The district of Canemah is located on the east side of the Willamette River. At that time, Oregon City was a separate settlement, and was located below the Willamette Falls above which Canemah sits. The two towns were connected by a path, later upgraded to an ox track.[3]
Early history
Oregon was first inhabited by Native Americans, and was considered by the Calapooya tribe to be part of their territory. Native Americans traveled up and down the waterfall by canoes. Canemah is significant to this because it was the southern point of where Native Americans needed to go through to cross the waterfall. The name "Canemah" itself means "the canoe place". There was said to have been a dispute among the Native Americans as to which of their nations would control this area. The reason is that whoever controlled Canemah and its northern areas could toll anyone who crossed that area to cross the waterfall in their canoe. Many people were killed, apparently also called "Canemahs" who had occupied Canemah and claimed the right to charge tolls for use of the area.[3]
Pioneer settlement
The first white settler at Canemah was Absalom F. Hedges (1817–1890). He arrived in Oregon City in 1844, and found all the good lots already taken. He then went south to Canemah, and staked out a Donation Land Claim close to the canoe landing place. Water travel above the falls was still mainly conducted by the Native Americans using canoes at this point, although they also paddled the flat boats, sometimes known as bateaux, that were starting to appear on the river. A few settlers had already established themselves in the Willamette Valley, and the boats and canoes brought their farm products to Canemah. At Canemah, they were loaded on ox-carts and carried around the falls to Oregon City. New emigrants to the Willamette Valley, and all of their goods, were then hauled back to Canemah up the track from Oregon City by the same ox-carts.[3]
Beginning of steamboat business
1852 advertisement for the "splendid steamer Washington" running between Canemah and ChampoegOregon Territory
By 1849, Hedges had opened up a tannery and laid out a townsite at Canemah, which he called "Falls City." With his brother-in-law William Barrow, Hedges set up a sawmill and opened a store. The name "Falls City" never caught on and the place continued to be called "Canemah." As river traffic increased, Hedges and some partners decided to put a steamboat on the Willamette above the falls. Hedges gathered up several thousand dollars in gold, and made a trip back east to buy the machinery for the vessel. He bought two engines which were shipped around Cape Horn to Oregon. Hedges and his partners returned overland.[3]
Steamboats in the Willamette
By the time Hedges and his party returned to Oregon, there were already three steamboats operating on the upper Willamette, Hoosier, Washington, and Multnomah. In June 1851, the small Hoosier was making three trips a week from Canemah up the Yamhill River, a tributary of the Willamette, to Dayton. The much larger Multnomah was assembled at Canemah in the spring of 1851 from parts premanufactured in the east, and made her first trial run in August 1851.[4]
Facing this competition, Hedges and company began construction on the new steamboat, named Canemah, which was launched near the end of September 1851 and entered service in late 1851. About this time, a new ox road was blasted along the river in the basalt cliffs that separated Canemah from Oregon City. Wagon traffic ran all day and night; night traffic was lit by torches burning along the road.
Canemah was an important place in the 1850s, and many more stores and residences were built, as well as nine or ten steamboats in addition to Multnomah and Canemah. During this period, on April 8, 1854, the spectacular and tragic explosion of the new steamboat Gazelle occurred. Other steamboats built at Canemah in the 1850s included Yamhill (1851), Shoalwater (1852) (later known by other names), Wallamet (1853), Enterprise (1855), James Clinton (1856), Elk, Surprise (1857), Onward and Moose.[3][5]
Reconstruction after flood of 1861
Boat basin above Willamette Falls, 1867, with sternwheeler under construction
Canemah, built almost at the river's level, was wiped out by the flood of December 1861. Afterwards, the wharves and some buildings were reconstructed, and prosperity seemed certain. More steamboats were built and a portage railway was built along the east back to replace the lumbering ox carts. The People's Transportation Company was organized, and the company built an improved boat basin above the falls. A canal was cleared below the falls which lessened the portage distance. New steamboats were built above the falls to serve customers upriver. These included a second Yamhill (1860), Unio/Union (1861), a second Enterprise (1863), Reliance (1865), Active (1865), Fannie Patton (1865), Echo (1865), Albany (1868), Success, and Dayton (1868).[3][5]
Decline of importance
The opening of the Willamette Locks in 1873 marked the beginning of the decline of Canemah's importance as a separate city. This is the Governor Grover, the first steamboat to pass through the locks on March 21, 1873.
