Page:Oregon, End of the Trail.djvu/126

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land airport was established on the Columbia River and the Medford, Pendleton, and Astoria ports were improved.

Some 60 steamboat lines, operating in the coastwise and intercoastal trade have ports of call in Astoria and Portland; with the early completion of improvement to the river channel below Bonneville Dam, The Dalles is expected to become an important deep-water port. A total of 7,763,683 tons of outgoing vessel freight crossed the Columbia River bar in 1934; rafted lumber reached 4,318,906 tons; a total of well over 12 million tons for the year.

Steamboating on the Columbia and lower Willamette Rivers is still carried on by a few combination stern-wheel freight and towboats, craft whose construction recalls the days when rivers were the chief lanes of commerce and travel. There are also three small passenger boats plying six times a week, between Portland and Astoria. They call at way ports on both sides of the river and a trip on one of them recalls the old Steamboating days.