Rogue River Valley

“ Educational and religious privileges have not kept pace with other improvements in this part of the Rogue River Valley, for the same reason that renders all mining localities inattentive to such matters—the want of a permanent population. They wait for an influx of steady-going settlers with families, a great number of whom could find delightful homes in Josephine County, at Government prices, or under the homestead law. ”

“ Out of Medford for a good many miles the route passes through a prosperous fruit-farming country, where the famous Rogue River apples are produced. The highway climbs gradually out of the valley into the foothills and as it leads up the gorge of the river, the scenery constantly takes on a wilder aspect, culminating in the virgin wilderness where thunder the Great Falls of the Rogue. ”

“ All of the Oregon waters that win their way to the sea are a tributary to the Columbia, save the short streams of the immediate coast, and the Umpqua and Rogue Rivers in southern Oregon. These both head in the Cascade Mountains and find their way to the sea through gaps in the Coast Range, and both drain large and fertile and beautiful valleys. Rogue River Valley is peculiarly attractive. With a fine climate, and kindly, productive soil, the scenery is delightful. ”

“ Josephine County embraces 2,500 square miles of the more mountainous middle division of the Rogue River Valley. Only about six thousand acres have been put under cultivation. Its population is disproportionately large, when the amount of land cultivated is considered; which only proves that its principal wealth is presumed to consist in its mines of gold, silver, and copper. Mining has been carried on with profit for about ten years ”

“ The war in Rogue River Valley had not virtually ended. "Old Sam's" band, with an escort of one hundred United States troops, was taken to the coast reservation at Siletz. Chiefs "John" and "Limpy," with a large number of the most active warriors, who had followed their fortunes during all these struggles, still held out and continued their depredations in the lower Rogue River country and in connection with the Indians of Curry County. ”

“ But limited to these pioneer transportation facilities, the trade and population of all this region must forever stand still. There are in what is known as the "Rogue River valley," of which Jacksonville, Ashland, Talent, Medford and Gold Hill are trading points, about a million and a quarter acres of fine agricultural, timber, mineral and grazing lands, and of which in 1863, not more than one-tenth had been taken up by actual settlers. The pioneer farmers saw the necessity and the immense benefits to be gained from a railroad which should pass through their valley from ”

“ The winter of 1852-'53 was distinguished for—so far as the memory of the oldest inhabitants recalled—its unprecedented deep fall of snow.
Rogue River Valley is rimmed around on all sides by high ranges of mountains. These mountain ranges were rendered impassable for pack trains or other modes of transportation. The supply of provisions in the mines grew less and less, until it was nearly exhausted. [85] Flour and beef, the staples of the miners' diet, went up to a dollar a pound and more; salt was worth nearly its weight in gold. ”

“ They seldom have horses, and if they take or kill an animal in their attacks, (which they endeavor to do as much as to take the lives of the men,) they afterwards cook and eat it, making a great feast.
South of the Rogue's River Valley is the Chesty Mountain, a single, and almost bald and barren ridge. To the right of the California trail it bears a little to the South, and interlocks with the Mountains on the coast. The Northern base is covered with timber; the summit and Southern side, in many places, with large boulders of granite. The distance across is six miles. ”

“ General Lane encamped on Rogue River, while the Indians selected a strong and almost inaccessible position, high up, and just under the perpendicular cliffs of Table Rock, to await the arrival of Superintendent Palmer and Agent Culver.
At the commencement of hostilities, the people of Rogue River Valley were sadly deficient in arms and ammunition, many of the settlers and miners having traded their arms to the Indians, who were much better equipped for war than their white neighbors. ”

“ Cow Creek Cañon, so winding that thirty-five miles of track had to be laid to attain twelve miles of actual distance, abounds with wild and beautiful scenery. From the valley of the Umpqua, the railroad passes into that of the Rogue river, in Josephine county. This county is equally famed for its natural beauty, its healthful climate and the wonderful productiveness of its soil. Grains, fruits and vegetables of every description, yield prodigiously, and their quality is not to be surpassed. ”

