Career
Born in Maine, he moved to Oregon City in 1847, and in 1849 he bought a half-interest in the original Portland townsite. Coffin"s interests included the Tualatin Plank Road between Portland and the Tualatin Valley, the Oregon Iron Company, an eastern Oregon sawmill, bridge-building, and other investments and projects. In 1856, he and a neighbor, Finice Caruthers, established the Pioneer Water Works to supply drinking water to Portland.
In that same year, he helped found the Oregon Republican Party and was elected to the Portland city council a year later.
His interests in transportation extended beyond roads and bridges to investments in the People"s Transportation Company, which controlled shipping on the upper Willamette River in the 1860s, and the Oregon Central Railroad. In 1863, after Coffin provided a steamboat for sending troops up the Columbia River to fight in the Yakima War, Oregon Governor Addison Gibbs made him a brigadier general in the state militia.
Coffin died in Dayton, Oregon, on March 16, 1882.
