Willamette Valley

“ There are, however, large tracts of fine prairie, suitable for cultivation, and ready for the plough.
The Willamette valley is supposed to be the finest portion of the country, though I am of opinion that many parts of the southern portion of the territory will be found far superior to it. The largest settlement is in the northern part of the valley, some fifteen miles above the falls. About sixty families are settled there, the industrious of whom appear to be thriving. They are composed of American missionaries, trappers, and Canadians, who were formerly servants of the Hudson’s Bay Company. ”

“ Bill saw the Willamette Valley open up ahead just as he reached Cottage Grove. It was the first real open country that he had seen since leaving the Medford Valley. The other valleys had been so narrow that they looked entirely too small to amount to much from the airman’s point of view, but Willamette was wide and had numerous farms, orchards and open spaces. It was a real valley, but after their flight from San Francisco to Roseburg the pilots knew that such wide-open spaces would seldom be found in the Northwest woods. ”

“ We have a right to be proud of the Willamette Valley with its varied resources, productiveness, beauty and climatic con- ditions. It would be hard to duplicate it anywhere on earth, yet it is almost in a state of nature. When we consider the productiveness of this valley, one's mind can hardly grasp its possibilities. To secure the proper results will require hard work intelligently applied. Its development will be largely aided by the fact that it has a navigable river flowing substan- tially throughout its entire length. ”

“ I do not know that a stronger fact could be adduced in proof of the still wonderful fertility of this Willamette Valley than that it should be possible this year to reap a good crop, grown on ground that was neither reaped, plowed, nor rolled—nothing done but to cast abroad the seed and harrow it lightly in.
Soon after passing Lebanon, eighteen miles from here, we reached the foot-hills of the Cascades; round, swelling, sandy buttes; sometimes covered with short pasture-grass; generally bearing a growth of oak-brush, sprinkled with firs of a moderate size. ”

“ The only immediate hope of such a wake-up and shake-up of the Willamette Valley as will stir its latent forces and bring the country into line with modern industrial life and spirit, lies in the possibility of effort from the outside. The valley will do little for itself. The power of adaptation to new ways and new uses lies not within the present population. If the successors of the pioneer had his push and hardihood something might be expected from them ”

“ The sun sinks downward thro' the silver mist
⁠That looms across the valley, fold on fold,
And sliding thro' the fields that dawn has kissed,
⁠Willamette sweeps, a chain of liquid gold.
Trails onward ever, curving as it goes. ”

“ Their descendants in the Willamette Valley somehow did not inherit these characteristics, perhaps because life here was "easy," on account of rich soil and mild climate. It is well known that the sturdiest peoples are those which have had to struggle hard against natural disadvantages, such as those of Northern Europe. It seems not good for men and women to live without effort. Perhaps there was too much ease for the successors of the pioneers in the Willamette Valley. ”

“ At Oregon City are the falls of the Willamette, where the power of the river is harnessed for the use of many factories. A ship canal has been built around the falls. The Willamette valley is one of the most fertile and most beautiful river regions of any land, stretching southward from Portland across eight counties and occupying four million acres of rich land. It is a natural center for dairying and diversified farming. A total failure of crops has never been known. ”

“ There is land to be had in the Willamette Valley in great bodies and at small price. It would be worth the while of the Southern Pacific Railroad, since it has a great invested stake in the valley, to buy up a whole district and repeople it with a view to an experiment in industrial regeneration. It would be interesting and, we believe, vastly profitable, if there could be set in the heart of this dormant country a community of strictly modern farmers, large enough to organize the industries and to maintain the coöperative spirit of systematic agriculture. ”

“ Other countries, less favorably situated for agricultural and other forms of organized industry, take on new ways and get ahead rapidly in population and wealth, while the Willamette Valley moves along in the old grooves, being today in essentials largely what it was thirty years ago, namely, a pioneer country. ”

“ Reed and Seton returned to Astoria on the 20th of March, 1813, bringing with them a quantity of dried venison, and they described in glowing terms the wonders of the Willamette valley, and told of the abundance there of beaver, elk and deer. They also brought the news that Wallace and Halsey had built a dwelling and trading house on a great prairie, situated, according to Franchere, "about 150 miles above the mouth of the Willamette." ”

“ My own affairs, and those of many friends, both in Oregon and elsewhere, and, indeed, the successful development of this great Willamette Valley, largely depend on our convincing an unprejudiced public that Nature is on our side in the effort we are making to secure a direct and near outlet to the great world. ”

“ The warm oceanic current from Japan, flowing south along the coast, is the cause of the mild climate of western Oregon, and of the heavy and incessant rains with which it is visited. These rains, continued through the centuries, have chiselled away the mountains, and, with other geological agencies, produced the three principal valleys into which this portion of the State may be considered as divided, — the Willamette, Umpqua, and Rogue river valleys. The Willamette valley has an area of about 8000 square miles, and contains more than half the population and wealth of the entire State. ”

“ The Willamette valley, including the first plateaus of the Cascade and Coast ranges of mountains, may be said to average a width of about sixty, and a length of about two hundred miles. It is beautifully diversified with timber and prairie. Unlike our great prairies [pg. 186] east of the Rocky Mountains, those upon the waters of the Pacific are quite small ”

