Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/302

246 valleys and eastward, it became apparent that the heavy handicap of rehandling freight at two portages would forbid the steamers from competing with the railroads. In 1879 the Oregon Steam Navigation Company sold out to the Villard interests for $5,000,000, and the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company was the result.

Since that time there have been few steamboats on that part of the River above The Dalles. The section between The Dalles and the Cascades was joined to the tide-water section by the opening of the Government locks at the Cascades in 1896, and since that time many of the finest steamers on the River do an immense tourist business between The Dalles and Portland. It is only a question of a few years till the locks at Celilo will be completed, and then the whole vast Inland Empire, with its enormous production, will be thrown open to the sea. Then there will come on a new age of steamboat navigation, and with it the electric railroad. The steamer and the trolley car will set the whole Columbia Basin next door to tide-water. When improvements now in view by Government are completed, our River will be one of the most superb steamer courses in the world. That may truthfully be said already of the two hundred and twenty miles from The Dalles to the Ocean, as well as of the three hundred miles from Kettle Falls, Washington, to Death Rapids, B. C.

The Government engineers in Senate Document, 344, February, 1890, name the amount of navigable water on the Columbia and its tributaries at 1664 miles. This may, perhaps, be an underestimation, since President Roosevelt has recently referred to it