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The history of rail in Oregon predates the transcontinental railroad in 1869. [1]
As Oregon was aligned with the union states during the American Civil War, a railroad connection was proposed to help supply the Union and build morale. [1]
Byron J. 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. Pengra incorporated a company in 1867 but failed due to lack of financial support. [1]
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. 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. He attempted to raise funds for this company in the eastern United States as well as England. [1]
Both Pengra and Chapman's companies were hampered by the Crédit Mobilier of America scandal in 1872. [1]
Rail routes to follow the Oregon Trail were surveyed by the government, Union Pacific, and others, including James H. 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. [1]
The wooden-railed narrow-gauge Walla Walla and Columbia River Railroad, established in 1868, involved several overland portages. [1]
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. 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). [1]
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. He offered a 50% partnership in the OR&N in 1879. Union was already building an extension from Brigham City, Utah to Butte, Montana that could be extended west. Central Pacific threatened Union Pacific if such an arrangement was made, which ended it immediately. [1]
Northern Pacific had a line reaching from the Dakotas to northern Idaho. Villard reached an agreement with Northern Pacific in 1880, which gave Portland access to transcontinental rail lines. Since activity in the Pacific Northwest had picked up by 1881, Union Pacific was again interested in the 1879 proposal. Union Pacific created the Oregon Short Line from Granger, Wyoming to the OR&N lines at Huntington, Oregon, joined on November 11, 1884. [1] [2] 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. [1]
Villard's OR&N lines were leased to Union Pacific's Oregon Short Line from 1887 until Union Pacific purchased OR&N in 1889. [1]
The following railroad lines were surveyed and perhaps graded, but not completed.
A transcontinental railroad or transcontinental railway is contiguous railroad trackage, that crosses a continental land mass and has terminals at different oceans or continental borders. Such networks can be via the tracks of either a single railroad or over those owned or controlled by multiple railway companies along a continuous route. Although Europe is crisscrossed by railways, the railroads within Europe are usually not considered transcontinental, with the possible exception of the historic Orient Express. Transcontinental railroads helped open up unpopulated interior regions of continents to exploration and settlement that would not otherwise have been feasible. In many cases they also formed the backbones of cross-country passenger and freight transportation networks. Many of them continue to have an important role in freight transportation and some like the Trans-Siberian Railway even have passenger trains going from one end to the other.
La Grande is a city in Union County, Oregon, United States. Originally named "Brownsville," it was forced to change its name because that name was being used for a city in Linn County. Located in the Grande Ronde Valley, the city's name comes from an early French settler, Charles Dause, who often used the phrase "La Grande" to describe the area's beauty. The population was 13,082 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Union County. La Grande lies east of the Blue Mountains and southeast of Pendleton.
Henry Villard was an American journalist and financier who was an early president of the Northern Pacific Railway.
The Seattle and Walla Walla Railroad was a 3 ft narrow gauge railroad and was the first proper railroad to serve Seattle, Washington, preceded only by horse-drawn rail vehicles and by a coal train making the very short haul from Lake Union to Pike Street. Despite its ambitious name, actual construction never went beyond King County, the county of which Seattle itself is the seat. After being sold to Henry Villard's Oregon Improvement Company in 1880 it was renamed the Columbia and Puget Sound Railroad. In 1916, that became the Pacific Coast Railroad Company.
Eastern Oregon is the eastern part of the U.S. state of Oregon. It is not an officially recognized geographic entity; thus, the boundaries of the region vary according to context. It is sometimes understood to include only the eight easternmost counties in the state; in other contexts, it includes the entire area east of the Cascade Range. Cities in the basic eight-county definition include Baker City, Burns, Hermiston, Pendleton, John Day, La Grande, and Ontario. Umatilla County is home to the largest population base in Eastern Oregon; accounting for 42% of the region's residents. Hermiston, located in Umatilla County, is the largest city in the region, accounting for 10% of Eastern Oregon's residents. Major industries include transportation/warehousing, timber, agriculture and tourism. The main transportation corridors are I-84, U.S. Route 395, U.S. Route 97, U.S. Route 26, U.S. Route 30, and U.S. Route 20.
