224 LESLIE. M. SCOTT
it came the turn of Clatsop County to urge, for a charter, the Astoria & Willamette Valley Railroad, $5,000,000 capital, between Eugene and Astoria (special laws 1858, p. 24). The ^corporators numbered 70 persons, representing Clatsop and Willamette Valley counties. It need not be added that this enterprise was premature; the Territory could not build such a road; the capitalization, however necessary, was excessive amid pioneer conditions ; nothing came of the company. Next appearance of the idea occurred in 1864, when the Legisla- ture pledged a loan of $200,000 for 100 miles of railroad in Willamette Valley (Session Laws, p. 77). At this time a subsidy bill was in Congress to aid a railroad from a connec- tion with the Central Pacific, then building, through California and Oregon to the Columbia River. Such a bill passed Con- gress in 1866 (Act of July 25, 1866) ; out of this act grew the Oregon Central and the Oregon & California Railroad, and, four years later, a second similar act (May 4, 1870), pro- viding a land bounty for a railroad from Portland to McMinn- ville and Astoria.
In the continuity of this early railroad development of Ore- gon, we see the Astoria project ever present. Owing to the lethargy of the Northern Pacific (construction not begun until 1870; opened to Portland not until 1883). Oregon directed its hopes for first transcontinental connections toward the Union Pacific and Central Pacific (opened to California in 1869). In 1863 the people of Oregon were delighted to hear that surveys toward Oregon were progressing up Sacramento Valley under Simon G. Elliott, of Marysville, Cal. ; George H. Belden and Charles Barry. Next year the surveys continued to Portland under Barry. In that same year the Oregon Legis- lature offered a $200,000 loan for a railroad in Willamette Valley, as already noted; also a bill appeared in Congress, as a forerunner to the Act of 1866 providing a land bonus for a railroad between Marysville and Portland. This act also led to the land grant act of 1870, allowing a land subsidy, this time for a railroad from Portland to McMinnville and Astoria.
We need not narrate the long controversy between the rival
