PORTLAND, CASCADES AND DALLES
The undersigned having made arrangements for the transportation of Freight over the Portage at the Cascades, on the Oregon side, and having the necessary Teams, Boats, etc., will receive and transport with the utmost dispatch all
FREIGHT, GOODS WARES AND MERCHANDISE by the steamers Fashion and Wasco and other conveyances.
The Road is now in complete order. My teams will always be in readiness; good Warehouses have been erected, and my personal attention given to the business.
W. R. KILBORN,
Feb. 9, 1856. Lower Cascades, Oregon side.
This wagon road portage to be effective must have extended from the present station of Bonneville to the present town of Cascade Locks, but no details of its route or character seem to have been published. What became of Captain Kilborn, who had, we may surmise, built the road and its warehouses and provided its teams and boats, does not appear. The writer has not found his name mentioned in the available literature subsequent to the time of the Indian attack upon the small settlements on the Washington side of the Columbia at the Cascades, in March, 1856, upon which occasion the Captain loaded the residents of the Oregon side in a large batteau and navigated them in safety down the river to the vicinity of Portland.[1] It is a fair presumption that he returned and continued operations on the Oregon portage wagon road, perhaps selling out later to Ruckel and his partners. The wagon road portage was evidently in use until near the close of 1858.
While the Indian attack temporarily affected the rival steamboat lines and their arrangements for the transfer
- ↑ Portland Weekly Oregonian, March 29, 1856.
