Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/319

Rh That was the time when the boomer boomed, the promoter promoted, and the sucker sucked. It was a great age, but alas, it was followed by an awakening, similar to that which follows a night of carousal, when the next day brings a dark-brown taste in the mouth and a very heavy head. The decade of the nineties was dolorous along the River and in the mines and forests and farms and town-lots and additions and suburbs adjoining.

Interlocked with the days of miner, cowboy, rancher, and boomer, was another age of equal importance and one that was both result and cause of the others. This was the age of the railroad builder.

Transportation by the River was a great feature of traffic in the fifties and sixties. But, during the second of those decades, the people of Portland began to realise that the time had arrived for rails as well as sails. The first great transcontinental railroad, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific, was in active process of building between California and Omaha. A fever of railroad building spread to the Columbia River people. Railroads were projected from Portland on both sides of the Willamette, up the valley, with the view of ultimate connection with California. Surveys were made by S. G. Elliott from Marysville, California, to Portland in 1863. It was October, 1870, when the first train reached Salem, the capital of the State. The road was known as the Oregon Central Railroad, and its manager and ultimately its chief owner was Ben Holladay, the most famous railroad man of that period in Oregon. In 1871 and 1872, railroad building was extended on the west side of the Willamette. The lines on both sides