In 1870, the Oregon State Legislature allocated funds for the construction of locks on the west side of the falls. By 1873 the locks were complete. Steamers could now move directly from Portland all the way to the Corvallis, with no portage. Towns based on the portage, like Canemah, started to fade in importance. During the 1870s, three or four more steamboats were built at Canemah, and these were the last to be built above the falls: the Shoo-Fly (Another steamboat on the Columbia River built three years later was named Don't Bother Me),[6]Alice, and McMinnville (1877), and the smaller Carrie Norton (1878).[5] By 1892, the name Canemah had been almost forgotten and the area came to be known as simply another part of Oregon City.[3] Canemah is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a historic district.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Corning, Howard McKinley, Willamette Landings - Ghost Towns of the River, at 41, 45, 58-69, 214 Oregon Historical Society (2nd Ed. 1977)
↑ Mills, Randall V., Sternwheelers up Columbia -- A Century of Steamboating in the Oregon Country, at 21, 52-53, 54, 176, University of Nebraska, Lincoln NE 1947 (1977 printing by Bison Press) ISBN0-8032-5874-7
1 2 3 Affleck, Edward L., A Century of Paddlewheelers in the Pacific Northwest, the Yukon, and Alaska, at 7-28, Alexander Nicholls Press, Vancouver, BC 2000 ISBN0-920034-08-X
Many steamboats operated on the Columbia River and its tributaries, in the Pacific Northwest region of North America, from about 1850 to 1981. Major tributaries of the Columbia that formed steamboat routes included the Willamette and Snake rivers. Navigation was impractical between the Snake River and the Canada–US border, due to several rapids, but steamboats also operated along the Wenatchee Reach of the Columbia, in northern Washington, and on the Arrow Lakes of southern British Columbia.
Steamboats on the Columbia River system were wrecked for many reasons, including striking rocks or logs ("snags"), fire, boiler explosion, or puncture or crushing by ice. Sometimes boats could be salvaged, and sometimes not.
The Willamette River flows northwards down the Willamette Valley until it meets the Columbia River at a point 101 miles from the Pacific Ocean, in the U.S. state of Oregon.
Gazelle was an early sidewheeler on the Willamette River in what is now the U.S. state of Oregon. She did not operate long, suffering a catastrophic boiler explosion on April 8, 1854, less than a month after her trial voyage. This was the worst such explosion ever to occur in the Pacific Northwest states. The wrecked Gazelle was rebuilt and operated for a few years, first briefly as the unpowered barge Sarah Hoyt and then, with boilers installed, as the steamer Señorita. A victim of the explosion was D.P. Fuller, age 28, who is buried in Lone Fir Cemetery in Portland, Oregon.
James D. Miller was a steamboat captain in the Pacific Northwest from 1851 to 1903. He became well known for his long length of service, the large number of vessels he commanded, and the many different geographical areas in which he served.
Echo was a sternwheel steamboat that operated on the Willamette River from about 1865 to 1873 and was one of the first steamboats to carry what was then considered a large cargo out of Eugene, Oregon.
Canemah was one of the first steamboats to run on the Willamette River above Willamette Falls. Canemah was the first steamboat to load grain at Corvallis, the first to carry the mail on the Willamette River, and the first steamboat in Oregon to suffer a fatal boiler explosion.
The Multnomah was one of the first steamboats to operate on the Willamette and Yamhill rivers. This vessel should not be confused with the Multnomah, a steamboat built in Portland, Oregon in 1885, which was larger and of a much different design.
The steamboat Shoalwater was the sixth steamer to operate on the upper Willamette River, which refers to the part of the river above Willamette Falls at Oregon City. In a short career of six years, Shoalwater was renamedFenix, Franklin, and Minnie Holmes. Shoalwater was the first steamboat in Oregon to suffer a boiler explosion, although no fatalities resulted.
