Willamette Chief (sternwheeler) - Monopoly-breaker and Wheat Boat

Monopoly-breaker and Wheat Boat

After completion, Willamette Chief the largest and finest boat of the company, was placed on the run up the Willamette River to Albany and Corvallis. When Willamette Chief first came downriver to Astoria she carried 200 tons of wheat, thirty farmers. More people, mostly farmers, 130 in all, boarded at Albany and Salem. Joseph Teal, known for some reason as "Colonel Teal", an early Oregon businessman and a staunch advocate of low steamer rates, was also aboard:

Teal had become an inveterate speech maker and hopeful breaker of monopolies and was always around when a new steamboat company tried to elbow its way into the business of the river. On the Willamette Chief he made a speech, envisioning things to come when all the valley wheat from all the valley farms would go direct to Astoria for only four dollars a ton, there to be shipped to a hungry world. Prosperity would follow, and the voice of the turtle would be heard in the land. Somehow both prosperity and the dove got lost in the shuffle.

Captain Charles Holman and engineer John Marshall were in charge of the vessel on the first trip. The next year Ephraim W. Baughman took command. In December 1875 Baughman was able to take the Willamette Chief right up to the foot of the Cascade Rapids on the Columbia River, which were the head of navigation on the lower Columbia. This was over a mile further than any other steamboat had gone up the fast moving stretch of water in the Columbia Gorge. Baughman remained in charge of the William Chief until she was acquired by the Oregon Steam Navigation Company in 1879 and rebuilt. While in her later years as a ferry the Willamette Chief acquired a reputation as slow-moving vessel, when she was first built Willamette Chief was capable of high speed, and once was able to outrace the sidewheeler Oneonta