THE QUARTERLY
of the
Oregon Historical Society
Copyright, 1923, by the Oregon Historical Society
The Quarterly disavows responsibility for the positions taken by contributors to its pages.
OREGON'S FIRST RAILWAY
The Oregon Portage Railroad at the Cascades of the Columbia River
By Frank B. Gill
Copyright, 1924 , by Frank B. Gill
A FOREWORD
In gathering the material for this article the author has confined himself almost wholly to two sources, the local newspapers of the period which, happily, have in large part been preserved, and the records of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company. Together with these I have had the benefit of the personal recollections of John W. Stevenson and his sister, Mrs. Barbara A. Bailey, who have lived in western Oregon since 1853 and were both identified with the Oregon Portage Railroad and the sawmill operated in connection with it, for a period of six or seven years.
John Stevenson was born in 1835 and his sister in 1836, in Illinois, of English and Scotch parentage. The family crossed the plains by ox team between April and October, 1853, and settled on the Clackamas river in Oregon. In 1857 John, then twenty-two years of age, took up a homestead at Cape Horn, Washington, where he now lives, and in the summer of 1863 he went to work in the Eagle Creek sawmill under Joseph Bailey, who had shortly before been appointed to the charge of the Oregon Portage.
Seeking a housekeeper who was capable of boarding his twelve or fourteen employees, including loggers, Bailey found in John Stevenson's sister, after four
