As crazy as it might seem, bridges haven 't always spanned the Willamette Valley 's waterways. Dating back to the mid-1800s, these heavily trafficked highways led travelers from the budding Rose City to ferries that, for a fee, carried people, livestock, wagons and cars across various rivers.
Throughout the state 's history, more than 500 of the boats traversed Oregon 's rivers and lakes.
"Almost every pioneer community, especially those in the Willamette Valley, was tied to the rest of the territory by roads or trails crossing at least one waterway on a ferry, so ferries were essential facts of life," wrote the late Charles F. Query in 2008 's "A History of Oregon Ferries since 1826."
Today, only a few remain, including the Canby Ferry,
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With the help of Geoff Wexler, library director of the Oregon Historical Society, I 've pulled together a brief history of the three ferries that now only exist as road names in the Portland area.
Boones Ferry: Maybe you 've heard of this guy Daniel Boone, one of the country 's most famous fur-pelt-wearing frontiersmen. His grandson, Alphonso Boone, trekked to Oregon via the Applegate wilderness trail in 1846. A year later, Alphonso 's enterprising son, Jesse, began operating a ferry across the Willamette, just west of the current site of the Interstate 5 Boone Bridge at Wilsonville.
Alphonso died three years later in northern California, searching for gold, claimed by what the history books describe only as "miner 's disease." The ferry operation was eventually sold. The Oregon highway commission took control of the conveyance at the turn of the century – when a trip for a horse and buggy cost 25 cents -- and decommissioned
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The Oregon Journal/1954 The ferry crossing site is still visible from the southbound lanes of the Boone Bridge.
Scholls Ferry: In 1847, settler Peter Scholl, also from Kentucky and of the Daniel Boone bloodline, took up a donation claim at the end of the Oregon Trail and started what became one of the Tualatin River 's most vital crossings. Scholl died in Portland in 1872. A bridge eventually replaced the ferry.
Taylors Ferry: New Yorker John A. Taylor crossed the plains with an ox team in 1852 and promptly built a ferry crossing on the Tualatin River, about 10 miles from Portland. He was more industrious than Boone and Scholl. He eventually built a toll bridge on his own to replace the ferry. At one time, Taylor was also the judge of Washington County and postmaster of the Taylors Ferry poster office.
There you go. Impress your neighbors and co-workers with your sudden (and astounding) knowledge of the ferry roads. Maybe next time we 'll talk about the dinosaurs of Washington County, starting with the Wooly Mammoths that once followed the ice age trail that is now Tualatin 's Southwest
In the beginning of the 1880s, there was a new type of transportation appeared in Pacific Northwest, railroads. It marked one of the key turning points in the region's history. When railway lines were completed to and through the Pacific
There have been steam engine trains trailing the United States in the early 1800’s. Many of the early ones ran only a few dozen miles. When the railways ran longer distances, the cost to build and later ride them were be extremely high. However, long distances were what Minnesota needed to keep up with the competitive and growing nation around it. “Construction began on the first track in 1861 in St. Paul and was completed in 1862.”
The lake, shaped like an ox-bow was once a riverbed of the Mississippi River. Eventually, the railroad stop adopted the name “Horn Lake.” The community surrounding the stop, developed store, built shops, and opened a post office. Today, the town of Horn Lake is every bit as dynamic as it was in times past.
Henry Hudson III: The Explorer Throughout the course of history, there have been many brave seamen, courageous explorers, and thoughtful navigators. But one man, Henry Hudson, was all three. Hudson made four incredibly daring voyages to find the nonexistent Northwest Passage, a route to find Asia by going west. Of course, you can’t find something nonexistent, but in the midst of his futile journeys, he made several discoveries that turned out to greatly influence the course of history over the next four centuries.
