The total drop in the 8½ miles from Tumwater falls to the foot of Five-Mile rapids is 81½ feet at low water. Steamboats have run the series in time of high water, when the drop is about 50 feet.
A few of the many proposals for circumventing the rapids have been spoken of. I mentioned in the beginning a giant's staircase. To make this reference clearer, the recommendation was for a canal from the head of Tumwater falls grade to a place above Big Eddy, where boats were to be brought to the lower grade by a flight of locks like stairsteps.
Nothing is accomplished for the development of a country without conscious, organized effort in the direction of the potentialities revealed by vision into the future.
Consideration of method and government appropriation insufficient to do anything delayed action for many years. February 5, 1886, I find Mr. Teal writing from Pasco Junction to the editor of a Portland paper:
"A free people should have a free river. Can the chains with which nature has seen fit to bind its waters, be broken? Can the lock which controls its usefulness, which only lets it fret and fume away its life betwen the rock-ribbed walls of The Dalles be opened? It can, and the people hold the key."
It was seen that delay in building the canal was giving the railroads dangerous opportunity to establish rates to all the interior unregulated by water transportation. January 30, 1903, the Portland Chamber of Commerce adopted a resolution of its open river committee pledging support of a $165,000 legislative appropriation with which to build a portage railway. The bill had been passed, but nothing was done by the state board, which feared the right of way could not be secured and that the railway could not be built within the appropriation.
May 17, 1904, the Open River Association was organized with members from Washington, Idaho and Oregon, to carry on the open river campaign to a definite result. Members of the Association subscribed a sufficient fund to guarantee the state authorities in proceeding with contracts. The State turned
