Rise of Monopoly Power Over The River
In about 1860, the Bradford brothers, R.R. Thompson, Harrison Olmstead, Jacob Kamm, and steamboat captains John C. Ainsworth and L.W. Coe formed the Oregon Steam Navigation Company which quickly gained monopoly power over the most of the boats on the Columbia and Snake rivers, as well as the portages at the Cascades and from The Dalles to Celilo. The O.S.N. monopoly lasted from about 1860 to 1879, when its owners sold out to the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company ("OR&N") and realized an enormous profit.
O.R. & N was an enterprise of Henry Villard and ten partners who raised $6 million in an effort to expand the O.S.N. monopoly to control all rail and steamboat transport in Oregon and the Inland Empire. Purchase of O.S.N. gave Villard and his allies control over just about every steamboat then operating on the Columbia, including all the OSN boats already mentioned, plus Emma Hayward, S.G. Reed, Fannie Patton, S.T.Church, McMinnville, Ocklahama, E.N. Cook, Governor Grover, Alice, Bonita, Dixie Thompson, Welcome, Spokane, New Tenino, Almota, Willamette Chief, Orient, Occident, Bonanza, Champion, and D.S.Baker.
Read more about this topic: Steamboats Of The Columbia River
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