make business for itself, used a goodly share of its earnings in developing mining and wheat-growing east of the Cascade Mountains.
By the Oregon Steam Navigation Company were built the first railroads in the country,—namely, the portages of five miles at the Cascades and fifteen miles at The Dalles. It also put some money into the Oregon Central on the west side of the Wallamet, which was turned over to Holladay, of the Oregon and California, on the east side, and both are now a part of the Southern Pacific system.
The stock of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company was principally in the hands of three men, J. C. Ainsworth, R. R. Thompson, and S. G. Reed, when the Northern Pacific Railroad Company made overtures for its purchase and did purchase, the former owners retaining a fourth of the stock, Captain Ainsworth being made manager and a director in the Northern Pacific Railroad Company, very fortunately, as it happened, for when the failure of Jay Cooke & Co. suspended construction and endangered the land grant, the old officers of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company came to the rescue and completed the road from the Columbia to Puget Sound in time to save the grant. The failure of the Northern Pacific Railroad having thrown on the Eastern market, where its value was not known, three-fourths of the Oregon Steam Navigation stock, the gentlemen above named employed agents to buy it up, and once more obtained control. They then built new and handsome boats for the Columbia trade, and also obtained the trade of the Wallamet River by purchasing the property of the Willamette Transportation Company, successors to the People’s Company, and became very powerful.
In 1879 Henry Villard, who had secured control of the Oregon and California, and who had conceived the plan of a road along the Columbia and across Idaho, finding the Oregon Steam Navigation Company in his way, made a proposition to purchase their steamers and portages, and with these, his steamships and railways, to form a company to be called the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company. This he was able to do, and the road he. projected is now leased to the Union Pacific, and is part of the Oregon Short Line through Idaho, con
