Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/275

Rh La Créole River with the Willamette. The Yamhill River was spanned at Lafayette with a strong double-track bridge placed on abutments of hewn timber, bolted and filled with earth, and raised fifty feet above low water. This was the first structure of the kind in the country. The Rockville Canal and Transportation Company was incorporated in February 1853, for the purpose of constructing a basin or breakwater with a canal at and around the falls of the Willamette, which work was completed by December 1854, greatly increasing the comfort of travel by avoiding the portage.

In 1851 the fruit trees set out in 1847 began to bear, so that a limited supply of fruit was furnished the home market; and two years later a shipment was made out of the territory by Meek and Luelling, of Milwaukie, who sold four bushels of apples in San Francisco for five hundred dollars. The following year they sent forty bushels to the same market, which brought twenty-five hundred dollars. In 1861 the shipment of apples from Oregon amounted to over seventy-five thousand bushels; but they no longer