Cascades portage, most of their business[1] during the first decade of steam navigation (1851-1860), but the discovery of gold in the Colville region in 1855 and later in other sections, gradually brought about an enormous increase in traffic.
It seems not unreasonable to charge the owners of this first railroad, Bradford & Company, a partnership which included in addition to the Bradford brothers, Daniel and Putnam, J. P. Flint of San Francisco, the financier of their enterprises, with the "first cause" of the portage subsequently establshed on the opposite or Oregon side of the Columbia. In the later months of 1854 Bradford & Co. had a steamboat, which they named the Mary, built to ply on the Columbia between their portage and The Dalles, thus obtaining control of the traffic on that section of the river, and at the same time they entered into an agreement with the owners of the steamboat Belle[2] operating between Portland and the Cascades for an exclusive through service which shut out all prospective competition. Before the building of the Belle, the steamboat Fashion had been operated between Portland and the Cascades, but she was at this time laid up, and the Belle, which had appeared as a competitor, was now at the opening of 1855 alone on the route.
It was apparently at this stage that Col. Joseph S. Ruckel came to Oregon and joined with Captain J. O. Van Bergen, the original commander of the Fashion, in purchasing her from J. and C. E. Williams, who had become the owners of the boat.[3] As Colonel Ruckel is chiefly known to history as the genius of the Oregon Portage Railroad it is perhaps not inappropriate here to introduce a biographical sketch of him found in the Portland
