to any portion of its people. There was need for other Hnes, some of which might perhaps connect with the Central, such as a line from the Sacramento north to the Willamette and one by the old emigrant trail from Fort Hall to the Columbia.
California parties had projected a railway northward from the Sacramento at an early day, but construction finally was begun at Portland, Oregon, in April, 1868, when ground was broken for two roads, one to run on the east side of the Willamette River, the other on the west side. The east side railway — The Oregon and California—was completed to Roseburg in the Umpqua valley during the year 1873. From that point south to the upper Sacramento/ the Oregon and California stage covered the difficult section through the Siskiyous until 1887, when the railway was completed and the isolated valleys of Southern Oregon were brought into close relations with the Willamette and the Columbia.
Entrance of Henry Villard. It was the Oregon and California Railway whose financial problems brought to the North Pacific that great organizing genius, Henry Villard. Once interested in the railway development of the region, Mr. Villard undertook, as an initial project, the opening of a complete system of railways along the Columbia, on the south bank, to connect Portland with The Dalles and the Inland Empire. In the early days of the gold rush to the Inland Empire, as we have seen, Portland business men and financiers had organized the Oregon