“ When they meet there is an "irrepressible conflict," the details of which we can not always reconcile with the Golden Rule. The tribes who took part in these several wars in southern Oregon were the Rogue Rivers, Modocs, Klamaths, Shastas, and Umpquas. The only honest acquisition of the Rogue River Indians was their name. On account of the thieving and treacherous habits of the people of that tribe, the river which flows through the valley was called by the early French trappers "Riviere aux Coquin," the river of rogues. ”

“ Passing through a country where the soil is a reddish clay, clothed with groves of oak, manzanita, laurel, and pine, we come at last to the Rogue River, the most beautiful of mountain-born streams. Quite near the river, on the stage-road, the traveler finds a neat hotel, with garden attached, looking so home-like, in conjunction with its beautiful surroundings, that the temptation to stop over for a day, and enjoy the peace and pleasantness of the place, is almost irresistible—to us, quite so. ”

“ Out of its ideal loneliness there were but two known ways, and both were worth a man’s best effort. Down the river one might drive a band of cattle, bring in a loaded pack train, single file against the wall. That was a twelve days’ trip. Up through the defiles at the west a man on foot might make it out, provided he knew each inch of the Secret Way that scaled False Ridge.
It was spring, the time of greening ranges and the coming of new calves. Soft winds dipped and wantoned with Lost Valley, in the Cañon Country shy flowers, waxen, heavy-headed on thin stems, clung to the rugged walls. ”

“ The distance between the fore side and the Corner is about a mile, and between these two points may be found the wealth, culture, and respectability of the township.
There is abundance of thrift, with very little “brag” about Cleverly. Rogue’s River turns a paper mill, a woollen mill, and a nail factory. Every season a vessel is launched from the ship-yard, and every winter the academy is well filled with students ”

“ About a mile from Tintagel, along the hilly road leading to Boscastle, and passing the wonderful little Bossiney cove with its elephant-shaped rock, there is a small rapid stream which winds through the Rocky Valley and falls like a torrent at low tide into the sea. The Rocky Valley, with its three huge boulders, its narrow walk now leading to the side of the stream and now mounting far above it, and ending only where the iron cliffs beetle above the roughest of bays, is one of the most sublime spectacles that Nature has to display in that enchanted region. ”

“ The hills by the great Valley River are a quiet country, sodded deep, with here and there an open grove like those in which the dreamers wandered with a garland of meadowsweet, or the fauns piped when the world was young. Through them, now and then, a little stream goes laughing, fringed with bulrushes and beds of calamus and fragrant mint, a narrow stream that runs chuckling through the stiff sod and spreads dimpling over the road on a bed of white sand, for all the world like a dodging sprite of the wood who laughs suddenly in some sunlit corner. ”

“ It has many solid brick edifices and many pretty cottages on its gentle slopes and rounded hills, overlooked by the great mountains. The view from any point of vantage of orchards and vineyards and semi-tropical gardens, with the wide sky-line of noble and snow-clad hills, is exceedingly attractive. The region is watered by the Santa Ana River and Mill Creek, but the main irrigating streams, which make every hill-top to bloom with vegetation, come from the Bear Valley Reservoir. ”

“ Wheat grown at Fort Vermilion is harder than grain of the same variety grown in Ontario. He explained that the river bottom proper only consists of points or flats in the bottom of the bed of the river, which “bottom” is practically about two miles in width, whereas, what is properly called Peace river valley, is in reality a broad tract of country. When you once get on to the height of land, this so-called “valley” covers three hundred miles in width, and extends from Rocky mountains on to Lake Athabaska. ”

