The Oregon Steam Navigation Company (O.S.N.) was an American company incorporated in 1860 in

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

with partners J. S. Ruckle, Henry Olmstead, and J. O. Van Bergen. It was incorporated in Washington because of a lack of corporate laws in Oregon, though it paid Oregon taxes. The company operated steamships between

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

and ports along the

Columbia River The Columbia River ( Upper Chinook: ' or '; Sahaptin: ''Nch’i-Wàna'' or ''Nchi wana''; Sinixt dialect'' '') is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river rises in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia ...

at Astoria, Portland and

The Dalles The Dalles is the largest city of Wasco County, Oregon, United States. The population was 16,010 at the 2020 census, and it is the largest city on the Oregon side of the Columbia River between the Portland Metropolitan Area, and Hermiston ...

, serving the lumber and salmon fishing industries.Laubaugh, Glenn
The Oregon Steam Navigation Company and its Related Portage Tramways
Pacific Northwest Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society A railroad was built to serve the steamship industry.

Formation of the monopoly

The company was incorporated on December 29, 1860, at

Vancouver, Washington Vancouver is a city on the north bank of the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington, located in Clark County. Incorporated in 1857, Vancouver has a population of 190,915 as of the 2020 census, making it the fourth-largest city in Was ...

, with 22 shareholders. Principal shareholders included D. F. Bradford (one of the owners of the north bank portage railway at the Cascades),

Jacob Kamm Jacob Kamm (12 December 1823 – 16 December 1912) was a prominent early transportation businessman in Oregon, USA. Early life Kamm was born on 12 December 1823, in Canton of Glarus, Switzerland. His family migrated to America when he was 8 to Il ...

, Harrison Olmstead, Simeon G. Reed, R. R. Thompson, and steamboat captains

John C. Ainsworth John Commingers Ainsworth (June 6, 1822 – December 30, 1893) was an American pioneer businessman and steamboat owner in Oregon. A native of Ohio, he moved west to mine gold in California before immigrating to Oregon where he piloted steamshi ...

and L. W. Coe. The company then gained control over most of the boats on the

Columbia Columbia may refer to: * Columbia (personification), the historical female national personification of the United States, and a poetic name for America Places North America Natural features * Columbia Plateau, a geologic and geographic region i ...

and

Snake Snakes are elongated, limbless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes . Like all other squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more ...

rivers. Timmen described the Oregon Steam Navigation Company as "the many-tentacled monopoly of river transportation." From 1858 to 1863, the Oregon Portage Railroad operated 4.5 miles of track between Bonneville and

Cascade Cascade, Cascades or Cascading may refer to: Science and technology Science *Cascade waterfalls, or series of waterfalls * Cascade, the CRISPR-associated complex for antiviral defense (a protein complex) * Cascade (grape), a type of fruit * Bioc ...

. The railroad hauled primarily military and immigrant traffic. In 1862, the railroad was sold to the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company for $155,000. Soon afterwards, the company acquired most of the steamboats on the Columbia and Snake Rivers. The

Oregon Railway and Navigation Company The Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company (OR&N) was a railroad that operated a rail network of running east from Portland, Oregon, United States, to northeastern Oregon, northeastern Washington, and northern Idaho. It operated from 1896 as a ...

purchased the Oregon Steam Navigation Company in 1879. * On the lower Columbia, the company's boats included ''Senorita'', ''Fashion'' (ex-''James P. Flint''), ''Julia'' (''Barclay''), ''Belle'' (''of Oregon City''), ''Mountain Buck'', and ''Carrie Ladd''. * On the middle Columbia, boats were ''Mary'', ''Hassaloe'', ''Wasco'', and ''Idaho''. * On the upper Columbia, the company ran the ''Tenino'' and the ''Colonel Wright''.Timmen, Franz: ''Blow for the Landing, A Hundred Years of Steam Navigation on the Waters of the West'', at 14, 17, and 27, Caxton Printers, Caldwell, ID, 1973

Competitors bought off

In 1862, river transport concerns not involved with the Oregon Steam Navigation Company formed the

People's Transportation Company The People's Transportation Company operated steamboats on the Willamette River and its tributaries, the Yamhill and Tualatin rivers, in the State of Oregon from 1862 to 1871. For a brief time this company operated steamers on the Columbia Riv ...

. The new competitor put the ''E.D. Baker'' on the lower Columbia, the ''Iris'' on the middle, and the ''Kiyus'' on the upper Cascades.Affleck, Edward L., ''A Century of Paddlewheelers in the Pacific Northwest, the Yukon, and Alaska'', at 43, Alexander Nicholls Press, Vancouver, BC (2000) These boats posed serious competition to the monopoly, so much so that in about 1864, the Oregon Steam Navigation Company paid its rival $10,000 a year to confine its operations to the

Willamette River The Willamette River ( ) is a major tributary of the Columbia River, accounting for 12 to 15 percent of the Columbia's flow. The Willamette's main stem is long, lying entirely in northwestern Oregon in the United States. Flowing northward b ...

. Oregon Steam Navigation Company also picked up People's Transportation's boats ''Iris'' and ''Kiyus'', in exchange for three OSN boats on the Willamette River, ''Onward'', ''Rival'', and ''Surprise''.

Expansion of fleet

Traffic increased in the early 1860s, so in 1863 and 1864, OSN added the ''Nez Perce Chief'', the ''Webfoot'', the ''Owyhee'' and the ''Yakima'', all built at Celilo on the upper Columbia, and the Mississippi-style side-wheeler ''Oneonta'' on the middle river. OSN also purchased the side-wheeler ''New World'' to work the lower Columbia. By 1878, OSN had added to its fleet the sternwheelers ''Harvest Queen'', ''John Gates'', ''Spokane'', ''Annie Faxon'', ''Mountain Queen'', ''R.R. Thompson'', and ''

Wide West ''Wide West'' was a steamboat that served in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. It had a reputation as a luxury boat of its days. ''Wide West'' was built in 1877 in Portland, Oregon, by the Oregon Steam Navigation Company. It was built ...

''.

Struggle for the portages

Control of the portages was critical to control of the river. OSN controlled all the portages, including both the north and the south portage railways around the Cascades (which had once been in competition with each other) as well as a portage system that had been built around

Celilo Falls Celilo Falls (Wyam, meaning "echo of falling water" or "sound of water upon the rocks," in several native languages) was a tribal fishing area on the Columbia River, just east of the Cascade Mountains, on what is today the border between the U.S. ...

by one Orlando Humason. In 1863, the company replaced the mule-drawn portage railway on the north side of the Cascades with a steam locomotive. The company also built a steam railway from the Dalles around Celilo Falls, which opened on April 23, 1863 and cost $1 million to build.
Cascade Portage and railroad, Washington side, 1867Oregon "Pony," first steam engine in Oregon, used on portage railroad

Competition

The

was organized in 1862 to compete with the Oregon Steam Navigation Company. The company then began a rate war with the O.S.N. People's Transportation was so successful that O.S.N. bought them off with an agreement to pay them $10,000 a year for ten years if People's Transportation would restrict its operations to the

References

External links

John Gates, chief engineer for Oregon Steam Navigation Company
{{DEFAULTSORT:Oregon Steam Navigation Company Steamboats of the Columbia River Steamboats of the Willamette River Defunct transportation companies of the United States Columbia River American companies established in 1860 American companies disestablished in 1879 1860 establishments in Oregon Defunct companies based in Oregon Transportation companies based in Oregon