“ The wonderful resources of the Willamette Valley as an agricultural country attracted one of them to Washington County, where he purchased a farm, and stocked it with teams and farming implements, and started on his road to independence and wealth. ”

“ It was toward the end of this period of river greatness—but still in that period—that the westernmost of the pioneers began moving from the Mississippi Valley to the Pacific Coast; specifically, so far as most of the farmers were concerned, to the Willamette Valley in Oregon. During the 1840's, their wagon wheels dug the ruts of the Oregon Trail. In the latter years of that decade there was the California gold rush to deepen those ruts. And all through the 1850's, and after, the wagons rolled on and the ruts worked farther into the hard plain and the harder mountains. ”

“ The sentiment of the people in the whole Willamette valley is dead against that sort of thing. They know what it would mean, and they don't propose to stand for it. They're bent now solely upon having the lands occupied by good farmers. If a stranger in the valley gets stung in these days by a land speculator, it's his own fault. ”

“ At the Dalles the immigrants had still the most difficult and dangerous portion of their journey before them, there being neither a road over the rugged mountains that separated them from the Willamette Valley, nor boats in which to embark on the river. It was too late to attempt opening a wagon-road into the Willamette Valley, a distance of sixty miles of extremely rough country, and there were few facilities for constructing a sufficient number of boats to convey the families and goods to their destination. ”

“ We can agree, however, more unreservedly with another enthusiast who speaks in terms of scenic beauty and pastoral prosperity rather than square miles and population:
“A broad valley, rich, prosperous, and beautiful to look upon is the Willamette, and a valley of many moods. Neither in scenic charms nor agricultural resourcefulness is its heritage restricted to a single field. ”

“ The Willamette Valley was the first part of the Oregon Country to attract settlers, and thence they spread over the Northwest This was natural and necessary. This valley was a paradise for pioneers. Nature had endowed it with every possible attraction. ”

“ Up, up, to an altitude fearfully astonishing —the ascent is steep and difficult, but there are many such ridges of the mountains to be crossed before you can descend into the flourishing valley of the Willamette. ”

“ Eighty-five years of farming in the Willamette Valley have enforced the old-new lesson-necessity of soil conservation. This area, one of the most productive in the world, with its ages-old store of soil wealth, yielded to the pioneers immense crops during half a century. Then the dwindling return and the retarded progress of the community brought home the ancient truth that the energies which growing plants take from land, however rich, some day must be given back ”

“ It is not more than half a mile from the mouth of Pole Alley, farther to the south, where Pudding river embogues into the Willamette; it is twenty-five yards in width at the mouth. The valley up this river to the Cascade mountains, where it rises, is alternately fine prairie and timber lands, with occasional fern openings. Some of the prairies are claimed by the recent emigrants. It is finely clothed in grass, and up the river some distance there are valuable mill sites; the water is clear, and well stocked with fish. ”

“ On the west the great valley is separated from the Pacific by a low range of well timbered mountains, that give rise to numerous streams and small rivers, some of which are lately found sufficient to admit vessels. On the east it is bounded by the Cascade or President's range, everywhere abounding with white pine and cedar. The Willamette river rises in latitude 42° and runs north and empties itself into the Columbia river 85 miles above its mouth. The falls of the Willamette are about thirty miles above its mouth, and must ever add a vast interest to the country. ”

“ Only a small portion of the land being fenced, almost the whole Willamette Valley is open to travel, and covered with the herds of the settlers, some of whom own between two and three thousand cattle and horses. ”

“ The travelers coming in from their long trip across the Plains, pushed up the Willamette Valley, and, attracted by the beautiful and fertile Calapooia Valley, with its abundance of grass on its surrounding hills, and plentiful supply of water, settled there to live the peaceful life of farmers or stock raisers, with very little trouble of any kind to disturb them in their occupation of home-making. In those early days the hills, most of which are now heavily wooded, were free from timber and covered with beautiful grass. ”

“ I believe the Willamette is well worthy of more attention in the Willamette Valley, whereas the Pacific, on account of its extreme susceptibility to the brown-rot, does not appear to be a safe variety here, although when perfect it is a magnificent prune for eating fresh, and one of the very largest known. I am told that in eastern Oregon where climatic conditions keep out the brown-rot, the Pacific is proving one of the best varieties for shipping fresh. ”

“ Old friends and relatives, tried and true, have come to meet us from the Willamette valley, and their unexpected coming fills us with gratitude unspeakable/ After stopping merely to exchange greetings and gather what meagre tidings they could obtain from each end of the long and tedious road, the jaded immigrants pushed onward through the heat and dust till nightfall, when they came to a small stream, where they were compelled to halt for the night on account of the water, though the grass was poor and the cattle fared badly. ”

“ Such a community would be very useful to the country as an object lesson; and of especial service in assisting the organization of other and similar communities. We know of no better locality for such an effort than that of Southern Yamhill and Northern Polk, named in a recent writing in these columns, where a syndicate operator finds that 40,000 acres of choice and improved farm lands can be bought for a price averaging less than twenty dollars an acre.
Exploitation is what the Willamette Valley needs. It lacks no gift of nature fitting it for the home of thrift and fortune. ”