THE ORIGIN OF THE OREGON CENTRAL RAILROAD COMPANIES
1. The Elliott and Barry Surveys.
On April 6, 1863, the California legislature passed an act granting certain privileges to a group of about seventy people who had "Created an association for the purpose of demonstrating the practicability by survey for a line of Railroad from Marysville, California, to Portland, Oregon." By this bill these people obtained the right of way through any of the public lands belonging to the State of California and the right to enter upon all public lands for the purposes of surveying. The act was to "be of no force in case the parties named in the first section of this bill" should fail to incorporate before July 1, 1865.[1]
Among this group of seventy was an engineer named Simon G. Elliott. Mr. Elliott had been a County Surveyor[2] and had gained considerable reputation because the Pacifiic Railroad had used his route over the Sierra Nevada Mountains.[3] He was a man of great energy and daring, and had been filled with enthusiasm listening to the expositions of Theodore DeHone Judah. Thus it is in 1863 we find Elliott engaged in the first survey. He went along the general line of the route gathering what subscriptions he could, but with little success, except in Southern Oregon. Southern Oregon had been brought into prominence by the discovery of gold in California and was at this time no insignificant factor in the State. The Southern Oregon cities were the trading centers between California and Oregon. It was to their advantage to have railroad connections for thus they could ship direct to San Francisco or to Portland. Their cry had ever been for connection with San Francisco.
On the other hand, Portland took a different attitude toward the proposition. If the proposed railroad was put
- ↑ Statutes of California, 1863.
- ↑ Gaston, Genesis of the Oregon Railway System—Oregon Historical Quarterly, Vol. VII.
- ↑ Oregon Statesman, October 26, 1863.
