Oregon Story; Ports

Funding for production of the Oregon story was made possible through a generous grant from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. Between Boardman here and Umatilla was a set of rapids called Devil's Bend. She was tricky. You'd start your heart over and jack up your throttles and hope you'd slide it stopped before you got into the rocks.

In the days before dams tamed the mid-Columbia, Dan Creamer was a river pilot. He vividly recalls one of his last trips on the Captain Al James pushing three barges. In the winter time, freezin' and the water was coming over the bow and the ice was makin' and the deck crew was out there trying to break the ice of it. And one thing about it I guess it ended up being one of the last trips that the Al James made. Today Dan Creamer is president of the Port of Morrow, located near the town of Boardman. He saved the Captain Al James as a reminder of his rough-and-tumble days in the river

terrain. Now spends his time promoting the ideal location of this modern port. "When you come down I-84 from New York and you get to the Port of Morrow. you look out and you see the Columbia River. You're on the interstate highway and you see the railroad. We're a hub here. And you can take your product off the highway, off the railroad and put it in a barge right here and save money." That's the way the Watch brothers see it, too. Their agribusiness is based in Washington but their cold storage and shipping takes place here. "The reason we came to the Port of Morrow really was transportation." Their new Morrow facility stores some of the 80 million pounds of frozen corn, peas, and carrots that will appear this year on dining tables from Oregon to Australia. At Western Alfalfa, thousands of tons of alfalfa cubes and pellets are bagged to feed

everything from horses in the Northwest to cattle along the Pacific Rim. "The port currently averages about 2,000 containers a month across our docks: the largest inland barge terminal in the United States." There are 23 ports in Oregon lining the coast in the Columbia River. Since the beginning, ports have been a key link to the outside world - taking millions of salmon, logs, and other Oregon commodities to the global marketplace. They continue to support thousands of jobs and generate billions of business dollars. The word "port" conjures up images of boat docks and cargo ships. [Music playing] But ports today also managed airborne transportation, commercial fishing facilities, shipyards, recreation, and most recently industry. "The Port is a public agency. But its primary goal, in particular in

this region, and I think in most regions, is to either create jobs or maintain jobs and have a good, viable economy." Created in 1959, Morrow is Oregon's newest port. It is home to thousands of acres of irrigated farmland and a thriving agricultural products processing and export industry. Dan Creamer remembers what the port property looked like 30 years ago. "You would never sell nothing but jackrabbits. Right here was jack rabbits and sagebrush, out here where the river is. It's a channel out there seven feet deep and a hundred and fifty feet wide. They call this The Rock Patch up here." Hard work and determination changed all that. Today Morrow is a model of a working Oregon port. No end is in sight to the possibilities of growth and success

here. It is a story that has played out in similar fashion many times in Oregon. From the time Spanish galleons first explored the coast in the 1700s, Oregon's waterways held the promise of great trade. Since then a rugged parade of shipwrecks, stout boatmen, determined business moguls, and capricious economies has marched through the history of Oregon's ports. Waterways were the first highways. Before the organization of formal ports, scores of tiny docks dotted the shores in an era of boom-and-bust harbor town. Almost every year, a different little burg would get ahead in the game of

attracting river traffic; each thinking they would become the next San Francisco. The town of Scottsburg was once in the running. Settled in 1850 on the Umpqua River. It became the premier southern Oregon port within a year - shipping lumber to gold miners in Oregon and Northern California. Soon more than a dozen businesses graced the frontier town, including southern Oregon's first newspaper: the Umpqua Weekly Gazette. But the prosperity wouldn't last. Almost immediately Scottsburg lost business to ports closer to San Francisco. Then, a flood washed away most of the town. Only a decade after its settlement, Scottsburg was nearly gone and other harbors rushed to take its place. One of those was Portland. By far the biggest port in the state, today the Port of Portland boasts five marine terminals, four airports, and seven business bars.

