Mychal Ostler 128 pages softcover
While the Civil War raged, a group of captains, merchants, bankers and
gamblers in the Pacific Northwest formed the Oregon Steam Navigation
Company. The first capitalistic enterprise in the new state, they aimed
to develop the richest and most powerful transportation operation in the
region, dominating hundreds of miles of river traffic from the Pacific
Coast to Montana. Achieving such status was anything but easy. They battled competitors, lawyers, the river
herself, and defectors within their management team. In the unregulated
business environment of the nineteenth century, men like John Ainsworth
made their own rules, often deploying frontier justice against their
enemies.