This is a history of a monumental fiasco in railroad finance—of the railroad built in 1878–89 between Yaquina Bay and the near-summit of Cascade Mountains, 143 miles, with steamship extensions to San Francisco and steamboat connections up and down Willamette River from Corvallis and Albany.
The project aimed to make Yaquina Bay the great seaport of the North Pacific Coast and the transcontinental terminus of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific or the Chicago and Northwestern railroad. The former had reached California in 1869 and the latter was contemplating a transcontinental line in 1887–89. Oregon had no through-rail route from the Eastern States, until opening of the Northern Pacific, August 22, 1883, nor from California, until connections with the Central Pacific December 17, 1887.
The plan of the Oregon Pacific was to open the first trans-continental rail route to Oregon, by crossing the State, east and west, through the mid-State region not yet (1915) served by railroad from Idaho, with an extension down Snake River to Lewiston—this to draw Columbia River traffic. It purposed to make the commerce of the Columbia River and the Willamette Valley tributary to a proposed metropolis at Yaquina Bay; to build there a city which should win priority from Portland.
Even after Portland became the terminus of the Northern Pacific in 1883, of the Union Pacific in 1884 (November 11), and of the Central Pacific in 1887, the project continued with unabated vigor until the close of 1889. The scheme was at hey-day in 1886-89, in which period considerable shipments went by sea, to and from San Francisco, and by the Willamette River in connection with the railroad. The towns of Newport and Yaquina "boomed" and soared as "the future seaport of