“ It stretches from the Wind River Mountains on the north to the Uintas on the south, and is bounded westwardly by the Wyoming Range, and on the east merges into the Laramie Plains. The drainage exit is through the Uintas, as noted, by means of the canyons heading at Flaming Gorge. There are here opportunities for extensive farming by irrigation. The only other chance for agriculture on the river, except Wonsits Valley, Brown’s Park, and a few minor places, is below Black Canyon, in the stretches I have called the alluvial and the canyon-valley divisions. ”

“ Above Rogers Pass, Bear Creek Valley widens out in a wild and interesting landscape. Great precipices descend sheer from Mt. Cheops and enormous masses of naturally quarried stone lie at its base; darkly wooded buttresses extend from the mountains to the north, silver cascades slip from great heights to the valley below. In the floor of the valley itself stand prodigious islands of rock, whole brotherhoods of spruce growing out of the scant soil on their summits. ”

“ There is a number of bays, south of the Columbia, where it is said good pleasant situations can be had, and a harbor about 20 miles south of Rogue River that is very large with no bar, and that any sized vessel can go in, and that there is a large amount of good land on two rivers that emty into the bay, and that there is Oister beds in the bay, has been lately discovered. The country is said to be large enough to support a very large town, and that they can get a good road to the mining country on Rogue River. ”

“ Indians have been hauling rock all winter for the dam. The canal, when completed, will be ten or fifteen miles long and will irrigate about 5,000 acres of the Milk river valley lands south of the river. These lands will grow excellent crops of grain and hay.
“A new enterprise that will be commenced this summer (1899) is a big reservoir on Warm Springs creek in the Little Rockies. This reservoir will cover 160 acres of land and will have an average depth of eighteen feet. It is designed to furnish a supply of water for irrigating purposes in the southern part of the reservation. ”

“ Ashley led his band up the North Platte, about on the track of Robert Stuart's eastward journey from Astoria of 1812-13, named the Sweetwater Branch, and passed over to Green River Valley, an inviting basin surrounded by high mountains, the Wind River range on the north, and on the south the point where the Green, then commonly called the Colorado, Spanish River, or the Seedskedee, enters the Uinta range by Flaming Gorge, the first of the thousand miles of canyons now celebrated, which enclose the river and, together with the rush of descending waters, make travelling by it hazardous. ”

“ In Ellicott's Puget Sound, MS., 20, he makes the mistake of confounding it with Rio San Roque or the Columbia. Grover, in Pub. Life, MS., 13–15, 18–19, mentions a map of French origin and some antiquity, whereon the Klamath and Rogue rivers are united and called 'Rouge Clamet,' or Red Klamath. The author of the map could hardly have called the Rogue River red had he ever seen it, as it is of a beautiful blue color. ”

“ The Umqua River runs through the middle of the Valley, receiving numerous tributaries, from the neighboring Mountains. It is a steam sufficiently large for navigation; but the great rapidity of its current, will probably always prevent it from being useful for that purpose.—The Valley is diversified with woodland and prairies; but the prairies occupy the greater portion, the timber being principally along the water courses and on the bordering Mountains. The prairies have a good soil, and are covered with a most excellent kind of grass. There is a great deal of fall in the smaller streams ”

“ The hay was mostly gathered in, but the smell of it still lingered on the meadows, and perfumed the wind, which sung a low melody among the leaves of the hedges. Along the vale of the Roch, to the left, lay a succession of manufacturing villages, with innumerable mills, collieries, farmsteads, mansions, and cottages, clustering in the valley, and running up into the hills in all directions, from Rochdale to Littleborough, a distance of three miles. ”

“ The formation of the whole country is a succession of basins and divides. Ensued another twelve miles' descent, which placed us in sight of Ruby Valley, and a mile beyond carried us to the station.
Ruby Valley is a half-way house, about 300 miles from Great Salt Lake City, and at the same distance from Carson Valley. It derives its name from the small precious stones which are found like nuggets of gold in the crevices of primitive rock. The length of the valley is about 100 miles, by three or four broad, and springs are scattered in numbers along the base of the western mountains. ”