But in the 1800s, Portland was battling cutthroat competition from the likes of St. Helens, Columbia City, and Oregon City to lure even the smallest sternwheelers to its docks. One family has witnessed the epic struggle of Portland's waterfront almost from the beginning. The Shavers has made their living on the river for over a hundred years. George Shaver is president of Shaver Barge &Transportation Company. He tells us what it was like when his great-grandfather got into the steamboat business in 1880. "There were few roads at that time, and particularly going to Astoria. So the company started initially running to Clatskanie, 'bout two-thirds of the way between Portland and Astoria. We used to carry passengers and freight from various waypoints from Portland to Astoria and Portland to The Dalles. Steamboats are really fun to work on because there's no noise.

All they do is go 'Shhh, shhh.' And they're warm. (chuckles)" Now part of the Oregon Maritime Center and Museum, the steamer Portland was built in 1947 as a harbor tug. George Shaver worked on this boat as a deckhand and mate. "Well, your principal responsibility was to take care of the vessel: keep it clean, And do that work which is required to make up to the tows, flash the barges, Run the tow lines, coil the lines, and do everything the skipper wanted you to do with it."

Today, tug boats and barges move placidly down the Columbia, slipping easily through the locks and dams. But some captains can remember when riverboating was not for the faint of heart. "We used to have to tie up in the old days for fog. We didn't have radar and all those goodies." "That was very different and very exciting, very thrilling times. And the channel was narrow and shallow, Lots of rocks, very tricky navigational job. It was not unusual to put holes in the barges."

To improve the odds of getting cargo to customers in one piece, early sternwheelers had an ingenious method for negotiating the worst rapids. "They had what they called 'portage railroads' and they used to portage around the rapids to the next cool, as you might call it, and reload the sternwheelers which operated on that stretch of the river. There were portage railroads at Bonneville to go around Cascade Rapids, and portage railroads at Celilo; a large one there." By the turn of the century, steamboats hauled the riches of the inland empire into Portland every day. Masted ships weighed down with grain or timber set sail to California, or abroad to the South Pacific and Asia. It was all very lucrative and very dangerous. From getting barges past rapids to navigating cargo ships out to sea, each vessel faced the specter of being grounded by the shallow channel of the Columbia - only ten feet deep

in some places. Merchants and sailors alike agreed that something had to be done about the channel so in 1891, by decree of the Oregon legislature, the Port of Portland became the state's first formal Port Authority. The city would never be the same. The port had the funds and the power to improve the waterfront. Its first piece of business was to dredge the shipping channel 25 feet deep from Portland to the sea. A monumental act, ensuring Portland's place as an international seaport. As the port grew, the Shaver family adapted to keep up with the demands of a thriving harbor. "As the business changed so did the company. And we evolved from a cargo and freight company, to passengers, into log towing. As the city got larger and the lumber mills kind of went away to further and further from Portland Harbor,

The company got into ship-assist business and ship barging into grain barging where we are today. We barge a lot of grain." Over a thousand ships a year dock here to take that grain as well as commodities like minerals, lumber, and wheat to international markets. They also bring in everything from cars to computers. But today getting a product like wheat to market involves more than just getting it off the farm and onto a boat. [Man speaking Taiwanese] Meet the Taiwanese noodle team. "We are using the Novo the contender for making this noodle because one, to increase the noodle and also one to make the noodle look whiter. The Port of Portland is the number one wheat exporter in the country. But in today's global

market we customers can afford to be discriminating. [Woman speaking foreign language] They use the laboratory at the Oregon Wheat Commission to see if the flour from this wheat is perfect for the kind of noodles their consumers want. "It became increased that finding quality of those two types, of the wheat That will be very useful for the for all me and also for the consumer." If this wheat passes the test it will be loaded into a modern grain ship for the journey to the Pacific Rim. This operation is a far cry from the small boats that exported sea otter and beaver pelts from Astoria two centuries ago. President Thomas Jefferson believed a settlement at Astoria was key in expanding the American empire all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Established as an outpost for fur trading, Astoria became a great seaport by the 1850s and soon

