Originally incorporated as the Oregon General Electric Company in December 1901, the name was changed on June 7, 1902, just prior to taking over the Portland City & Oregon Railway Company. Fred S. Morris held interests in both companies, so their eventual merger is not really surprising.
The merging of the companies came about in the middle of a motormen’s strike on the PC&O, and may have been an attempt to break it – all the men were told their positions had been eliminated because the PC&O no longer existed, but they would be welcome to reapply with the new company, which would have allowed management to weed out “undesirables.” The men, backed by public opinion, stuck to their guns and eventually won most of their demands after a head-on collision between two cars run by untrained scab workers made the company’s position untenable. All but five men (out of about 100) were reinstated to their previous positions and the strike was lifted on July 11, 1902, with regular service resuming two days later.
By design or accident, the company ended up operating all of the standard gauge lines of the time, inheriting the Hawthorne, Mount Scott and Oregon City (then running through Sellwood) lines and constructing the Cazadero line to reach the site for its proposed hydroelectric dam on the Clackamas River (the Richmond and Woodstock lines weren’t regauged until 1910). The standard gauge Troutdale line was opened in 1907, when the OWP&R was an operating division of the PRL&P.
Although the OWP&R merged into the PRL&P in June 1906, it continued to operate under the old name as a separate standard gauge division that retained more liberal freight-carrying rules than the city lines for a number of years.
| Important Dates | December 6, 1901 – First incorporated as the Oregon General Electric Co. June 7, 1902 – Reincorporated as the Oregon Water Power & Railway Co. July 1, 1902 – Property of the Portland City & Oregon Railway Co. transferred to the Oregon Water Power & Railway Co. June 30, 1906 – Merged into Portland Railway, Light & Power Co. December 31, 1906 – Final deed transferring all property to PRL&P. | | --- | --- | | Preceded By: | ‣ | | Succeeded By: | ‣ |