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Numerous small steamboats and motor vessels comprised the Coos Bay Mosquito Fleet which operated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries on Coos Bay, a large and mostly shallow harbor on the southwest coast of the U.S. state of Oregon, to the north of the Coquille River valley. Coos Bay is the major harbor on the west coast of the United States between San Francisco and the mouth of the Columbia River. ==Establishment of inland water routes== Inland riverboats were used to navigate the bay and the several rivers flow that flow into it. Many of the passages were quite narrow, for example Beaver Slough was aptly named, as every night beavers built dams across the slough which had to be dismantled to allow the passage of ''Mud Hen''. Nat H. Lane and W.H. Troup, both steamboat captains from the Columbia River, began steamboat operations on Coos Bay in 1873.〔Wright, ed., ''Lewis & Dryden Marine History'', at pages 207-208〕 They built and operated ''Messenger'', doing business as the Coos Bay and Coquille Transportation Company.〔 One feature of Coos Bay was that one shallow southern arm called Isthmus Slough reaches south almost to Beaver Slough, a shallow north-extending branch of the Coquille River.〔(''Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers to the Congress'' (1873), page 19. )〕 In 1869 Judge Gilbert Hall built a mule-hauled portage railway across the Isthmus.〔 This line, which was a little over 1.5 miles long, cost $8,000 to build, and consisted of wooden rails laid on rough wooden sleepers, with trestles crossing the ravines that were encountered along the route.〔 The transport on the route consisted of a single wagon carrying a platform, with one man driving the wagon.〔 Smaller steamboats would run up Isthmus Slough to the north landing to connect to the portage railway, where passengers and freight would be transferred to a wagon, and then hauled across the isthmus to Hall's southern landing on Beaver Slough.〔 In 1872, the steamboat ''Satellite'' made daily trips from Empire City to Isthmus Slough.〔 ''Satellite'' also ran 18 miles up the Coos River twice a week.〔 Once at the south landing, canoes and small unpowered boats would carry passengers and freight south to the Coquille River.〔 The journey was about 6 miles from the north landing to the Coquille River.〔 It took one day to make the trip, and the railway could carry about 2 tons of freight in a single day.〔 In the year 1873 about 600 tons of freight were shipped over the line.〔 In August 1874, construction began on a steam-powered narrow gauge portage railroad to replace the mule-hauled cars.〔(Dodge, Orville, ''Pioneer History of Coos and Curry Counties, Or: Heroic Deeds and Thrilling Adventures of the Early Settlers'' (Capital Printing Co. 1898), at page 424. )〕 The narrow gauge steam line was called the "Isthmus Transit Railroad".〔 This was a good shortcut between Marshfield, as Coos Bay was then called, and Coquille, and it also eliminated the need to cross the hazardous Coos and Coquille bars by the ocean.〔Timmen, pp. 199–203〕 Frank Lowe had a shipyard in Marshfield, and in the early part of the century he produced many vessels for the Mosquito Fleet, including the propeller ''Coquille'', and the sternwheelers ''Millicoma'' and ''Rainbow''.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Coos Bay Mosquito Fleet」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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