Washington was an early steamboat operated in the states of California and Oregon. Washington was built in California and was initially operated on the Sacramento River. In 1851, the steamer was purchased and brought on a ship to the Oregon Territory, where it was operated on the Willamette River until the summer of 1853. Washington was sold again, and then transferred to the Oregon coast, where it operated on the Umpqua River, on the Coquille River and on Coos Bay. Washington was able to operate for shorter distances over the open ocean along the Oregon coast. The steamer was wrecked by a boiler explosion in December 1857, near Scottsburg, O.T., on the Umpqua river.
Elk was a stern-wheel driven steamboat built on the Willamette River in 1857 at Canemah, Oregon. This steamboat is chiefly remembered for its destruction by a boiler explosion in which by good fortune no one was seriously hurt. A folklore tale later arose about this disaster.
Portland was a side wheel steamer built at Portland, Oregon in the summer of 1853. This vessel was chiefly remembered for its dramatic destruction in 1857 by being washed over Willamette Falls, an incident which killed its captain and a deckhand. The death of the captain, Arthur Jamieson, was one of at least four brothers, all steamboat officers, who were killed in three separate steamboating accidents occurring between 1857 and 1861 in Oregon and in British Columbia.
Wallamet was a sidewheel-driven steamboat that operated on the Willamette and Columbia rivers in Oregon and later on the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers in California. Built in a Mississippi river style that was not suited to the conditions of these rivers, and suffering from construction defects, Wallamet was not a financially successful vessel. The name of this vessel is often seen spelled as Willamette.
Unio was a small sternwheel-driven steamboat which operated on the Willamette and Yamhill rivers from 1861 to 1869. This vessel is primarily remembered for its having been named Unio when built in 1861, in the first year of the American Civil War, and then having the name completed, to Union, by a new, staunchly pro-Union owner, James D. Miller. Union appears to have sunk in 1869, been salvaged, and then dismantled, with the machinery going to a new steamer then being built for service on the Umpqua River.
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 River, and for about two months in 1864, the company operated a small steamer on the Clackamas River.
James Clinton was a steamboat which operated on the upper Willamette River from 1856 to 1861. Although the Clinton was said to have been "not a very good boat.", it was the first steamer ever to reach Eugene, Oregon. James Clinton was destroyed in April 1861, when a large fire broke out at Linn City, Oregon in a shoreside structure near to where the vessel was moored.
Alice was a stern-wheel driven steamboat that operated on the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the 1870s and 1880s. Alice was the largest vessel built above Willamette Falls and was considered in its day to be the "Queen of the River". This steamer was rebuilt after near-destruction in a fire at Oregon City, Oregon in May 1873. In 1876, it was withdrawn from the upper Willamette River and transferred to the Columbia River, where it was worked as a towboat moving ocean-going ships to and from Portland and Astoria, Oregon, near the mouth of the Columbia River.
Dayton was a steamboat which operated on the Willamette and Columbia rivers from 1868 to 1881. Dayton operated on the Willamette from 1868 to 1876, mostly upriver from Willamette Falls, including a route on the Yamhill River to Dayton, Oregon, after which the steamer was named. From 1876 to 1881, Dayton was employed on a run from Portland to Monticello, W.T., which was located on the site of what is now Longview, Washington.
Albany was a stern-wheel driven steamboat that operated on the Willamette River from 1868 to 1875. This vessel should not be confused with the later sternwheeler Albany, which ran, also on the Willamette River, from 1896 to 1906, when it was rebuilt and renamed Georgie Burton.
George Anson Pease was a well-known steamboat captain in the Pacific Northwest region on the United States, who was active from the earliest days of steamboat navigation on the Willamette River in the 1850s. He worked in various roles until the early 1900s, commanding numerous vessels during that time. During a flood in 1861, while in command of the sternwheeler Onward, Pease rescued 40 people from a flood in the area of Salem, Oregon.
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