Early History and Founders
In the 1860s and 1870s, the Oregon Steam Navigation Company (OSN) had obtained monopoly power over riverboat navigation on the Columbia River system. This was before the extensive construction of railroads in Oregon and what was then the Washington Territory, so the only way that goods could be shipped to market was by way of the rivers. Many companies arose to compete with the OSN, and one of the few survivors was the Shaver Transportation Company. Founders of the company included steamboat captains James W. Shaver and George M. Shaver.
Shaver Transportation was begun by James W. Shaver whose family were pioneers in Portland, Oregon. They owned a woodyard business which supplied firewood for trains, powered then by steam locomotives. They also supplied wood from a dock for steamboats. In 1880, James W. Shaver went into the steamboat business with two partners, Henry Corbett and A.S. Foster, both prominent members of the early business establishment in Portland, Oregon. They bought out Captain Edward Bureau and began doing business as the People's Freighting Company. Their first vessel was the steamboat Manzanilla, which they put on the route down the Willamette and Columbia rivers from Portland to Clatskanie, Oregon.
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