Oregon

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We would not be subjected to all the innumerable and indescribable tortures of a journey to Oregon for all the soil its savage hunters ever wandered over. All the writers and travelers agree in representing Oregon as a vast extent of mountains, and valleys, of sand dotted over with green, and cultivable spots. Russia has her Siberia, and England has her Botany Bay, and if the United States should ever use a country to which to banish its rogues and scoundrels, the utility of such a region as Oregon will be demonstrated. ”

“ The scenery in Oregon is varied, romantic, picturesque, and grand. There is certainly nothing to equal it in North America, East of the Rocky Mountains; and, although much has been said of the beauty and grandeur of the scenery of Switzerland, we doubt if any thing can be there found to equal it; taking into view the rich, extensive, and flowery plains, surrounded by tall and heavy forests of ever-green, watered by many large and living streams, flowing sometimes smooth and gentle, then rapid and again precipitating, in broad and heavy. ”

“ Oregon was a fine country in my early days—a park on a large scale, that could not be surpassed even by artificial culture. It mattered not at what point immigrants or travelers entered this western shore of America, at each of its thresholds a scene of beauty awaited them. Before the Anglo-Saxon race penetrated the Rockies there was no civilization in the country that is worth mention. It was in its natural state of beauty, romantic and grand, with its endless prairies, streams and forests and wild animals of all kinds for the use of man. ”

“ I say the man is alive, full grown, and listening to what I say, who will yet see the Asiatic commerce traversing the North Pacific ocean—entering the Oregon river—climbing the western slope of the Rocky Mountains—issuing from its gorges—and spreading its fertilizing streams over our wide extended Union! ”

“ A country that has the Rocky Mountains for its eastern wall, the Pacific Sea for its western barrier; whose interior mountains are teeming with treasure; whose soil is seldom hardened by frost; down whose coasts sail no icebergs; whose wharves front those of China and Japan, and whose people are full of the intellectuality of the nineteenth century, will not pause nor hesitate on the road to wealth, learning, literature, or art. Already Oregon has furnished the world a poet, whose mountain minstrelsy echoes from foreign shores. ”

“ Whereas the people of Oregon, now occupying one of the most beautiful and interesting portions of the globe, are placed in the most critical and responsible position ever filled by men, owing, as they do, important duties to themselves, to their country, to posterity, and to mankind, as the founders of a new government and a young nation ”

“ May Oregon flourish by receiving constant additions to her vigorous and industrious people, whose efforts, in scarcely any other place in the wide world so certain of a due return, may make her waste places plain, and cause her wildernesses to rejoice and blossom as the rose! ”

“ Oregon has it, and it is to the pioneer spirit that Oregon owes it.
Oregon is curiously faithful to those who redeemed it from the wilderness. Since 1856 the population of the state has multiplied five-fold. Every country and every race have contributed to the expansion; but the forces which started with the earlier years have continued to dominate. Habits planted at the beginning still rule the land. A thousand influences have intruded themselves, but they have bent to the conditions which existed before them. ”

“ What there is in the territory of Oregon to tempt our national cupidity, no one can tell. Of all the countries on the face of the earth, it is one of the least favored of heaven. It is the mere riddling of creation. ”

“ For great was the Oregon opportunity to the nation and the Lewis and Clark expedition was the key that opened it. All honor from the nation at large is due to those who made this national opportunity and seized it. The possession of the Pacific coast was the corollary and sequel to the Oregon movement; but the Oregon movement itself was corollary to nothing less than the spirit and vigor of the American people and their foothold upon this continent. ”

“ But, thank God and the energy of a free people, the country, with all its untold wealth and prospective grandeur, is ours, and to-day, as we hear the lightning tap of intelligence, from the Old World to Oregon, we have not one solitary regret that thirty of the best and most active years of our life have been spent, in contending publicly and privately, by day and by night, in season and out of season, against that influence. ”

“ The sons of Oregon today are tall and sturdy, and the complexion of the daughters is faintly like that of the native rose—a hue gained from living and playing in a pleasant outdoors. Will the sons of the impending industrial age be shorter and shrewder, and the daughters dependent for their beauty upon commodities sold in drug-stores; and will Oregonians become less appreciative of nature and rooted living and more avid and neurotic in the pursuit of wealth? These are some of the questions and misgivings in the minds of native Oregonians, including some of those who wrought the Oregon Guide. ”

“ But to conclude this portion of our subject by summing up, in short, the advantages and disadvantages which the Territory of Oregon possesses, in comparison with other countries, or rather, with portions of the United States. We suppose its principal advantages, for instance, over the Valley of the Mississippi, to be, in climate, in its situation for Commerce, in its water power, in its forest of gigantic trees, in the purity of its waters, and in the vastness and beauty of its scenery. In all of these it is certainly superior. ”

