Oregon City

“ How glorious it would be for Oregon if the Lewis and Clark Fair Clubs would in dead earnest determine to possess themselves of the philosophy of city making, and to do their best to control municipal activity in Oregon so as to make it conserve highest economic and æsthetic ends and bring about rational unity in all municipal development and foster an architectural spirit. Why not commission a delegate to Dresden? Why not begin to make wholesome, beautiful, and edifying the Oregon village and city, so that, as a whole, each may be a positive joy forever? ”

“ The people of Oregon found it indeed difficult to perceive any benefit that they had received from congress, or the presidential appointments. They were still without a proper government; they had no troops, no shipping, no light-houses, no pilot-boats, no appropriations—nothing, [21] if they excepted two post-routes to places where there were no settlers, and two post-offices—the distributing office being at the mouth of the Columbia, a hundred and twenty miles from Oregon City, with no other conveyance for the mails between the two places than Indian canoes. ”

“ Just below Portland on the banks of the Willamette river and connected with Portland by an electric street railway stands the first capital of Oregon, Oregon City, the stronghold of the Hudson Bay Company, which aided England in so nearly wrenching that vast territory from the United States.
This quaint old town is rapidly taking on the marks of age. The warehouse of that mighty fur company stands at the wharf, weather beaten and silent. No busy throng of trappers, traders and Indians awaken its echoes with [158] barter and jest. No fur loaded canoe glides down the river. ”

“ On the east side of the Willamette, at the falls, the land is claimed by Dr. John McLaughlin, who laid out Oregon City in the year 1 842. The many advantages presented for the growth and prosperity of a manufacturing city is mani fest to the most casual observer. We are informed that where Oregon City now stands, it was, three years ago, a dense forest of fir and underbrush. The march of improvement has been with gigantic stride. ”

“ And that is the way Portland got its appropriate name.
The town started slowly, and its rate of growth for the first three years was scarcely noticeable. Oregon City was the head center of all the Americans; the seat of government, the saw and the grist mill; and Vancouver did not invite and encourage settlers at that point. Men came and looked, and then passed on up the valley, or out into Tualatin plains, and took land for farms. ”

“ It is one of the most beautiful localities I have seen in Oregon—on the right bank of the Willamette, with beautiful shade trees, neat cottages, not cramped or huddled together, but with ample spaces for gardens—with a fine view of the woods, which, in a vista of twenty miles, surround it—and, in the background, with the bold slope of the Cascades, renders it one of the most beautiful sites for a city to be found in Oregon. It is not only the political center of Oregon, but it is also destined to become a point of great manufacturing importance. ”

“ Another flouring-mill; a paper-mill, for the manufacture of coarse and printing paper; a lumber-mill, machine-shops, and other industries, show the business resources of the place, which, although the oldest town in Oregon, is yet only a small one.
Oregon City, like Portland, has a good number of churches—Methodist, Episcopal, Catholic, Baptist, and Congregational. A seminary, and graded public school, besides two or three private schools, furnish educational facilities. A Government Land Office is located here, where the lands for the northern portion of the State are entered. ”

“ As a man I am glad to claim him as the first home builder in Oregon. With as much right to locate his home on the banks of the Willamette where and when he did and call it a city, as I had to choose mine on the to me always beautiful hills five miles south of Salem; where I believed, when I located, there would be a village some day. His personal right to home in Oregon up to June 15, 1846, was equal to mine or any American and he resigned his place in the H. B. Co. and moved his family to Oregon City before the treaty of joint occupancy was abrogated. ”

“ Without reference to any person’s right or claim, he employs a surveyor to run out the plat; and as a bill was before the Senate of the United States to grant to every white male inhabitant a mile square, he has a mile run out to suit his views, and lays out a town plat at the falls, and calls it Oregon City. ”

“ Oregon City has never lost this characteristic of a floating population looking for a place to settle.
Among the emigrants of 1843 who settled in Oregon City were Gen. M. M. McCarver, the founder of Burlington, Iowa, who, in trying to locate the future great city of Oregon missed Portland by about ten miles; James A. Athey and family settled on the west side somewhere beyond Wanaxka's village, where with a turning lathe he manufactured the first furniture made in Oregon ”

“ And when the great caravan reached Oregon City six months afterwards, it found an American Government in operation, with officials to give directions, with records of lands already taken up, and with laws authorizing the new-comers to go out and select their homesites and have them duly recorded and protected. The infant Provisional Government was literally a god-send to the settlers, the incoming immigrants, and to the Canadians as well; and too much honor can never be given the men who organized that government. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They have, bee-like, been hived up in Oregon City during the winter, and are now swarming, to the entire satisfaction of the first occupants of the hive, it not being wide and large enough for such an unexpected increase. The last immigration, numbering about a thousand, are generally pleased with the country, and are setting about their spring work with becoming spirit and fortitude.
The Indians of this lower country, whose national honor and dignity are laid in the dust, are looking upon the rapid growth and increased strength of the whites with sorrowful countenances and sad hearts. ”

“ Sailors' Diggings has lapsed back to nature. Pacific City, located near the mouth of the Columbia, once aspired to be the metropolis of the Oregon country. It is no more. Monticello, on the Cowlitz, is but a memory. Santiam City on the Santiam River, a few miles above its mouth, has passed from the memory of man. What of Cincinnati, which once aspired to be the state capital? It too, has passed. Zena and Bloomington, Jennyopolis and Marysville, Starr's Point and Calapooya, Umpqua City and the Dardanelles live only in the memory of the pioneers. ”

