The Columbia River Gorge has long been a natural passageway between rural inland farms and western shipping docks. Early homesteaders had difficulty transporting crops as they relied on wagons and steamboats. Water still provides a route, but modern barges, boxcars, and trucks now carry goods. Portland is the nation’s largest wheat port, with forty percent of U.S. wheat shipped through the Gorge by barge or train. Major Northwest agricultural exports moving through this corridor include grains, hay cubes, bulk legumes, paper products, and frozen French fries.