dazzled the world with another signature export: salmon. "And at night when the fishing season was on you'd look over for the river and it looked like a city was all lit up with the lights on the fish boat masts and the lights on the buoys." Harry Larson and Al Risman grew up together in Astoria when there was only one radio station and the canneries were filled with Chinese workers. "Us kids loved to go down there. When the Chinese weren't working or had a lull between work time, they'd make these fancy Chinese kites for us; the swallow kites." The port buzzed with activity through the 1920s and even during the Depression. Al and Harry both got hired on as longshoremen.

"I think Harry and I both were still in high school, we used to go down on the weekends. I did, in 1938 I think it was. And they'd have as high as fifty men trucking flour on the docks. But it was a real fascinating thing to go down the docks and see all the different nationalities, different ships; and most of the longshoremen all had some kind of an accent. We'd load flour and maybe wheat, frozen tuna would come in here we would offload it. They'd trucked them up for processing. Lumber was a big item and Astoria port district had about seven sawmills." Astoria occupied a strategic location - during World War II, the US Navy took over most of the port property. "Astoria more than doubled its population at that time because we had two shipyards; we had two Army

bases, Fort Stevens, Fort Columbia. Crown Point was going full blast with the Navy. You couldn't get a bed in Astoria." Back in Portland, Kaiser worked the port facilities around the clock, making tankers and liberty ships. George Shaver remembers the launching of those vessels. "Our fleet was busy, busy, busy catching ships and moving them to the outfitting dock. A ship would come off the waves going faster than it would ever go again. We had to catch the thing before it ran into the bank on the other side. That was exciting". After World War II Astoria stayed busy; canning fish, pulling flour, shipping lumber. But eventually, competition and declines in natural resources like salmon caught up with

the port. "The flour mill closed down and then the grain elevators closed down. The tuna fish canneries closed - Bumblebee; Van Camp. Hundreds of people involved in that, so that left Astoria with only one cargo, and that was logs. And Astoria shipped out logs by the millions of board feet." But not any more. Restrictions on logging left Astoria searching for a new identity. And though this deep-draft port will always be linked to fishing, the core of its future is yet to be defined. Some traditions go on. The Astoria Crab Fest still draws crab lovers. Ships

Still need to be guided through the bar of the great river of the West. Although today, the Columbia is on its best behavior. "The wintertime is where we really start earning our pay; that's when it's safe to bring a ship across the bar. That's a decision that the pilot has to make." Captain George Ware transfers to a ship carrying cars to Portland. His job is to pilot the vessel over the bar. It's not easy. In fact ,all down the coast ships have wrecked trying to navigate the mouth of the river. Gardiner, a mill town which lies along the Umpqua River, sprang from the wreck of the

trade schooner Bostonian in 1850. The castaways dragged the cargo upriver and named their settlement after the owner of the newly-sunken ship. Beautiful houses soon graced the town - all painted white. Gardiner became known as the White City By the Sea. Home of the Umpqua Steam Navigation Company, the salad days of Gardiner saw tons of logs and salmon shipped to San Francisco. But then something happened that the town did not anticipate. In 1912 the railroad passed Gardiner by and marooned the little harbor. Though initially regarded with competitive suspicion it soon became clear that a railroad terminal was actually the next step up the ladder for a port town. To move goods the quickest and easiest way possible, a port needed to connect to a large transportation system. First, that meant rail. Then highways. And eventually air. All together, this is now known

as intermodal transportation. Competition was stiff for both the companies vying to build railroads and the town trying to get them. Florence promoted itself as the perfect spot for a transcontinental railroad terminal, stating in a promotional flyer "Florence is peopled with the better class of American citizens. We have good schools, churches, practically all the benevolent orders, and no saloons." But Coos Bay would receive the Southern Pacific railroad terminal in 1916, getting an edge on other coastal ports. Long before that, its first major export was coal - shipped to San Francisco to fuel the Gold Rush. But the commodity that really put Coos Bay on the map was timber. By 1908 Coos Bay had the largest sawmill in the country, putting out about half a million board feet of lumber a day - more than all the other mills in the region combined. While the lumber business lagged during the Depression, longshoreman Eugene Bailey

