The Forgotten Origins of the Pacific Mail Line
How an obscure postmaster from Astoria helped launch the steamship route that fed the California Gold Rush.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
From a lecture delivered by General Dunbar before the Traveler’s Club of New York, we learn of the origin of the American mail steamers from Panama to the Pacific Coast. The line originated with J.M. Shively, a plain man who had drifted across the continent and became the postmaster at Astoria. In 1845, while in Washington, he proposed a line of steamers to provide a connection for immigrants. Following this, President Polk consulted J.W. Woodward of New York to find a way to convey emigrants to Oregon. Woodward examined the Isthmus route and presented a plan to carry them via small boats up the Chagres River and over the mountains by mule. While the original goal was to bolster American presence in Oregon during the boundary dispute with Britain, the line was later finalized just in time for the gold discovery in California in 1848.
“The Pacific Mail steamships were built and dispatched to the Pacific just in season to take the first rush of passengers to California.”
Long before tech giants defined the Pacific Northwest's identity, the region's growth was staked on logistics—specifically, the race to connect the Atlantic and Pacific via the Isthmus of Panama. This historical focus on 'transit' as a tool for political influence echoes current debates about the region's reliance on global supply chains and shipping hubs.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.