Steamboat Competition on the Willamette River in the 1860s

I’m trying to find business interests for one of my characters in my next Oregon historical novel. The novel is set in 1864, and Oregon didn’t yet have any railroads, other than a few small portages around falls on the rivers. But there was active steamboat competition along the Columbia and Willamette Rivers.

The People’s Steamship Company (known as the P.T. Company) was incorporated in 1862 by brothers Asa and David McCully, along with several other investors, including Stephen Coffin, who had purchased much of the original site that became Portland, Oregon. The P.T. Company began with a steamship on the Willamette River, but soon built a boat to run from The Dalles to Celilo Falls on the Columbia River. The P.T. Company also contracted with other steamship operators to travel above Celilo Falls. Those boats ran along the Columbia and then up the Snake River to what is now Lewiston, Idaho.

But the P.T. Company’s enterprises on the Columbia soon attracted the attention of the rival Oregon Steam Navigation Company (known as the O.S.N.). This company was much larger, and author Franz Timmen later called it “the many-tentacled monopoly of river transportation.” (See Timmen, Blow for the Landing, A Hundred Years of Steam Navigation on the Waters of the West, 1973) O.S.N. had been incorporated in 1860 and acquired most of the boats then operating on the Columbia. By 1864, it ran steamships from Oregon to San Francisco, as well as along the Columbia River from Astoria up to The Dalles. O.S.N. also operated the Oregon Portage Railroad, around the Cascades Rapids on the Columbia River.

The O.S.N. did not relish a new upstart competitor like the P.T. Company. O.S.N. refused to let the P.T. Company use its portages. In addition to the Oregon Portage Railroad around the Cascades, O.S.N. also operated portages around Celilo Falls (farther up river than the Cascades). That meant the P.T. Company had to haul its freight around these falls by horse cart, which added to its costs.

Moreover, O.S.N. began running steamboats on the Willamette in competition with P.T. Company. Fares decreased as a result of this competition. In fact, passenger travel between Portland and Oregon City on the Willamette was free, and freight was only 50 cents per ton. The feud between the companies caused the P.T. Company to go into debt.

In 1866, the two companies merged, which resolved their differences. But that didn’t happen until after my novel, so perhaps I will have my character involved with one or the other of these steamship companies. This competition between them could give rise to good conflict in my story. Now I have to decide if I want my character working with the more successful O.S.N. or the struggling underdog P.T. Company.

Which would you prefer—for my character to make money or lose his shirt?