remembers the prosperity after World War II. "Well, it was like Grand Central Station. You could have a job at ten o'clock - have a job in the morning early - and then at 10 o'clock just get mad and disgusted and quit and by noon you could have another job because the jobs are that plentiful. I worked as a hull man in the hull of a ship, moving cargo into the place to rest. In those days now, I remember, we hand-handled it. You didn't have a machine down there, doing the work. You were the machine." In 1960, Eugene Bailey witnessed an historic labor agreement for mechanization and modernization. It introduced labor-saving machinery at the docks, ending much of the hand-loading work - and ending the jobs of many longshoremen. Bailey survived the changes; worked his way up the union ladder, eventually becoming president. In 1958 he

proudly gave another future president a guided tour of the Port of Coos Bay. The young, little-known senator from Massachusetts saw a dynamic seaport shipping timber from giants like Weyerhaeuser. Today, the picture is much different. "It's very, very slow at the dock; this is about as bad as I've seen it in quite some time. Just other day I picked up the paper and I read the next ship due seven days. And I don't recall a long, long time ago that it was that bad that only one ship was due to arrive in seven days. Normally we have ship-ships. And those ship-ships are even slowing up now." Today the port of Coos Bay is looking beyond shipping wood products to try to attract a new industry, possibly a large steel company. This would give a welcome economic boost to Coos Bay. Diversification is the mantra of Oregon's ports today.

Modern businesses need their port to be more than a shipping wharf and ports are pushing to meet those needs in the name of economic development. Selling or leasing property for light to heavy industry is one way many ports are attempting to regenerate their city's economy. The Port of St. Helens is breaking ground to build the United States Gypsum Company. And the port of The Dalles assist with the infrastructure needs of growing businesses. "The water, the sewage, the electrical power, heat, all those things - the port provides those. And location is a real issue. This port happens to be located relatively close to the freeway which is very nice for getting products in and out of here." AAA Metal Fabrication is a company that produces tanks for wineries and microbreweries ".Without the help of the port, I am relatively sure we wouldn't be here." Owning an interstate toll bridge enabled the port of Hood River to invest in development and urban renewal. Empty

buildings like the Diamond Fruit Canning complex have been renovated for medium-industrial use. And, of course, the business of recreation is booming here as well as in other port towns. Though much has changed, many concerns of the past continue to challenge our ports: fluctuating economies; navigation; channels deep enough to handle the ever-more- gargantuan ships that move into our harbors. But now ports on the Columbia face a decidedly modern problem. "It would be devastating to the Northwest if they start removing dams." Environmental issues like breaching dams on the Columbia and river dredging are a major concern for 21st century ports. But the story of our ports is still unfolding. "Dead slow ahead, please." Anne McIntyre is the first female apprentice river pilot on the Columbia River.

"It's a great career. Piloting is terrific - it's really challenging, every day is different. You get to meet people from all over the world." "Steer two-zero-five." "The equipment on this ship is essentially state-of-the-art." Like the bar pilot, her job is to safely guide ships to their destination. I think we have better equipment; there's more training than there used to be." It's a far cry from the Captain Al James that helped pioneer this river. "I come down every day make sure it's still tied up, hasn't casted off." Ports have come a long way from taking livestock downriver via portages; from navigating bars with no charts. They have helped tame river and ocean trade. They continue to be an economic force: providing thousands of jobs, bringing in needed goods and taking the best of what Oregon has to offer to the rest

of the world. Ports continue to leave their mark on Oregon life. Funding for production of the Oregon Story was made possible through a generous grant from the United States Department of Agriculture rural development.