by this and the first few blocks and warehouses, with their ugly rears toward the river, we haul up alongside a handsome, commodious wharf, and begin to look about.
"Portland is, we find, a cheerful-looking town of about 9,000 inhabitants; well paved, with handsome public buildings, and comfortable, home-like dwellings. It is at the head of ocean steam navigation, and owes its prominence as the commercial town of Oregon to the fact. Here the smaller steamers which ply on the Wallamet River have hitherto brought the produce of the valley to exchange for imported goods, or to be shipped on sailing vessels to foreign ports; and here have centered the commercial wealth and political influence of the State.
"The river in front of Portland is about one-fourth of a mile wide, with water enough for large vessels to lie in; and the rise and fall of the tide amounts to a couple of feet. During the winter flood in the Wallamet, which is occasioned by heavy rains, the water rises about eight feet. For this reason the wharves are all built in two stories—one for low, and one for high water. The great flood of 1861-62 and that of 1870, brought the water over the wharves and even over Front street, which is twenty-five feet above low-water mark. The summer floods in the Columbia, occasioned by the melting of snow in the mountains where it has its source, back the water up in the Wallamet as far as Oregon City, which makes its necessary to abandon the lower wharves. These two rises keep the Wallamet supplied with water through the greater portion of the year. . ."
Portland was connected with the eastern states by transcontinental railroad, the Northern Pacific, in 1883. Henry Villard, leading spirit of this enterprise, feted the town in celebration of the achievement. Thereafter business increased and trade volume grew; heavy manufacturing established itself with an eye to the future in a town where the sputtering oil street lamps had already given way to sputtering gas jets. Before the 1880's closed, street railways— that in 1872 had begun as a single horse-drawn line along First Street—had fanned out, with tracks on Morrison Street and connecting laterals, all operating with electric equipment. Portland's first bridge spanned the Willamette in 1887, and the first California through-train arrived in town.
