Eastern Oregon

“ Eastern Oregon seems less prolific of natural beauties than the country west of the Cascade Range, where the Columbia River provides not only uninterrupted navigation from the sea to the heart of the mountains, but constitutes in itself a continuous panorama of rare views, to which minds even of the least ideality soon become attached. As the eastern foothills sink to plain, the forest disappears, only a few scattering pines remaining in the vicinity of the Dalles ”

“ A remarkable feature of the rivers of Eastern Oregon is the depth of their beds below the surface of the country which borders them. The Des Chutes flows through a canyon in places more than a thousand feet deep. Where it enters the Columbia its banks are not so high, because the great river itself has its course through the lowest portions of the elevated plains; and its bed is nowhere at any very great elevation above the sea-level. At the Dalles, two hundred miles from the sea, the level of the river is one hundred and nineteen feet above it ”

“ He was active in the affairs of the early American settlement. When the gold discovery in California drew nearly the whole adult male population from Oregon, he built a boat at Oregon City, loaded it with flour, and in it safely sailed to San Francisco, where he sold both cargo and vessel. He also built a saw-mill in the Willamette Valley, and was one of the first to export cattle to California. In 1857 he removed to eastern Oregon, and died at the Umatilla reservation April 24, 1877, aged 78 years. ”

“ The best land in Eastern Oregon lies along near the base of this transverse chain of mountains, and in the valleys of the streams flowing from it on either side; the upper portion of these valleys being invariably the best. All the timber of the country—fir, pine, cedar, spruce, and larch—grows on the high mountain ridges, except the mere fringes of cottonwood and willow which border the streams. The Blue Mountains constitute a wall between the Columbia River Basin, to the north, and the Klamath Basin, to the south ”

“ But during the Pliocene all this was changing, the Cascade mountains were becoming a lofty mountain range, the climate was cooler, eastern Oregon and Washington were being ti-ansformed into a high table land and a fine grazing country, over which roamed herds of wild horses and camels. ”

“ Sixty-four years ago the great mass of the people of Oregon was located in the Willamette Valley. At that time Eastern Oregon was yet practically in pos- session of the Indians. The great donation claims of 640 acres each, had sub- stantially taken up all the open lands in Western Oregon. At that time the country and the farmers were every thing, and the towns amounted to little in wealth, population or political influence. ”

“ By this rule Oregon was granted 90,000 acres. Id., 60-4. The selections made previous to Gibbs administration were taken in the Willamette and Umpqua valleys. To secure the full amount of desirable lands required much careful examination of the country. The agricultural-college grant was taken between 1862 and 1864 in the Klamath Valley, and a considerable portion of the common-school lands also. Eastern Oregon, in the valley of the Columbia, was also searched for good locations for the state. ”

“ Religious services are generally held with regularity, in the towns and settlements. In all that goes to make up the character of good, moral, and respectable people, the settlers of both Eastern Oregon and Washington appear to be ahead of most newly settled communities. The overland stage route is through this county, giving daily mail communication with the east and west. The roads are kept in good repair for wagoning goods from the Columbia River to the different mining-camps and settlements. ”

“ But to describe the climate of Oregon with the greatest exactness, in the fewest words, is, we think, to compare it to France; which, laying between precisely the same parallels of latitude, and occupying exactly the same position on the Eastern Continent that Oregon does on the Western, boasts a climate which has long since and universally been acknowledged one of the finest on the Globe. The situation of Oregon in regard to commerce every one who knows anything about the geography of the world is already acquainted with. ”

“ The question is settled that Oregon is destined to be numbered among the states of our great American Republic ; the scenes of our early sufferings and privations will soon be known only as they are engraved on the memory of the sufferers, or recorded on the pages of history. A brighter day is before us and we fancy that we already descry the first dawning light breaking over the tops of the eastern mountains. We must look to the older and more gifted states to aid in giving us a religious as well as a political and commercial character. ”

“ This is due to the fact that their boundaries were made according to physical conditions,—the situation of mountains, rivers, and streams, which make, what may be called, natural boundaries. In addition, when the population of Oregon was small, the size of the counties was of little moment, for the white population was mostly in small settlements west of the Cascade Mountains. When Wasco County, comprising all of Eastern Oregon, was created in 1854, its population was small and mostly living near the Columbia River, a part of its northern boundary. ”

“ The result of these efforts was to fill up the eastern portion of Oregon and Washington with an active population in a few years, and to materially increase the wealth of the state, both by addition to its producing capacity, and by a consequent rise in the value of lands in every part of it. The travel over the Northern Pacific, chiefly immigration, was large from the moment of its extension to the Rocky Mountains, and was in 1885 still on the increase. ”

“ The northern portion of eastern Oregon is far superior in all its physical characteristics to the southern. Confused masses, known as the Blue and Powder River Mountains, lie in the north-east, modifying the climate for the better, and giving many rich valleys and table-lands to the agriculturist. The Grande Ronde, Umatilla, John Day, Burnt, and Powder rivers are the principal streams, and their main and tributary valleys are very lovely. ”

“ But competition was not undesirable to the people, who had more cause to fear pooling. Besides, it was but natural that the Northern should wish to occupy all the country north of Snake river with its own feeders, and to confine the Oregon road to the country south of it. But the wheat region of eastern Washington, and the rich mineral region of northern Idaho, were the fields into which Oregon wished to extend its business. ”

