TRANSPORTATION Jl
from Portland to Salem in one day. Larger vehicles, some of them drawn by six horses, came into use as the roads were gradually improved. During the early 186o's connections were established with California stage lines, and fast service was instituted to adjacent valley and mountain points.
Until well along toward the middle of the I9th century, freighting on the Columbia River was chiefly controlled by the Hudson's Bay Company, which operated fleets of large barges for carrying furs from the upper tributaries of the Columbia down to the company's general depot at Fort Vancouver, where the pelts were examined, dried, and packed for shipment to London. Each of these barges had a cargo capacity of five or six tons, and was manned by a crew of at least six FrenchCanadian or half-breed oarsmen. At the Cascades, the boats and their cargoes were carried across a short portage, while the rapids below were "shot" by the sturdy voyageurs. Many of the early homeseekers and their belongings were transported down the river in these barges. The Hudson's Bay Company long maintained a similar service on the Willamette River as well.
There were few steamboats on either river before 1850. In that year the Columbia, go feet long, was launched at Astoria and began operating on a semi-weekly schedule between Astoria and Oregon City, on the Willamette. This service was supplemented later in the same year by a larger vessel, the Lot Whitcomb, built and launched at Milwaukie, near Portland. Steamer service above the falls at Oregon City reached Salem in 1853 and Eugene in 1857. At Portland, ocean-going vessels loaded shipments for California, the Sandwich Islands, and eastern ports by way of Cape Horn.
Wagon wheels were still creaking over the mountain passes when pioneer promoters in the Northwest began to organize railroad companies. In the late 1850'$, Joseph S. Ruckel and Harrison Olmstead gave Oregon its first rail service, selecting as their scene of operations the portage trail around the Cascades of the Columbia River. Here, in the summer of 1859, four and a half miles of wooden track were laid, between the site of Bonneville and what is now Cascade Locks; and over this track, mules and horses pulled trains of four or five small cars. A few months later the wooden rails were given a bearing surface of sheet iron, and the Oregon Pony, first steam locomotive to be built on the Pacific coast, began transporting amazed immigrants past the Cascades in a cloud of sparks and steam and smoke. The Union Transportation Company, later reorganized as the Oregon Steam Navigation
