Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/770

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LATER EVENTS.

by that institution, was built by subscriptions obtained chiefly by its first president, Judge Deady. An immense hotel, costing nearly a million dllars, and an art glass manufactory were added in 1888.

East Portland shared in the prosperity of the greater city, and having a larger extent of level land for town-site purposes, offered better facilities for building cheap homes for the working classes. The Portland Reduction works was located there, and opened in the spring of 1887, for smelting ores from the mines of Oregon and Idaho. Street cars were introduced here in 1888, connecting with West Portland by means of a track laid on a bridge over the Willamette at Morrison street, and with Albina by another bridge across the ravine which separates them. The extensive ware houses and other improvements of the Northern Pacific railroad were at Albina, which thus became the actual terminus of that road, and of all the transcontinental roads coming to Portland. A railroad across the plains northeast of East Portland carried passengers to the Columbia, opposite Vancouver, and brought that charming locality into close neighborhood to Portland.[1]

At Oswego, a few miles south of Portland, the Oregon Iron Company's works, which in 1883 were

closed on account of the low price of iron, and the incapacity of the furnaces to be profitably operated, were reopened in 1888 by the Iron and Steel Works Company,[2] employing over three hundred men. The


  1. Albina, as I have otherwheres shown, was founded by Edward Russell, but the property was sold in 1879 to J. B. Montgomery before the N. P.R.R. co. selected the site for its terminal works. This gave it importance, as the machine shops of the Terminal co., N. P., the O. R. & N., and the O. & C. cos were located there, to which are now added those of the S. P. R. R., making in all quite a village of substantial brick buildings with roof 3 of slate in the railroad yards. Montgomery dock has an area of 200x500 feet, and has had as much as 600,000 bushels of wheat stored in it at one time. In 1887 42,000 tons were shipped through it. The Columbia River Lumber and Manufacturing co. keeps an extensive lumber yard at Albina. The owners are J. B. Montgomery and Wm M. Colwell. All these large enterprises, together with the iron works, employ many laborers, who find pleasant homes in Albina.
  2. S. G. Reed, Wm M. Ladd, F. C. Smith, C. E. Smith, J. F. Watson, the Or. Transcontinental co., and some eastern capitalists constituted the company.