“ Nothing has transpired which should affect the opinions formed and expressed by the author in favor of the attractions which Oregon offers to the energetic and industrious. The past half-year has been one of successful development for the State as a whole. A bountiful harvest, which has been vouchsafed to Oregon while many Eastern States and many European countries have had to mourn because of drought or excessive rain and consequent scarcity, has again proved how highly favored by position and climate is this Western nook. ”

“ From the summit, which is 4,377 feet above sea level, the descent was easy and from Des Chutes river the route laid out passed through a farming country equal in productiveness to the famous wheat-growing basin of the Columbia in Washington, taking in the Harney and Malheur valleys, running through a pass in the mountains to Snake river and thence to Boisé, there to connect with eastern roads. The road at Yaquina connects with the Oregon Development Company's line of stoamers to San Francisco. ”

“ Owing to the settlement of the boundary question, and the prospect that a donation law would soon be passed, between four and five thousand persons came to Oregon in 1847, most of them people of comfortable means. [35] They commenced arriving at the Dalles as early as the 22d of August, and continued to arrive until November, when two hundred wagons were still on the eastern side of the mountains. ”

“ As supplemental to my article on Oregon Counties, which was published in the March Quarterly, I wish to say that by the Act of August 14, 1848, establishing the Territorial Government of Oregon, the summit of the Rocky mountains was made the Eastern boundary of Oregon Territory. When Washington Territory was created by the Act approved March 2, 1853, the present boundary line between Oregon and Washington was established; the Eastern boundary of Washington Territory was then the summit of the Rocky mountains. ”

“ Today Oregon and Washington are very
distinctly divided into
Eastern and Western parts; the "East
Side" and the "West Side" are understood by all, just as "Up State" is in New York. In the Fifties it was all "West Side."
The Columbia, however, was a
sufficiently well defined boundtwo sections the into which the bulk of the between ary had the Willamette poured valley, and the Puget migration Sound Country where later emigrants had sought the fertile valleys marked at one time by the Hudson's Bay Company as its legitimate field of activity. ”

“ The state's extreme length, along the I24th meridian, is 280 miles; its extreme width, between Cape Blanco and the eastern boundary line, is 380 miles. Including 1,092 square miles of water surface, its total area is 96,699 square miles, making it the ninth largest state in the Union. With the exception of the far eastern portion, it lies in the Pacific Time Belt; and it embraces 36 counties.
The lofty and frosty-peaked Cascade Range divides Oregon into two unequal parts. To the east is the broad plains-plateau section ”

“ This proposition deeply touched the heart of the western pioneer. He had probably crossed the Blue Ridge or the Cumberland Mountains when a boy, and was now in his prime. Rugged, hardy and powerful of frame, he was full to over-flowing with the love of adventure, and animated by a brave soul that scorned the very idea of fear. All had heard of the perpetually green hills and plains of Western Oregon, and how that the warm breath of the vast Pacific tempered the air to the genial degree and drove winter far back towards the north. ”

“ In 1877 the men and women who settled the Rogue River and other southern valleys, and whose isolation, Mining adventures, and Indian wars gave them a history of their own, hardly identical with but no less interesting than that of the settlers of the Willamette Valley, met at the picturesque village of Ashland and founded the Pioneer Society of Southern Oregon on the 13th of September of that year, about 800 persons being present. Its first officers were L. C. Duncan president, William Hoffman secretary, N. S. Hayden treasurer. ”

“ Yet fertile spots are found, pleasant little valleys where the climate is delightful, and, so far as appears, the earth fruitful. North of the Snake River the whole region is unexplored except as traversed by fur-hunters; indeed, away at the base of the Rocky Mountains is a large and diversified tract, a terra incognita to the world at large. And for many years to come this portion of the Oregon Territory offers few attractions to agriculturists. ”

“ The country was two thousand miles from the nearest American settlement on the Missouri river; and separated from it by thousands of miles of trackless plains, rugged mountains, inhospitable deserts, and savage tribes of Indians. Why should any American citizen with a family go to such a country as that? About all that anybody knew about Oregon that could be relied on before the emigration started, was to be found in the following brief notice of the country, in Mitchell's Common School Geography, of 1842, as follows:
"Oregon Territory is the most western part of the United States. ”

“ Of the general condition of the country south of the Columbia at the period of the division, something may be here said, as I shall not again refer to it in a particular manner. The population, before the addition of the large immigration of 1852, was about twenty thousand, most of whom were scattered over the Willamette Valley upon farms. The rage for laying out towns, which was at its height from 1850 to 1853, had a tendency to retard the growth of any one of them. [7] Oregon City, the oldest in the territory, had not much over one thousand inhabitants. ”

“ Purely wild for unnumbered centuries, a paradise of oily, salmon-fed Indians, Oregon is now roughly settled in part and surveyed, its rivers and mountain ranges, lakes, valleys, and plains have been traced and mapped in a general way, civilization is beginning to take root, towns are springing up and flourishing vigorously like a crop adapted to the soil, and the whole kindly wilderness lies invitingly near with all its wealth open and ripe for use.
In sailing along the Oregon coast one sees but few more signs of human occupation than did Juan de Fuca three centuries ago. ”

“ Ever since Oregon was first heard of in the romantic, adventurous, hunting, trapping Wild West days, it seems to have been regarded as the most attractive and promising of all the Pacific countries for farmers. While yet the whole region as well as the way to it was wild, ere a single road or bridge was built, undaunted by the trackless thousand-mile distances and scalping, cattle-stealing Indians, long trains of covered wagons began to crawl wearily westward, crossing how many plains, rivers, ridges, and mountains, fighting the painted savages and weariness and famine. ”