rowing down the chamber of commerce building in Portland

  

rowing down the chamber of commerce building in Portland

" I was the first Portland harbor pilot appointed by the state board of pilot commissioners. They appointed me at the request of the marine insurance interests of Portland."

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~jtenlen/ORBios/jtgray.html

""'The next spring I returned to Dawson as port captain for the Seattle Yukon Transportation Company. I certainly earned my salary that season. The discovery of gold at Cape Nome in 1899 caused a stampede from Dawson to Nome in the spring of 1900. I fitted up two steamers and two cargoes and sold over eleven hundred tickets at one hundred dollars each for the trip down the Yukon to St. Michaels, which, as you know, is not far from Nome.

 The fare included meals.

 I decided to feed the passengers all they could eat, but I figured that beef at seventy-five cents a pound would be too expensive, so I bought caribou meat from the Indians at eight cents a pound and fitted up the hold of one of the barges with a refrigerator plant, using natural ice from the Yukon.

I rigged up a butcher shop in the icehouse, where the caribou meat was cut in readiness for the, galley stove. My receipts from passenger fare alone on that one trip were over one hundred and ten thousand dollars."

___________________

""'Yes, I have had some rather unusual experiences as a pilot and steamboat captain 

 and I have also seen some rather unusual sights.  

One year during the big flood on the Columbia and Willamette I took Mrs. Gray for a ride in a small boat to see the sights in Portland.

 "At that time the Ladd & Tilton Bank was located at the corner of Stark and Front streets.  

I rowed through the main entrance of the bank and as I traversed the room my oar touched the counter. 

 From there I proceeded further uptown and rowed through the main entrance 

 and down the long hall 

 of the Chamber of Commerce building."