Union Pacific and Northern Pacific were now in direct competition, which led Northern Pacific to build their own line directly to the coast at Tacoma, Washington. Union Pacific created the Oregon Short Line from Granger, Wyoming to the OR&N lines at Huntington, Oregon, joined on November 11, 1884. Since activity in the Pacific Northwest had picked up by 1881, Union Pacific was again interested in the 1879 proposal. Villard reached an agreement with Northern Pacific in 1880, which gave Portland access to transcontinental rail lines. Northern Pacific had a line reaching from the Dakotas to northern Idaho. Central Pacific threatened Union Pacific if such an arrangement was made, which ended it immediately. Union was already building an extension from Brigham City, Utah to Butte, Montana that could be extended west. He offered a 50% partnership in the OR&N in 1879. Since Union Pacific and Central Pacific had an uneasy agreement due to owning the western and eastern halves of the Transcontinental Railroad, Vilard approached Union Pacific with an alternative to using the Central Pacific line from Salt Lake City to San Francisco. In 1879, he purchased the Oregon Steam Navigation Company and the Oregon Steamship Company, merging them to the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company (OR&N). Henry Villard was sent by German investors to oversee their investments in the Oregon and California Railroad Company, then became the major force in railroading for the region. The wooden-railed narrow-gauge Walla Walla and Columbia River Railroad, established in 1868, involved several overland portages. Slater and Dan Chapman's Grande Ronde Valley and Columbia River Valley Construction Company in 1874, and the Blue Mountain and Columbia River Rail-Road Company's narrow gauge effort. Rail routes to follow the Oregon Trail were surveyed by the government, Union Pacific, and others, including James H. īoth Pengra and Chapman's companies were hampered by the Crédit Mobilier of America scandal in 1872. He attempted to raise funds for this company in the eastern United States as well as England. Chapman created the Portland, Dalles and Salt Lake Railroad Company in 1881, then reincorporated it as the Portland, Salt Lake and Salt Pass Railroad Company in 1876. William Williams Chapman, Surveyor General of Oregon from 1857 to 1861, proposed a railroad along the Oregon Trail from Portland, over the Blue Mountains, along the Snake River, then south to the transcontinental railroad at Salt Lake City. Pengra incorporated a company in 1867 but failed due to lack of financial support. Pengra, the Surveyor General of Oregon from 1862 to 1865, secured a federal land grant in 1864 for the Oregon Central Military Wagon Road from Eugene to Owyhee, and proposed a railroad along this line, then joining the transcontinental railroad near Winnemucca, Nevada. A map of Willamette Valley rail lines from 1919.īyron J.
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