“ It is proper that this house should stand here in perpetual memory of its original builder and owner—a man who stands supreme as the first, the greatest, of Oregon's citizens. It is the one house in Oregon which typifies the old and binds together the old and the new — the days of heroic Oregon and the days of the greater Oregon of today. ”

“ Oregon today is still the most unspoiled and most uncluttered spot in America — partly because the gold rushes of California and Alaska left it undisturbed. Soon, perhaps, it will be changed by the coming of Power, the inrolling of immigration from the dust bowl, the devastation of timbercutting and forest fires, and the boosting activities of chambers of commerce. ”

“ Henceforth in South and North, as well as West, the men whose eyes were fixed on the future whose interests were higher than cotton or the tariff, whose imagination had been kindled by the vision of a great nation stretching from ocean to ocean, more and more gathering to its broad embrace the commerce of the European world with that ancient and mysterious East, were the tireless champions of Oregon. ”

“ For, if after a long toilsome climbing over rocky declivities a pleasanter part of the way is reached, and the weary toilers are led to hope for easier travel, just here, at any turn in the road, the dreadful savage might suddenly make his appearance. Such was the dark picture the journey overland to Oregon presented to the men and women of the frontier, who yet restlessly waited for their own chance to try it. ”

“ Oregon, California and New Mexico are all thrown into our hands inviting us to send into that vast region the missionary, the school teacher and the pious layman to preach and labor for God and His church ; there are our mountains and rivers of gold and to them our Eastern population are directing their course and pouring in by multitudes ; in a very few years this newly acquired territory may accommodate a population as large as that which the whole country now sustains ; there will be the wealth and the people and thence will emanate our laws and the great controlling influence. ”

“ Be that as it may, Oregon, as a field of operations for the friends of science and religion, is daily rising in importance, as far as the increase of population is concerned. The original inhabitants are vanishing like the dew of the morning; and far and near may be seen the marks of civilization ”

“ He held in his strong grasp for 45 years the most powerful thing in Oregon—the public opinion of that broad commonwealth and of a wide fringe around it.
Does not such a man go on living beyond the grave? Does not such a personality continue in perpetuity? ”

“ The Oregon Territory, when first the term came into use, embraced the same somewhat undefined region which in these Pacific States histories I have denominated the Northwest Coast; namely, the lands lying between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, and extending northward indefinitely from the forty-second parallel of latitude. Later the name Oregon was applied to a narrower area.
In surface and climate it is varied; in resources limitless, though its possibilities are little known. There is grand and beautiful scenery in every portion of it ”

“ Eighteen hundred and forty finds Oregon with her little population all active and busy, laboring and toiling to provide the necessaries of life—food and raiment. And if a man did not wear the finest of broadcloth, his intelligence and good conduct secured him a cordial welcome to every house or shanty in the country among the American or French settlers and missions. This was an innovation upon Hudson’s Bay Company customs, and a violation of aristocratic rules sought to be enforced by foreign influences and sustained by the missionaries then in the country. ”

“ At Forest Grove, reside some of the earliest settlers of the valley—persons who have seen their children, born in Oregon, grow up to manhood's estate, and have sent them back to "the States" to learn something of an older civilization than that of the mountains and plains of Washington County. There is always a great charm in hearing the annals of a State from the lips of its founders. Many walking cyclopedias of Oregon history belong to the population of the Tualatin Plains, and to their influence is due much of the good order and good morals of the community. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At last, amidst the multitude of oppugnant issues and factions, of the contending claims to life and liberty of men—white, red, copper-colored, and black—of the schemings of parties, and the fierce quarrels of politicians, democrats, national and sectional, whigs, know-nothings, and republicans, Oregon is enthroned a sovereign state! ”

“ Therefore, the immigrants and pioneers of Oregon, men and women of the Anglo-Saxon race, who have given to the western shore of the continent its greatness, deserve the greatest praise, honor and reward for their valor and endurance in raising the Oregon region to its present rank of greatness in so short a time. It is marvelous. It surpasses imagination of man. ”

“ Among the fir-clad hills and broad rich valleys of Oregon, the bucolic instinct still lingers. Of the 100,000 people who constitute the permanent population of Oregon, fully four-fifths of them dwell not in town or village, but upon farms. Yet the commercial metropolis of Oregon—Portland-on-Wallamet—is the second town in importance on the Pacific coast. Next to San Francisco, the capital and commerce of the Pacific slope will centre in this solid and reliable Oregon town. ”

“ We have now at the end of the century a very different Oregon from the Oregon of the "fifties"; but it has been wrought out by evolution, not by revolution. The Oregon of today is the true child of the earlier Oregon, with the family likeness strong, with the family traits predominating. The pioneer makes, now as ever, the spirit of the country. Others have prospered, in a material sense, more largely than the pioneer. ”