Oregon's First Railway
181
they named the Hassaloe, larger than the Mary, and to qperate in her stead between the Cascades and The Dalles.[1] These improvements stirred the less prosperous owners of the "Oregon Transportation Line," as the Ruckel-Van Bergen-McFarland steamboat line came to be known, and Colonel Ruckel during the following season built the larger and more powerful steamboat Mountain Buck[2] to replace the Fashion between Portland and the Cascades.
Unnoticed by the newspapers of the day, there had come into the Territory by this time one Harrison Olmstead, who became a partner of Ruckel in the control of the Oregon Portage. Olmstead acquired ownership of the land bordering on the Columbia river for a little over a mile, including the landmark known from its supposed resemblance to a double tooth[3] as Tooth Rock, and the mouth of Eagle Creek. Ruckel became the owner of the next claim eastward from the Olmstead holdings, partly in Multnomah county and reaching up the river bank past the so-called "Middle Cascades" where he built his home. Below Olmstead's acquisition, and embracing the present station and picnic grounds at Bonneville, John C. Tanner had his claim. Above the Ruckel land was the claim of John Chipman, including the sites of the afterward constructed government canal and locks and the settlement now called Cascade Locks. While the Ruckel and Olmstead properties really controlled it, the Tanner and Chipman claims were needed for full ownership of the portage and were eventually purchased by the owners of the central portions.
