This 0-4-0T (Tank) locomotive was built by the Vulcan Iron Foundry in San Francisco, CA, in 1861 for $4,000. It is stored in a purpose built shed in the grounds of the Cascade Locks Historical Museum in Cascade Locks. The building is not open to the public and getting good photographs was, at best, challenging.
This was the first steam locomotive built on the Pacific Coast and the first to operate in the Pacific North West. It was used on the Oregon Portage Railway to take steamboat passengers and goods 4½ miles past the Cascades Rapids on the Columbia River (now drowned by the Bonneville Dam).
Delivered in 1862, the engine replaced flat cars originally running on rails and pulled by mules for 4½ miles over iron-reinforced wooden rails. It was for this reason that it became known as the “Oregon Pony”.
For four years, the little Oregon Pony engine moved nearly 200 tons a day between the Cascades and Bonneville, until it was transferred to the The Dalles, where it was put to work on the portage around Celilo Falls. The railway was bought by the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, which sold the engine in 1866.
The OSN sold the engine in 1866, after which it went to San Francisco, CA, where it worked filling and grading the streets in that city. After the locomotive was damaged in a 1904 fire, the owner partially restored it and donated it to the Oregon Historical Society in Portland, OR.
The engine was displayed at the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition in Portland, OR, and then went into storage at the Albina Railyard. In the 1930s, it was moved to Union Station and then returned to Cascade Locks in 1970. The Port of Cascade Locks funded a restoration in 1981.
