transportation than the Oregon Transportation Line afforded with its weaker and smaller steamboats. Accordingly Ruckel and Olmstead proposed a combination of the various interests now represented on the route, and this was given effect under the title of Union Transportation Line, or Union Transportation Company, both names being used in advertising. This association of which Captain Ainsworth at Portland, and Colonel Ruckel at the Cascades, were made the Agents, began operations on or shortly before May 12, 1859, using the Carrie Ladd and Hassaloe. The Oregon Portage Railroad ceased operation, and the Hountain Buck and Wasco were laid up.[1]
The "Union Transportation Company" of 1859 was strengthened by the inclusion of the steamboat interests above The Dalles under new articles of association signed May 12, 1860, and renamed with the more expansive title of "Oregon Steam Navigation Company." As yet there was no corporation, the name adopted covering only a loose partnership, but before the year was ended the partners obtained a special Act of the Washington Territory legislature creating a corporation under the latter name and organized it near the close of 1860. This perhaps oldest operating company of the many predecessors of the present Union Pacific System was composed of steamboat owners, and all its property at the beginning was a dozen steamboats employed, if at all—for not all were serviceable—on the Willamette, Columbia and Snake rivers between Portland and the upper country. Among the stockholders were the owners of the two portages at the Cascades, but they had become stockholders, as had the others, through the conversion of their steamboats to the ownership of the corporation. The corporation, however, had no share in the ownership and no voice in the management of the portage facilities.
From this time forward it is possible to refer to the
- ↑ Portland Weekly Oregonian, April 23, 1859; February 4, 1860; Dalles Journal, December 16, 1859.