These trade boats came from Europe and now passed through Cleveland on their way down to the Gulf of Mexico polluting at every point along the journey. “In 1862, Congress passed the first of several railroad acts that would eventually connect the continent, lessening the need for rivers as a major mode of transportation within the commercial, public, and military sectors. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Navigation Data Center reported declining commercial traffic on many of the nation's waterways.” (Harlow ) Despite the railroad acts, influential business men
“The Oregon Trail,” written by Francis Parkman is a description of the experiences traveling into the unknown depths of the American west in 1846. The story is told from the first person point of view of Parkman, a scholar from Boston who embarks on the great expedition of traveling into the west in hopes of studying the lives of the Native Americans. His journey is also one of the first detailed descriptions of the beauty and the bounty of a largely uninhabited North American territory. But one of the most critical elements of the story was Parkman’s encounters and recruitment of members to his band of travelers who ultimately play a major role in the success of the western journey.
Hill impacted the development of Minnesota by building railroads throughout the state. Nicknamed, “the empire builder” because he had a powerful sense of urgency and the drive to get things done. He entered the railroad industry in 1878 and completed a line between the Twin Cities and Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada. He made sure that shipping was made available everywhere as he knew that farmers counted on it. During the 1880s he continued to promote and expand his railroad business which he named, The Great Northern Railway.
Pony Express, National Historic Trail. Pony Express Bows to Telegraph Line. 2002. 13. Web.
After years of waiting and preparing we started on the journey to the west. We made our way to Independence, Missouri to go on the Oregon Trail which was laid by traders and trapers. While there I became familiar with George Wilson who was also a working family man. A lot of families left together making the trail busy and causing jams..
This was to let steamboats, a new form of transportation, to deliver goods to the states bordering the rivers and lakes they travelled on. Rails was also one of the largest forms of transportation in the North. Steam-powered trains were used to carry passengers and goods to anywhere that track was
The barges made it possible for grain to be transported from a long way away in a much safer manner than trucks, which have been prone to tipping over with heavy loads of grain. Which is devastating to farmers since that is their entire season's crop gone before their eyes in an instant. There were other methods of transportation that were used to transport grain, the most successful one was a designated railroad for transporting grain, the grain companies tried to use already built rail lines like the Chicago lines, who ended up fighting back against the grain mills because they felt they were not getting their share of the profits. Steamboats were also tried for transporting on the river but the railways provided a better route for the mills so the steamboats weren’t used long. Even though there were routes on the Mississippi and the St. Croix, the rail lines ended up being more efficient.
The idea of building the Erie Canal, from the governor of New York DeWitt Clinton, was an immense challenge in construction and engineering, yet the canal was built in less than 10 years. The Erie Canal victoriously rerouted European-American buying and selling inward for building interstate commerce in America’s heartland (310). The nation’s economic growth also depended on improvements to water transportation. The use of steamboats accelerated trade in the interior parts of the nation by using the river system. Urban growth was also stimulated by these improvements revamping Cincinnati from being a frontier outpost manufacturing and market center beginning in 1790 and to the 1830s (311).
As American factories and farms started to produce more goods businessmen and legislators began to create a faster and cheaper way to get goods distributed to consumers. Around 1820, Americans began to build canals and steamboats, railroad, and extend roads linking the Atlantic Coast with new states in the Trans Appalachian west. Canals and Steamboats shrunk the distance of carrying goods from one place to another and could haul the most cargo for transportation. A well-known waterway called the Erie Canal connected the Great Lakes region to the Atlantic Ocean and cost 7 million dollars.
Before the 1800s, there were two early roads, Forbes and Wilderness Road. In 1811, the National Road known as Cumberland Road was built to reach Western settlements, because they needed a road to ship farm products that connect East and West. The National Road passed thousand of wagons and coaches. John F. Stover states in American Railroads, “The rich agricultural production of the country, the small but expanding factories of eastern cities, and the largely untapped natural resources of the nation-all of these called for improvements in transport. ”(Stover1)
Have you ever wondered what it would be like without transportation? In the 1890’s the railroad system, the main source of transportation at that time, came to a halt after a strike called the Pullman Strike. A severe depression had hit the United States in 1893. This hit a railroad manufacturing company called the Pullman company hard.