Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/722

 that section. In 1880 the road was sold to a Scotch company of Dundee, represented by William Reid of Portland, who extended it twenty miles farther, and built another narrow-gauge from Ray landing, below the Yamhill, to Brownsville, all of which may be properly said to have resulted from Gaston's enterprises. Then he went to live in Portland, where he did not rank among capitalists—in these days of sharp practice, not always a dishonorable distinction.

No sooner did railroad enterprises begin to assume a tangible shape in Oregon, than several companies rushed into the field to secure land grants and other franchises, notably the Portland, Dalles, and Salt Lake company, the Winnemucca company, the Corvallis and Yaquiua Bay company, and the Columbia River and Hillsboro company. Vancouver Register, Aug. 21, 1869; ''Or. Laws, 1868, 127-8, 140-1, 143; Id., 1870; H. Ex. Doc.'', 1, pt iv. vol. vi., pt 1, p. xvii., 41st cong. 3d sess.; Zabriskie's Land Laws, supp. 1877, 6; Portland Board of Trade Rept, 1875, 6-7, 28: Id., 1876, 4-6; Id., 1877, 14-15.

Owing to a conflict of railroad interests, and fluctuations in the money market, neither of these roads was begun, nor any outlet furnished Oregon toward the east until Villard, in 1879, formed the idea of a syndicate of American and European capitalists to facilitate the construction of the Northern Pacific, and combining its interests with those of the Oregon roads by a joint management, which he was successful in obtaining for himself. E. V. Smalley, in his History of the Northern Pacific Railroad, published in 1883, has given a minute narrative of the means used by Villard to accomplish his object, pp. 262-76. Under his vigorous measures railroad progress in Oregon and Washington was marvellous. Not only the Northern Pacific was completed to Portland, and the Columbia River, opposite the Pacific division at Kalama, in 1883-4, but the Oregon system, under the names of the Oregon Railway and Navigation and Oregon and Transcontinental lines, was extended rapidly. The Oregon Railway and Navigation Company owned all the property of the former Oregon Steam Navigation and Oregon Steamship companies. It was incorporated June 13, 1879, Villard president, and Dolph vice-president. Its first board of directors consisted of Artemus H. Holmes, William H. Starbuck, James B. Fry, and Villard of New York, and George W. Weidler, J. C. Ainsworth, S. G. Reed, Paul Schulze, H. W. Corbett, C. H. Lewis, and J. N. Dolph of Portland. The Oregon and Transcontinental company was formed June 1881, its object being to bring under one control the Northern Pacific and Oregon Railway and Navigation companies, which was done by the wholesale purchase of Northern Pacific stock by Villard, the president of the other company. Its first board of directors, chosen September 15, 1881, consisted of Frederick Billings, Ashbel H. Barney, John W. Ellis, Rose well G. Rolston, Robert Harris, Thomas F. Oakes, Artemus H. Holmes, and Henry Villard of New York, J. L. Stackpole, Elijah Smith, and Benjamin P. Cheney of Boston, John C. Bullitt of Philadelphia, and Henry E. Johnston of Baltimore. Villard was elected president, Oakes vice-president, Anthony J. Thomas second vice-president, Samuel Wilkinson secretary, and Robert L. Belknap treasurer. ''Smalley's Hist. N. P. Railroad'', 270-1.

Seven years after Holladay was forced out of Oregon, the Oregon Central was completed to Eugene, the Oregon and California to the southern boundary of Douglas county, the Dayton and Sheridan narrow-gauge road constructed to Airley, twenty miles south of Sheridan, and another narrow-gauge on the east side of the Willamette making connection with this one, and running south to Coburg in Lane county, giving four parallel lines through the heart of the valley. A wide-gauge road was constructed from Portland, by the way of the Columbia, to The Dalles, and eastward to Umatilla, Pendleton, and Baker City, on its way to Snake River to meet the Oregon short line on the route of the Portland, Dalles, and Salt Lake road of 1868-9. North-eastward from Umatilla a line of road extended to Wallula, Walla Walla, Dayton, Grange City in Washington, and Lewiston in Idaho; while the Northern Pacific sent out a branch eastward to gather in the crops of the Palouse region at Colfax, Farmington, and Moscow; and by the completion of the Oregon