when the feasibility of railroads in the state was first discussed there could not have been more than 60,000 population in Oregon.
The agitation in favor of railroads in Oregon was started, contrary to the general experience, not by men of capital able to build roads, but by men without capital, and with views and plans somewhat ahead of their time. The first tangible effort, continuously pushed until the actual construction of a railroad was commenced, started at Jacksonville, in Southern Oregon, in 1864. In 1863 S. G. Elliot, a county surveyor of California, and George H. Belden, a civil engineer of Portland, Oregon, contributed their efforts to make a preliminary survey for a line of railroad from Marysville, California, to Portland, Oregon. These two men organized a surveying party, and without means or money themselves, made their survey from Marysville north to Oregon on substantially the route where the Oregon & California line is constructed. They landed at Jacksonville in October, 1863, having collected all means to support their party from the people along the route as a bonus to help the new enterprise along.
These seedy, footsore wayfarers of the Elliot and Beldon purvey did not inspire much confidence in the building of seven hundred miles of railroad, to cost over $20,000,000. To make matters worse, and seemingly wreck the infant project, Elliot and Belden quarreled upon the point of which of them should control the location of the survey line in Oregon. Then and there both gentlemen abandoned the whole outfit, leaving their men unpaid five months' wages. Accompanying this surveying party was Col. A. C. Barry, who was acting as a sort of commissary general, and upon the desertion of Elliot and Belden, Barry put the whole party into the old Jacksonville Hospital for winter quarters, and then made a canvass of the town to interest the people or some one to raise money to pay the men and continue the survey the next year. In the course of this canvass Colonel Barry called upon J. Gaston, then a practicing attorney at Jacksonville, and fully explained his plans. Mr. Gaston agreed to take hold of the matter and help extricate the enterprise from the difficulties which had apparently wrecked it; Gaston then advancing money to pay the members of the surveying party under a contract that they should continue the work the next season. In pursuance of this agreement Colonel Barry, provided with letters from Gaston to his friends and public men, then proceeded to the Willamette Valley, going all the way from Jacksonville to Portland on foot, to enlist and arouse interest in the completion of- the survey. Having received assurances of support, Barry returned to Jacksonville, and in April, 1864, reorganized his party, and with ample supply of tents and means of transportation, on May 1 took up the line of survey where Elliot and Belden had dropped it. and by October 1 had extended this line from Jacksonville to Portland and the Columbia River—the first survey that was ever made for a line of railroad between Portland and the southern boundary of the state.
In this undertaking Mr. Gaston had paid for the outfit at Jacksonville, guaranteed the wages of the surveying party, and put in all his time in the
