Eastern Oregon - Transportation

Transportation

Historically, the region has been relatively isolated from Western Oregon, due to the difficulty of crossing the Cascades. Early settlers floated down the Columbia River from The Dalles to reach Western Oregon. In 1845, Sam Barlow built a road around the south side of Mount Hood, which served as the final leg of the Oregon Trail. The Applegate Trail and Santiam Wagon Road were constructed soon after, connecting eastern and western Oregon in the southern and central parts of the state. In the early 20th century, Samuel Hill built the Columbia River Highway, allowing automobiles to pass through the Columbia River Gorge.

Railroads began to be important as early as 1858 with the construction of the Oregon Portage Railroad which built a 4.5-mile (7.2 km) bypass around the rapids at Cascade Locks. This was followed by the 1862 incorporation of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company whose operations included building a rail bypass from The Dalles to Celilo Falls. In 1880 these two short sections of rail were incorporated into the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company (OR&N). Shortly thereafter Henry Villard, who then controlled OR&N, moved aggressively to block entry of the then under construction Northern Pacific Railway into the Columbia Gorge. In an agreement first made in March 1880 and formalized in the fall of 1880, the Northern Pacific Railway, then controlled by Frederick Billings, and the OR&N, at that time controlled by Henry Villard, agreed to divide the Columbia Plateau at the Snake River, with the Northern Pacific staying to the north and the OR&N staying to the south. Northern Pacific was not to build down the gorge into Portland, but would receive trackage rights on the tracks that OR&N was building on the south bank into Portland. The first St. Paul-Portland Northern Pacific train arrived in Portland on September 12, 1883, via OR&N trackage down the Oregon side of the Columbia River from Wallula, Washington forever ending the isolation of at least the northern portion of Eastern Oregon. A year later in November 1884, the Oregon Short Line was completed across southern Idaho, and met the OR&N at the border station of Huntington providing rail service that essentially paralleled the Oregon Trail all the way from Omaha, Nebraska. Later the OR&N became part of the Union Pacific Railway.

The only other railroad ever built east over the Cascade Mountains was trackage that was to become part of the Southern Pacific Transportation Company which was opened in 1926 over Willamette Pass to Klamath Falls to bypass the difficult line south of Eugene, Oregon to Ashland, Oregon.

All-weather highways over the Cascade Mountains were not completed until the 1930s and 1940s.

Major road routes through eastern Oregon include I-84 from Ontario to the Columbia River Gorge. The only other interstate freeway in the region is an eleven mile (18 km) stretch of Interstate 82 that ends at the Columbia River in Umatilla. U.S. Route 395 is a major North-South route, passing through Pendleton, Burns, John Day, and Lakeview. Further west, U.S. Route 97 runs North and South from the California border through Klamath Falls, Bend, and Redmond to Biggs Junction on the Columbia River. Other major east-west routes include U.S. Route 26, U.S. Route 30, U.S. Route 20 and U.S. Route 730.