The Blue Mountains are a mountain range in the northwestern United States, located largely in northeastern Oregon and stretching into extreme southeastern Washington. The range has an area of about 15,000 square miles (38,850 km2), stretching east and southeast of Pendleton, Oregon, to the Snake River along the Oregon–Idaho border.
The Grande Ronde River is a tributary of the Snake River, 182 miles (293 km) long, in northeastern Oregon and southeastern Washington in the United States. It drains an area southeast of the Blue Mountains and northwest of the Wallowa Mountains, on the Columbia Plateau. It flows through the agricultural Grande Ronde Valley in its middle course and through a series of scenic canyons in its lower course.
The Wallowa Mountains are a mountain range located in the Columbia Plateau of northeastern Oregon in the United States. The range runs approximately 40 miles (64 km) northwest to southeast in southwestern Wallowa County and eastern Union County between the Blue Mountains to the west and the Snake River to the east. The range is sometimes considered to be an eastern spur of the Blue Mountains, and it is known as the "Alps of Oregon". Much of the range is designated as the Eagle Cap Wilderness, part of the Wallowa–Whitman National Forest.
The Wallowa River is a tributary of the Grande Ronde River, approximately 55 miles (89 km) long, in northeastern Oregon in the United States. It drains a valley on the Columbia Plateau in the northeast corner of the state north of Wallowa Mountains.
The Western Pacific Railroad was a Class I railroad in the United States. It was formed in 1903 as an attempt to break the near-monopoly the Southern Pacific Railroad had on rail service into northern California. WP's Feather River Route directly competed with SP's portion of the Overland Route for rail traffic between Salt Lake City/Ogden, Utah, and Oakland, California, for nearly 80 years. The Western Pacific was one of the original operators of the California Zephyr passenger line.
The Eagle Cap Excursion Train is a heritage railroad service located in Wallowa, Oregon, United States, operated on a 63-mile (101 km) line from Elgin to Joseph. The line is owned by the Wallowa Union Railroad (WURR), a public entity, which acquired it from private owners in 2002. The first excursion train was operated in 2003.
The Idaho Northern and Pacific Railroad is a small railroad in southwestern Idaho and eastern Oregon in the United States. It owns 120 miles of former Union Pacific branch lines, and is a subsidiary of the Rio Grande Pacific Corp., based in Fort Worth, Texas. Idaho Northern and Pacific's offices are in Emmett, Idaho.
The Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company (OR&N) was a railroad that operated a rail network of 1,143 miles (1,839 km) running east from Portland, Oregon, United States, to northeastern Oregon, northeastern Washington, and northern Idaho. It operated from 1896 as a consolidation of several smaller railroads.
Rail transportation is an important element of the transportation network in the U.S. state of Oregon. Rail transportation has existed in Oregon in some form since 1855, and the state was a pioneer in development of electric railway systems. While the automobile has displaced many uses of rail in the state, rail remains a key means of moving passengers and freight, both within the state and to points beyond its borders.
The Grande Ronde Valley is a valley in Union County in northeastern Oregon, United States. It is surrounded by the Blue Mountains, and is drained by the Grande Ronde River. La Grande is its largest community. The valley is 35 miles (56 km) long, north to south, from Pumpkin Ridge to Pyles Canyon, and 15 miles (24 km) wide, east to west, from Cove to the Grande Ronde River's canyon. Its name, fittingly, means, "great circle."
The Wallowa Union Railroad Authority is a short-line railroad owned by Wallowa County and Union County in the U.S. state of Oregon. It operates freight and tourist trains over a 62.58-mile (100.71 km) ex-Union Pacific Railroad line from the end of an Idaho Northern and Pacific Railroad branch at Elgin to Joseph, generally paralleling Oregon Route 82.
The Puget Sound Shore Railroad and successor Northern Pacific and Puget Sound Shore Railroad built a branch line of the Northern Pacific Railroad between Puyallup and Seattle, Washington, U.S., and partially constructed a line around the east side of Lake Washington to Woodinville.
Hilgard is an unincorporated community in Union County, Oregon, United States, at the junction of Oregon Route 244 with Interstate 84/U.S. Route 30, near the Grande Ronde River. It is also the site of a junction (wye) of the Union Pacific Railroad. Hilgard Junction State Recreation Area is across the river from the community.
The transportation system of Oregon is a cooperation of complex systems of infrastructure.