Lyman's History of old Walla Walla County, Vol. 1 / Embracing Walla Walla, Columbia, Garfield and Asotin counties

by William Denison Lyman

CHAPTER IV

THE EARLY TRANSPORTATION AGE

It is but trite and commonplace to say (yet these commonplace sayings embody the accumulated experience of the human race) that transportation is the very A. B. C. of economic science. There can be no wealth without exchange. There is no assignable value either to commodities or labor without markets.

New communities have always had to struggle with these fundamental problems of transportation. Until there can be at least some exchange of products there can be no real commercial life and men's labor is spent simply on producing the articles needful for daily bread, clothing and shelter. Most of the successive "Wests" of America have gone through that stage of simple existence. Some have gotten out of it very rapidly, usually by the discovery of the precious metals or the production of some great staple like furs so much in demand and so scarce in distant countries as to justify expensive and even dangerous expeditions and costly transportation systems. During nearly all the first half of the nineteenth century the fur trade was that agency which created exchange and compelled transportation.

After the acquisition of Oregon and California by the United States there was a lull, during which there was scarcely any commercial life because there was nothing exchangeable or transportable.

Then suddenly came the dramatic discovery of gold in California which inaugurated there a new era of commercial life and hence demanded extensive transportation, and that was for many years necessarily by the ocean. The similar discovery in Oregon came ten years later. As we saw in Chapter Two of this part there came on suddenly in the early '60s a rushing together in old Walla Walla of a confused mass of eager seekers for gold, cattle ranges, and every species of the opportunities which were thought to exist in the "upper country." As men began to get the measure of the country and each other and to see something of what this land was going to become, the demand for some regular system of transportation became imperative.

The first resource was naturally by the water. It was obvious that teaming from the Willamette Valley (the only productive region in the '50s and the first year or two of the '60s) was too limited a means to amount to anything. Bateaux after the fashion of the Hudson's Bay Company would not do for the new era. Men could indeed drive stock over the mountains and across the plains and did so to considerable degree. But as the full measure of the problem was taken it became clear to the active ambitious men who flocked into the Walla Walla country in 1858, 1859, and 1860, and particularly when the discovery of gold became known in 1861, that nothing but the establishment of steamboats on the Columbia and Snake rivers would answer the demand for a real system of transportation commensurate with the situation.

To fully appreciate the era of steamboating and to revive the memories of the pioneers of this region in those halcyon days of river traffic, it is fitting that we trace briefly the essential stages from the first appearance of steamers on the Columbia River and its tributaries. To accomplish this section of the story we are incorporating here several paragraphs from "The Columbia River," by the author: The first river steamer of any size to ply upon the Willamette and Columbia was the Lot Whitcomb. This steamer was built by Whitcomb and Jennings. J. C. Ainsworth was the first captain, and Jacob Kamm was the first engineer. Both of these men became leaders in every species of steamboating enterprise. In 1851 Dan Bradford and B. B. Bishop inaugurated a movement to connect the up-river region with the lower river by getting a small iron propeller called the Jason P. Flint from the East and putting her together at the Cascades, whence she made the run to Portland. The Flint has been named as first to run above the Cascades, but the author has the authority of Mr. Bishop for stating that the first steamer to run above the Cascades was the Eagle. That steamer was brought in sections by Allen McKinley to the Upper Cascades in 1853, there put together, and set to plying on the part of the river between the Cascades and The Dalles. In 1854 the Mary was built and launched above the Cascades, the next year the Wasco followed, and in 1856 the Hassalo began to toot her jubilant horn at the precipices of the mid-Columbia. In 1859 R. R. Thompson and Lawrence Coe built the Colonel Wright, the first steamer on the upper section of the river. In the same year the same men built at the Upper Cascades a steamer called the Venture. This craft met with a curious catastrophe. For on her very first trip she swung too far into the channel and was carried over the Upper Cascades, at the point where the Cascade Locks are now located. She was subsequently raised and rebuilt, and rechristened the Umatilla.

This part of the period of steamboat building was contemporary with the Indian wars of 1855 and 1856. The steamers Wasco, Mary, and Eagle were of much service in rescuing victims of the murderous assault on the Cascades by the Klickitats.