Captain Leonard White [Oregon Encyclopedia]

Captain Leonard (Len) White is a legendary pioneering riverboat captain on the Willamette and Columbia Rivers. He was the first to successfully navigate a sternwheeler to Corvallis, Harrisburg and Eugene and established a regular shipping route on the Willamette for several years. Later Captain White concentrated his talents to navigating and opening routes on the upper Columbia River, and was the first to operate a sternwheeler above the Celilo Falls as well as first up the Grand Ronde River and first and furthest up the Snake River, for his time.

Leonard White was born in Indiana in 1827 and came to Oregon Territory in 1843 with his father James and mother. They took a 640 acre donation land claim in West Salem, Polk County in 1845. Leonard White married Gertrude Hall in Salem in 1853. Gertrude was one of the children survivors of the Whitman Massacre in 1848. In 1855 they had a son, Judd, who drowned at Celilo Falls in 1863. Their daughter Fontana (Scott) was born in 1856. Gertrude and Leonard divorced in 1867. Gertrude remarried to Owen Denny and died in 1933.

By at least 1850 Leonard began his career navigating uncharted rivers between Oregon City and Salem. He advertising in the Oregonian that the keel boat Salem Clipper had successfully navigated the river to Salem on October 31, 1850 and that he was available for runs above the falls to "any conceivable point above". This advertisement of April 17, 1851 likely caught the attention of George Gibbs and Edward Starling when they were drawing their "Sketch Map of the Wallamette Valley" in 1851 that documented the proposed reservations of the Kalapuya tribes. The map legend states that they used a "survey by Leonard White of Salem" for the section of the Willamette River from the falls to Salem, and that the map was created following the negotiations with the Indians of Oregon in April and May of that year. The survey mentioned was likely a river navigational chart created by Captain White.

Following this early success Captain White piloted the sternwheelers Fenix and Canemah out of Canemah until 1856, when he became pilot of the Clinton. He navigated on the Willamette until 1858 when he took assignment on the sternwheeler Colonel Wright, built at the mouth of the Deschutes River. He became the first to navigate this type of craft above Celilo Falls. In preparation, Captain White spent some time studying the upper Columbia and learned its dangers, then aided by a sail the steamer made it to Wallula and back without incident. In 1861 he piloted the Colonel Wright up the Snake River to become the first to making landing at what was to become Lewiston. In 1863 Captain White captained the steamer Cayuse as far as the Grand Ronde River. That year he bought interest in the Cascadilla from W.H. Gray. In 1865 he was captain of the Forty-Niner which reached further up the upper Columbia than ever before, to Little Arrow Lake, British Columbia, where he met ice. He continued to operate that craft on the upper river until he took ill in 1869.

In 1869 Len travelled to San Francisco for a cure. He returned to Portland in 1870 where he died. Captain Len White remains one of the greatest steamboat captains in the annals of river travel in the Northwest.