO' the stock of his company, payable in lots and lands, going even as far back as the Talbot donation claim at Council Crest; and soon made quite a showing of foundation securities. He first tried to raise money out of his Philadelphia Loan and Trust Company friends and found out that they wanted everything, so to speak, and he vv'as compelled to fall back on Portland men. In this he was successful in securing the confidence of Mr. Preston Smith, who came to his assistance with hard cash and his personal influence with others among whom was the late Charley Woodward of wholesale drug store fame. And between these gentlemen money enough was raised to start the enterprise, and after started, bonds were issued and taken by some San Francisco capitalists who had experience with and confidence in cable railways. And thus the road was completed, the great brick power house with its ponderous steam engines being located at the intersection of Chapman and Market streets, and only a short time pulled down to make room for other structures. While the cable road was never a financial success as a dividend earner and a very expensive road to build, yet it made Portland Heights the handsome residence suburb that it is, and in the end returned from sales of real estate and its railway franchises all the money ever invested in it.

Major Sears has done so much for Portland and Oregon in freely giving the city and state the benefit of his great engineering knowledge, his wide experience