Southern Oregon

“ Grant County, embracing that central portion of Eastern Oregon where the Blue Mountains are highest, and extending southward to the southern boundary of the State, comprises altogether some of the most remarkable features of the whole country, including a portion of the wonderful "lake region." It was first settled in 1862, by a mining population; since which time it has contributed ten millions to the wealth of the world. The mining-camps are all on the head-waters and forks of the John Day River ”

“ By incredible effort and much suffering and property loss, the way was opened. The next year many again traveled it to avoid the hostile Cayuse Indians on the upper Columbia. But with all this travel through Southern Oregon, none re- mained to settle it.
It was not until 1848, the first white men ventured into the country to make settlement. But these were only a few cour- ageous settlers who settled choice land claims in the Yoncalla and Looking Glass Valleys, though it is believed that as early as 1847 Warren N. Goodell located upon the land now the site of the town of Drain. ”

“ As the river was long known as the Oregon, so the vast northwest territory of which it was one of the most prominent geographical features acquired the name of "the Oregon country" or "the Oregon territory." The region thus designated originally comprised all the land between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, from the vaguely delimited border of the great Spanish Southwest to the equally vague delimitations of British America and the Russian possessions on the north. By the Treaty of Florida in 1819, the southern boundary was fixed at the 42nd parallel ”

“ The isolated Oregon community in the early fifties was scattered from the headwaters of the Willamette to the southern shores of Puget Sound. Soon there were lone settlers along the trail to California and outlying hamlets at the newly discovered gold diggings. A thin line of settlements at least five hundred miles in length was thus exposed to the depredations of infuriated tribes. For it was hemmed in on the landward side by a broad semicircular belt of Indian territory. ”

“ Louis to Western Missouri had barely cast off and got into the stream when I found myself among men who were talking of Oregon, some with means to make their way. and others, like myself, seeking opportunity to work their way. The large majority of heads of families who crossed the plains in wagons in 1843 and 1844 were from the southern rather than eastern and northern States. ”

“ The agricultural counties of the Willamette Valley rank, Linn first, Yamhill second, Lane third, and Marion fourth, Clackamas ranking least. The coast and Columbia-River counties fall below the interior ones. In the southern part of western Oregon there is also much less wealth than in the W 7 illamette Valley, Douglas county, how ever, leading Jackson. In eastern Oregon, Umatilla leads the other counties in per capita wealth, Grant, Union, W r asco, Lake, and Baker following in the order named. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The truth of history, and justice to all the actors in the great drama of life to be recorded, must be the unwavering guide.
The history of Oregon has been so fruitful a field for writers of every description that it is safe to say that more pages, if not more books, have been written about this region, its discovery, its name, its missionaries, Indians, the trials and sufferings of its immigrants, its novel provisional government and its latter day new laws and politics, than about all the other states west of the Ohio river. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Early in the spring of 1843, or as soon as the grass began to grow, promptly, without preconcert, but as if by appointment, emigrants from every part of Missouri and the neighboring states were on the roads to the usual rendezvous in the vicinity of Independence. Their wagons were drawn by two or three or five yokes of oxen; on the covers were the words "For Oregon," and their immense herds of cattle filled the highways. Many of them had been neighbors at home, and often families of brothers, with their wives and little ones, constituted a colony. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Only a small portion of those territories laid down on the maps as Oregon and California, are at all calculated for settlement: much the largest portions of both, are nothing more than barren wastes, which can yield little or nothing to the support of animal life. The valuable portion of Oregon lies between the Blue Mountains and the Coast; and the valuable portion of California, between the California Mountains and the Coast. The principal advantages that those countries possess over the Western States, are a mild and very healthy climate, and an excellent, commercial situation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Possessing, so far as I could learn, a salubrious climate, a productive soil, and all the other natural dements of wealth, and by its position in reference to divers most important channels of traffic, as well as its configuration of coast, and variety of native productions, being admirably adapted to become a great commercial country, I foresaw that Oregon must, eventually, become a favorite field of modern enterprise, and the abode of civilization. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The country will be settled, and that speedily, from some quarter, and it depends very much upon the speedy action of congress what that population shall be, and what shall be the fate of the Indian tribes in that territory. It may be thought that Oregon is of little importance ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ The east coast lines had been followed from Hudson's bay south to the Straits of Magellan, and thence along the west coast north to the Bering sea, and no strait found. The result of this conclusion was, to start explorations overland, first from Canada and afterward from Missouri territory, which finally developed the emigration to Oregon. And as this fact became fixed in the minds of men, we see the then ruling powers of the world taking steps to establish claims to the country by more open and assertive action. ”