Bay Coos Bay is a large and mostly shallow harbor on Oregon's southwest coast, to the north of the Coquille River valley. It is the major harbor on the west coast of the United States between San Francisco and the mouth of the Columbia River. Two steamboat captains from the Columbia River began steamboat operations on Coos Bay in 1873. Inland riverboats were used to navigate the bay and the several rivers flow that flow into it. A mule-hauled portage was built between a shallow southern arm of Coos Bay and the Beaver Slough, a shallow north-extending branch of the Coquille River, in 1869; it was replaced in 1874 with a steam portage railroad. This connection established a convenient link between the steamboat operations of Coos Bay and those on the Coquille. Numerous steamboats were built over the ensuing decades. In 1912, a number of steamboats were wrecked, by collision, fire and grounding on the sandbar at the mouth of the bay. Umpqua River The Umpqua River runs from Reedsport up through Douglas County. Gardiner is a town near the mouth of the Umpqua where several river steamers were built. One of the Umpqua River's several branches eventually reaches Roseburg, although the head of navigation was Scottsburg. Captain Godfrey Seymour began steamboat operations on the Umpqua River with Raftsman, later adding Washington, Swan, and Enterprise. Swan was unique as the only steamboat to ever ascend as far as Roseburg on the Umpqua. This was in 1870, when the merchants of Gardiner were anxious to demonstrate the navigability of this river. Roseburg is 85 miles above the mouth of the river, and it took Swan 11 days to get there. This was sufficient to persuade Congress to allocate $70,000 for channel clearance of the Umpqua, even though no other steamboat ever again ran up to Roseburg. In 1906, the propeller steamer Juno (32 tons) was built at Marshfield and placed on the Umpqua River service by the Umpqua River Steam Navigation Company. Scottsburg landing on Umpqua River, circa 1900, showing passengers and a number of small vessels Siuslaw Bay and River Siuslaw Bay is yet another large shallow bay on the Oregon coast, with its entrance about 24 miles north of the mouth of the Umpqua River. The Siuslaw River widens into the bay, which meets the ocean near the town of Florence. In 1890 or thereabouts, the Moonlight was placed