miles south. This, too, has been incorporated in the O.R.& N. system.
Of independent roads, which are also in effect feeder lines to this Oregon system, may be mentioned the Sumpter Valley road, built by Messrs. Eccles and Nibley of Utah, from Baker City to the mining town of Sumpter and southwest towards Burns, now aggregating nearly fifty miles of track. This road was organized in 1890. The same parties have within the past year built eighteen miles of a new road running up the Hood River Valley from the town of Hood River, and called The Mt. Hood Railroad. Another important independent line is the Rogue River Valley road running from Jacksonville to Medford, and from there proposed to extend to Crater Lake, and on this line develop the largest tract of sugar pine timber in the United States. This enterprise was started in 1891 by Mr. E. J. DeHart of Medford, and Wm. Honeyman of Portland. Another important independent line is what has been called successively, The Willamette Valley & Coast, "The Oregon Pacific," and The Corvallis & Eastern Railroad, running from Yaquina, on the bay of that name, eastwardly via Corvallis and Albany to Idanha in the Cascade Mountains. This road has had a checkered career. Commenced in 1880 by public spirited citizens of Corvallis and Benton County, who first and last put about $100,000 of hard cash and labor into its construction. It was turned over to one T. Egenton Hogg, a promoter of great promise and little performance, who reorganized the scheme into its second name and issued $15,000,000 in bonds and $18,000,000 in stock on one hundred and forty miles of road and then failed and died, leaving his bankrupt road to be sold for $100,000 to its present owner, A. B. Hammond. It has from the first been such a "misfit" that neither the genius of Villard, the energy of Huntington, nor the comprehensive mind of Harriman have been able to assign to it a practical and
