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A few real-world comments, assuming that C&NW had built the Oregon Pacific route. The route would have accessed a previous Harriman monopoly in Southern Idaho. Potentially this would give C&NW some significant competitive traffic, though being mostly marginal ag, it would probably not have paid off until the post-war era when agriculture and irrigation had advanced somewhat. The route accross the Oregon desert would have been long and bleak and with little on-line traffic. Burns was a center for logging for a while, as well as for ranching, but the remainder of the area is either canyon scablands or vast emptiness good for little but grazing. There is a possibility that this leg could serve as a launching point for a Northern California extension, much as GN would later attempt, but if actual builders in this area are any indication, this would likely have to wait until after the main extension was completed. The crossing of the Cascades via Hogg/Santiam Pass would have been the lowest, best route over the Cascades other than the routes at water level in the Gorge. The Eastern approach would have been fairly easy, the Western approach less so but by no means nasty. By any stretch, this would have been a major asset to this route. The line in the Willamette Valley would have primarily been a non-starter. Yaquina City was a watering hole with some peirs in the 1880 & 90s, by contrast Portland was already the most important U.S. city on the west coast after San Francisco. C&NW and/or OP would have been forced to build a "branch" northwards to reach Portland in short order. This would have been viciously opposed by SP, which then held a virtual monopoly in the region, but there's nothing to say they could have put a full stop to it; twenty years later the Oregon Electric invaded SP territory and planted a foothold deep for Hill. At the time Hogg started the OP adventure, the O&C -- future SP -- was not completed to California, and the NP was not yet open all the way to the coast. The OP could easily have become a new Central Pacific, combined with a suitable midwestern partner. Also, the OR&N across the Blues was not yet complete or established. Interesting trivia: in the pre WWI era, when Hill had finished the Oregon Trunk to Bend, he had two plans for the OT. One was to launch an extension south to Klamath Falls, and then over the Cascades to the Rogue River valley, tapping vast forest land and agriculture, as well as getting one step closer to California. The other and more interesting one was to build the Boise & Western, yet another SP&S managed subsidiary that would build via Burns and the Malhuer Canyon to reach Boise and Pocatello. The goal? First, to invade a Harriman stronghold, and second, to make a transcon out of a granger, in this case, the Burlington. The Q was the real moneymaker, and both SP&S and Q were 50/50 properties; it's likely that if the extension had happened, the SP&S would have become a Q managed corporation, much like C&S or FW&D. WARNING! Speculation alert! See below: The biggest applecart upsetting that a completed Oregon Pacific to Ontario might have accomplished is that the UP might have chosen to become involved with it, rather than with the OR&N, which would have likley left the OR&N in NP hands, and possibly prevented the construction of NP on Stampede Pass, and might have resulted in the north bank being occuppoed by either Milwaukee, or by the GN on it's own, rather than the jointly owned (with NP) SP&S.
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