“ Paul; breeder of thoroughbred horses; compositor and pioneer city editor of the Morning Oregonian.
Ireland left the Oregonian to found the Oregon City Enterprise, having in mind promoting the interests of Oregon City in connection with the railroad then projected but not built, which has become the main line of the Southern Pacific through the Willamette Valley.
The new publisher had in mind also, of course, the idea of making an independent living and getting out of the employee class. ”

“ After 1840 the place grew as a political and trade center. According to Mrs. Mary Waller Hall, daughter of the Reverend Alvin F. Waller, who was one of the missionary party which came to Oregon on the Lausanne and settled at Oregon City in June, 1840, the first apple tree in that place grew in the lot where the Methodist church was first built, from seed that her mother threw outdoors after she had been preparing dried apples for cooking. Oregon City post office was established March 29, 1847, with David Hill first postmaster. ”

“ The period between frontier and civilization is always an interesting one. The Oregon Sepectator, coming in February, 1846, six months before the Alta Californian, indicates to some slight degree the relative importance of these two frontier regions. M. P. Deady accredits Oregon City with being the first metropolis on the Pacific Coast [1] but the spectacular growth of California during the gold days detracts from the period when their achievements were more nearly alike. ”

“ The unveiling of a tablet at Oregon City on August 9th to mark the site where The Oregon Spectator, the first newspaper in American territory west of the Rocky Mountains was issued on February 5, 1846, seventy-three years and seven months before, was an interesting feature of the joint programme of the National and State Editorial Associations at their meetings in Portland on August 8-10, 1919.
At the time The Spectator was started the difficulties confronting such an enterprise were very great. Then Oregon City had a population of less than five hundred. ”

“ Oregon City had hitherto been the only centre of commercial or political importance, but in 1850 two off-shoots appeared in the newspaper line—one at Milwaukie and the other at Portland, called respectively the Star and the Oregonian. The Star, edited by J. O. Waterman, Esq., afterwards removed to Portland, and became the Times; but the Oregonian has always been a fixture in Portland. Its first editor was Thos. J. Dryer, afterwards consul to the Sandwich Islands. Following close upon those came the Statesman, established first at Oregon City by A. Bush, Esq., and removing to Salem in 1853. ”

“ The American settler, gaining courage and following the example and the track of the American missionaries with their wives, winds his way over the mountains and through the desert and barren plains down the Columbia River and through the Cascade Mountains,—weary, way-worn, naked, and hungry. In one instance, with his rifle upon his [Pg 314] shoulder, and his wife and three children mounted upon the back of his last ox, he plods his weary way through Oregon City, and up the Wallamet, to find his future home ”

“ It is the only county that has had or could have a "Centennial" celebration of its founding and exis- tence as an American community; and it is the only place where British guns were trained to fire on American interests in Oregon. Its chief city, Astoria, is the outpost and sentinel holding the keys to the gate, to protect the name, fame and vast interests of Oregon and the great Columbia river valley. ”

“ The settlers were left in suspense as to their claims for some two years. By the Donation Act of September 27, 1850, each family settled in Oregon was entitled to a section and each unmarried man to a half-section. The reservation of sections 16 and 36 for schools was reaffirmed, and these public lands of the people of the territory were supplemented by a grant of two townships, and the unsold remnant of the "Oregon City claim," to aid in the establishment of a university. The special liberality to Oregon settlers was continued down to 1855. ”

“ Conceiving it to be proper at this session to establish the seat of government, according to the fifteenth section of the organic act, which authorized the legislature at its first session, or as soon thereafter as might be expedient, to locate and establish the capital of the territory, the legislature proceeded to this duty. The only places put in competition with any chance of success were Oregon City and Salem. ”

“ At the present time this is confined to the Walamet valley and extends from Vancouver on the Columbia to the extreme upper settlement here are included within this district Oregon City, Salem, Ylamhill, and the Calapooya circuits.
Oregon City has a population of nearly 1000 persons there are 185 houses, with two churches, one Methodist one Cath- olic, two flouring mills, and two saw mills ”

“ Marion has a little the most capital invested, and produces a little the most, but uses $278,295 more capital in materials, while paying only $8,982 less for labor. Comp. X. Census, ii. 1007-8. The principal factories are of woollen goods. Assessed valuation considerably over six millions. Population, 9,260. Oregon City, founded by John McLoughlin in 1842, is the county seat, whose history for a number of years was an important part of the territorial history, being the first, and for several years the only, town in the Willamette Valley. ”

“ As mayor of the city, as president of the board of commissioners that constructed the water works to bring water from Bull Run lake, a few miles north of Mt. Hood, and in every trust reposed in him, Henry Failing, is the man against whom there never was a doubt, but that the
Portland on the direct main route around the world connecting all the commercial cities and nations public and every private citizen, no matter how poor or humble, would get absolute and unqualified justice in the discharge of every duty. ”

“ It has a population of four thousand, good public buildings, and the best hotel in Oregon out of Portland,—the Hotel Pendleton,—besides several others of less proportions. There are two flouring-mills, foundry and machine-shops, sash- and door- factory and planing-mill, city water-works, telephone connection with every part of East Oregon, three banks, seven churches, good common school, a Protestant and a Catholic academy, and numerous substantial and costly business houses, not the least imposing of which is the office of the East Oregonian newspaper. ”