While the enterprising steamboat builders were thus making their way up-river in the very teeth of Indian warfare steamboats were in course of construction on the Willamette. The Jennie Clark in 1854 and the Carrie Ladd in 1858 were built for the firm of Abernethy, Clark and Company. These both, the latter especially, were really elegant steamers for the time.
The close of the Indian wars in 1859 saw a quite well-organized steamer service between Portland and The Dalles, and the great rush into the upper country was just beginning. The Senorita, the Belle, and the Multnomah, under the management of Benjamin Stark, were on the run from Portland to the Cascades. A rival steamer, the Mountain Buck, owned by Ruckle and Olmstead, was on the same route. These steamers connected with boats on the Cascades-Dalles section by means of portages five miles long around the rapids. There was a portage on each side of the river. That on the north side was operated by Bradford & Company, and their steamers were the Hassalo and the Mary. Ruckle and Olmstead owned the portage on the south side of the river, and their steamer was the Wasco. Sharp competition arose between the Bradford and Stark interests on one side and Ruckle and Olmstead on the other. The Stark Company was known as the Columbia River Navigation Company, and the rival was the Oregon Transportation Company. J. C. Ainsworth now joined the Stark party with the Carrie Ladd. So efficient did this reinforcement prove to be that the transportation company proposed to them a combination. This was effected in April, 1859, and the new organization became known as the Union Transportation Company. This was soon found to be too loose a consolidation to accomplish the desired ends, and the parties interested set about a new combination to embrace all the steam boat men from Celilo to Astoria. The result was the formation of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, which came into legal existence on December 20, 1860. Its stock in steamboats, sailboats, wharfboats, and miscellaneous property was stated at $172,500.
Such was the genesis of the "O. S. N. Co." In a valuable article by Irene Lincoln Poppleton in the Oregon Historical Quarterly for September, 1908, to which we here make acknowledgments, it is said that no assessment was ever levied on the stock of this company, but that from the proceeds of the business the management expended in gold nearly three million dollars in developing their property, besides paying to the stockholders in dividends over two million and a half dollars. Never perhaps was there such a record of money-making on such capitalization.
The source of the enormous business of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company was the rush into Idaho, Montana, and Eastern Oregon and Washington by the miners, cowboys, speculators, and adventurers of the early '60s. The up-river country, as described more at length in another chapter, wakened suddenly from the lethargy of centuries, and the wildness teemed with life. That was the great steamboat age. Money flowed in streams. Fortunes were made and lost in a day.
When first organized in 1860, the Oregon Steam Navigation Company had a nondescript lot of steamers, mainly small and weak. The two portages, one of five miles around the Cascades and the other of fourteen miles from The Dalles to Celilo Falls, were unequal to their task. The portages at the Cascades on both sides of the river were made by very inadequate wooden tramways. That at The Dalles was made by teams. Such quantities of freight were discharged from the steamers that sometimes the whole portage was lined with freight from end to end. The portages were not acquired by the company with the steamboat property, and as a result the portage owners reaped the larger share of the profits. During high water the portage on the Oregon side at the Cascades had a monopoly of the business and it took one-half the freight income from Portland to The Dalles. This was holding the whip-hand with a vengeance, and the vigorous directors of the steamboat company could not endure it. Accordingly, they absorbed the rights of the portage owners, built a railroad from Celilo to The Dalles on the Oregon side, and one around the Cascades on the Washington side. The company was reorganized under the laws of Oregon in October, 1863, with a declared capitalization of $2,000,000.
Business on the river in 1863 was something enormous. Hardly ever did a steamer make a trip with less than two hundred passengers. Freight was offered in such quantities at Portland that trucks had to stand in line for blocks, waiting to deliver and receive their loads. New boats were built of a much better class. Two rival companies, the Independent Line and the People's Transportation Line, made a vigorous struggle to secure a share of the business, but they were eventually overpowered. Some conception of the amount of business may be gained from the fact that the steamers transported passengers to an amount of fares running from $1,000 to $6,000 a trip. On April 29, 1862, the Tenino, leaving Celilo for the Lewiston trip, had a load amounting to $10,945 for freight, passengers, meals, and berths. The steamships sailing from Portland to San Francisco showed equally remarkable records. On June 25, 1861, the Sierra Nevada conveyed a treasure shipment of $228,000; July 14th, $110,000; August 24th, $195,558; December 5th, $750,000. The number of passengers carried on The Dalles-Lewiston route in 1864 was 36,000 and the tons of freight were 21,834.
It was a magnificent steamboat ride in those days from Portland to Lewiston. The fare was $60; meals and berths, $1 each. A traveler would leave Portland at 5 A. M. on, perhaps, the Wilson G. Hunt, reach the Cascades sixty-five miles distant at 11 A. M., proceed by rail five miles to the Upper Cascades, there transfer to the Oneonta or Idaho for The Dalles, passing in that run from the humid, low-lying, heavily timbered West-of-the-mountains, to the dry, breezy, hilly East-of-the-mountains. Reaching The Dalles, fifty miles farther east, he would be conveyed by another portage railroad, fourteen miles more, to Celilo. There the Tenino, Yakima, Nez Percé Chief, or Owyhee was waiting. With the earliest light of the morning the steamer would head right into the impetuous current of the river, bound for Lewiston, 280 miles farther yet, taking two days, sometimes three, though only one to return. Those steamers were mainly of light-draught, stern-wheel structure, which still characterizes the Columbia River boats. They were swift and roomy and well adapted to the turbulent waters of the upper river.
STEAMERS ASOTIN, SPOKANE AND LEWISTON IN PORT AT LEWISTON