While the experiment with the wheat shipping was being tried another industry was rising into importance, the one that more than any other has contributed to the growth of the town. In 1866 four thousand cases of salmon had been packed. The following year eighteen thousand cases were packed on the Columbia River, and this important industry was established and by 1874 it had reached the proportions of an extensive commercial transaction. Astoria's share in the salmon packing business began with the erection of Badollet & Company's cannery in Upper Astoria in 1873. This cannery did not run the next season. A. Booth & Company built the second Astoria cannery. Devlin & Nygant's, R. D. Hume & Company's, and Kinney's were built in the order named and all were in operation in 1876. Trullinger's mill was built during this year and Astoria now boasted of two large mills, five canneries, and a tannery. During the two years, from 1874 to 1876, the population of the town nearly doubled and many new buildings, consisting of canneries, warehouses, and dwellings, were erected. There was much money in circulation as every one had money and the fishermen were prodigal with theirs. Small change was seldom used, the quarter being the smallest coin in general use. This was the period of Astoria's greatest growth. From a small shipping station in the sixties it had grown to be a town of about two thousand people, controlling the most important industry on the lower Columbia and holding a large trade. Improvements followed as a matter of course. In 1876 the Western Union Telegraph Company completed its line between Portland and Astoria, and Robert Mason & Company constructed a building and entered into the production of oil from salmon heads. During this year a new enterprise was started at the canneries of M. J. Kinney and Hanthorn & Company, that of canning beef and mutton. At Kinney's from September, 1876, to January, 1877, nineteen thousand five hundred cases of beef and five hundred cases of mutton were packed. This industry seems never to have gotten beyond the experimental stage in Astoria, owing largely to the difficulty of securing cattle at a fair price and to the lack of facilities for and experience in handling the meat. During the season of 1877 there were eleven canneries in operation in Astoria and more than a thousand fishing boats were in use on the river. Just before sundown, during the fishing season, the river would be covered with white sailed boats, all sailing briskly along on their way to their favorite drifts. Houses during this year were in great demand, and many were built. The _Astorian_ thus speaks of the building boom: