On account of traffic diverted this way, Linn City sprang up on the river shore on the west side; a hotel and other buildings gave the settlement a consequential air. Money for steamers and construction work was obtained by a man named Page, backed by California capital, but misfortune attended the enterprise from the start. They also had a dry dock, in which their first steamer was burned on the stocks October, 1853. About six o'clock in the evening of October 8, 1854, Oregon City heard a boom like a cannon, the second steamer built by this company, the handsome Gazelle, had exploded with fifty people on board, twenty-two of whom were killed outright and many others injured. A sad day followed when the mangled dead were carried in one long funeral train to the newly opened cemetery. The only explanation was that the boiler of the Gazelle was made of poor iron and gave way under the strain. Some also were injured on the Wallamet, alongside the Gazelle.
In March, 1857, the steamer Portland, after loading at the mills, in turning round broke a rudder and backed over the falls. Balancing on the verge, she strained the whistle cord, blowing a long blast as breaking in two she plunged to the bottom. The hull and machinery of the Portland lie now as she fell, and the safe with $700 in gold. The captain, Arthur Jamison, jumped, but too late, and he and Bell, a deckhand, went down together. The pilot house and upper works floated off down the river and came ashore at Portland uninjured. The captain's coat and watch hung in their usual places, not even wet. At low water the hog chain shows still; a diver once tried to get the safe, but boulders from the falls had rolled on top.
F. X. Matthieu and others built the Elk at Canemah; she blew up, and her captain, George Jerome, went up with the boiler and lodged in a cottonwood tree unhurt. This same George Jerome was the only man on the Wallamet, when she was lined over the falls in July, 1854, to carry mails at Astoria. In the same manner, in July, 1858, the steamer Enterprise, Captain Tom Wright, was lined down over the falls, going north where she coined money on the Eraser river. This new gold rush caused a greater boom in boats than ever.
Another favorite spot for building steamers was on a sand spit out of the canyon at the foot of nth street, where Bush's furniture factory now stands. In the deep water there the finest stern wheeler yet built, the Carrie Ladd, named for a Portland banker's daughter, was launched in October, 1858, constructed for Jacob Kamm and Captain Ainsworth. Her engines were brought from Wilmington, Delaware. She was fitted up more like modern steamers than any yet made, and in her day was queen of the rivers. The steamer Relief was also built at that point in 1858.
In the autumn of 1861 there was great excitement over the outbreak of the Civil war. Captain D, P. Thompson recruited a company, of which John T. Apperson was first lieutenant and Jacob S. Rinearson was major, and they were directed to report forthwith to Colonel E. D. Baker on the Potomac. But Oregon Indians had heard of the trouble in the east, and were again hostile. Those who had enlisted in the hope of going east were imperatively needed to protect the Oregon frontier, and to guard incoming immigrants.
In December, 1861, the river rose to an unprecedented flood, and in one fell swoop carried away most of the improvements on both sides of the falls, all the mills, the breakwater, the hoisting works of the Milling and Transportation Company, the foundry, the Oregon City Hotel, Abernethy's brick store, and many more structures. Linn City with gardens, groves and more houses than were in Oregon City was swept clean down to the bed rock. Not only was Abernethy's mill taken off the island, but also the trees and very earth down to the solid rock. On the Oregon City side McLoughlin's mill was carried off leaving not a vestige behind. The Willamette Iron Works that the year before had made engines and machinery for the first two steam saw mills of eastern Oregon, at Walla Walla and The Dalles, was carried away bodily; and where a grove of gigantic firs stood on the site of the present basin not a trace remamed
