THE YAQUINA RAILROAD 245
The various accessory properties of the Oregon Pacific were sold by Hammond after his purchase in 1904, at handsome profits. Among those properties were the follow- ing, which Mr. Nash informs me brought prices approximately as follows : Steamship Willamette Valley, $40,000 ; Tug Reso- lute, $17,000; three river steamboats, $35.000; rolling stock $100,000; total $192,000. Later, on December 18, 1907, Ham- mond sold the Corvallis and Eastern Company for an addi- tional $750,000, to E. H. Harriman, who conveyed it to the Southern Pacific, where the ownership now lodges. Before this sale it was reported that the Goulds contemplated Yaquina Bay as a northern terminus of their Western Pacific railroad (Oregonian, May 21, 1905), but the report did not materialize
Impatient at the inaction of the Corvallis and Eastern, as to the Eastern Oregon extension, Wallis Nash and others in- corporated the Co-operative Christian Federation, Feb. 21, 1906, to build the road into that region, for colonization pur- poses (Oregonian, Feb. 22, 1906, page 10; March 1, 1906, page 10). Other officers of the Federation were J. Frank Watson, Samuel Connell, L. O. Ralston, C. E. S. Wood, of Portland; J. R. Blackaby, of Ontario; N. U. Carpenter, of Baker; C. W. Thompson, of Pendleton; H. S. Wallace, and David Leppert. For a railroad branch of the Federation, Mr. Nash organized at Portland in July, 1906, the Mid-Oregon & Eastern Railway, Portland to Mehama, Idanha and Ontario, $13,125,000 capital, Wallis Nash, president. (Details, in Ore- gonian, December 23, 1906.) Announcement that funds were pledged to build the railroad was made in The Oregonian Jan- uary 6, 1907, after return of Mr. Nash from London. This project ended with the sale of the Yaquina Railroad to Har- riman and the Southern Pacific.
The railroad has served since as a local branch of the South- ern Pacific. Yaquina Bay as a seaport affords little or no railroad traffic and the National Government feels no incentive to develop deep channel at the Bay entrance.
