The beginning of the lumbering industry in the Great Northwest, on Portland townsite, more than fifty years ago, and now developed into a business aggregating in the same territory one hundred million dollars annually California & North Eastern from Weed in the state of California to Klamath Falls in Oregon, 86 miles. Central Railroad of Oregon from Union Junction to Union, 3 miles; and from Valley Junction to Cove, 11 miles; all in Union county. Columbia River & Oregon Central from Arlington to Condon, 45 miles. Coos Bay, Roseburgh & Eastern, Marshfield to Myrtle Point, 26 miles. Des Chutes, from DesChutes Junction to Bend, 120 miles. Independence & Monmouth, from Independence to Monmouth and Airlie, 16 miles. Malheur Valley, from Malheur Junction to Vale, 24 miles. Mount Hood, Hood River to Dee, 16 miles. Northwestern, from Blake Junction to Homestead, 58 miles. Oregon & Washington from Portland to Huntington, and Branches. 827 miles, with a total capitalization of 113 million dollars. Oregon Short Line in Oregon, Huntington to Nyssa, 25 miles. Oregon & California, from Portland to the state line; and from Portland to Corvallis, 412 miles. Spokane, Portland & Seattle, from Portland to Vancouver, 5 miles. Umatilla Central, from Pilot Rock Junction to Pilot Rock, 14 miles. United Railways, Portland to Banks, 28 miles. Oregon Electric, Portland to Eugene, 125 miles. Garden Home to Forest Grove, 20 miles. This list does not contain the mileage of the logging railroads in the state which are regarded as temporary structures, and not used by the general public. CHAPTER XX 1810-1911 AGRICULTURE HORTICULTURE ANIMAL INDUSTRIES - FARMS, FARM LANDS AND VALUES-COMMERCE-MANUFACTURES-THE STATE FAIR-THE LEWIS AND CLARK EXPOSITION. Cultivation of the soil for food in Oregon was commenced at Oak Point on the south side of the Columbia river in the year 1810 by Capt. Nathan Winship of Boston, Mass. Captain Winship and his brother Jonathan had decided to establish a trading post on the Columbia river, and this point was selected for the enterprise. Here they cleared some land in May, 1810, commenced building a house and planted a garden, but on account of the annual Columbia river freshet they were forced to abandon the site and move to higher ground. In 1811 the Astor men building the Fort at Astoria in May of that year planted twelve potatoes that had been brought from New York around Cape Horn, which started the cultivation of potatoes in Oregon, and from the twelve first planted a crop of fifty bushels was produced in 1813. The first bushel of wheat was brought overland from Canada by order of Dr. John McLoughlin in 1825, and was planted that year. In 1837 Lieut. Slacum reported to the U. S. War Department that the H. B. Co. had produced on their farm near Vancouver that year 8,000 bushels of wheat, 5,500 bushels of barley, 6,000 bushels of oats, 9,000 bushels of peas, and 14,000 bushels of potatoes, besides turnips, pumpkins and other vegetables. At that time the Company had 1,000 head of beef cattle, 700 hogs, 200 sheep, 500 horses and forty yoke of working oxen, a threshing machine, a flouring mill and a distillery. Outside of the Hudson's Bay Company the first farms were opened in Marion county, Louis Bichette settling near Champoeg in 1825, Joseph Gervais near where the town of Gervais is located, in 1828, and Etienne Lucier in 1830. A number of the remnants of the Wilson Price Hunt party also settled on the prairie near Gervais and Lucier; and all of them being Canadian Frenchmen they gave the name to the neighborhood— "French Prairie," which identifies that region to this day. When Jason Lee came in 1834 he found here these Frenchmen and although they were all Catholics, and he was a Methodist, he deemed it a good place to found a mission and start the first school in the Willamette valley. These first farmers and Americans who came in 1843 and 4 prospered in raising wheat, as the H. B. Company took all they raised at a fair price. Gervais had the first orchard in the present state of Oregon, his trees having been procured from Dr. McLoughlin at Fort Vancouver; but they were all seedling apples, and not to be compared with the grafted fruit introduced by Luelling in the fall of 1847. The first market the pioneer Oregon farmers had for their wheat was the operates. After retiring from railroad work, he devoted his time to farming. In a measure he recouped his lost fortune and acquired large tracts of land near Umatilla, where he recently held 3,300 acres, which was sold to the Swift Packing House Company for a million dollars. Mr. Hunt passed away last year. JAMES J. HILL'S WORK Mr. James J. Hill did not come into the Oregon railroad field until its railroad development had been planned and fixed by those already here, or by the laws of nature. If Hill's roads over in the state of Washington could have hauled lumber to the eastern states for as low a freight rate as Harriman was hauling the same class of freight through the Columbia gateway, and paid as good dividends on his railroad shares, it is not probable that he would have crossed the Columbia with his magnificent bridge at Vancouver, or ventured into the rugged fastness of the Des Chutes canyon. But James J. Hill is a great man, one of the greatest in the nation, and he did not need a telescope to discover the great field for his energy, and the profitable employment of the great capital of which he is trustee, which lay beyond the Des Chutes, and beyond the Nehalem mountains. The "North Bank Road" is a monument to the railroad genius and grim perseverance of Mr. Hill. It is literally a rock road for a hundred miles, either carved out of the basaltic cliffs or built upon the rock foundations filled in from waste rock blasted out of the roadbed. ELECTRIC RAILWAYS Railroads operated by electric power, other than the street railways of towns and cities, were introduced in Oregon in 1906, by the construction of the Oregon Electric from Portland to Salem, with a branch to Forest Grove. The owners of that line have since extended the road to Eugene; and also constructed another line from Portland to Banks in Washington county, with the intention of extending the line to Tillamook Bay. Several other electric propositions have been incorporated. OTHER RAILROADS Other railroads, and railroads now in process of construction in Oregon, are as follows, for an account of which this work is indebted to the Report of the Oregon Railroad Commissioners for the year 1911. And it is no more than a truthful record of contemporaneous history to say, that the present Board of Railroad Commissioners-Clyde B. Aitchison, Thos. K. Campbell and Frank J. Miller, and their efficient secretary, H. H. Corey, have, as such officials, rendered services to the State of incalculable value, and fully vindicated the confidence placed in them by the people of Oregon. Astoria & Columbia River railroad, Portland to Astoria, 92 miles. Beaverton & Willsburgh, from Beaverton to Washington county to Willsburgh in Multnomah county, 10 miles. |