Two Years in Oregon Part 21

The prosperity of the city, which has been very great during the last few years, is solely attributable to its character of toll-gate.

Situated at the extreme northern boundary of the State, in a position which was not unsuitable when Oregon and Washington Territory were bound together, it is perfectly anomalous to suppose that the capital city of Oregon should have been there placed by deliberate intention.

As matters now stand, it is the only port in Oregon, save Astoria, to which the large grain-ships can come, and at which the deep-draught ocean-going steamers can take in and discharge their cargoes; and, very naturally, its business-men seek to perpetuate that state of affairs, regardless of the growing interest of the great country which now pays tribute to their little town. It is not easy to forget how more than one of its leading citizens, when applied to to add their signatures to a pet.i.tion to Congress in aid of the removal of the reef partially obstructing Yaquina Bay, replied, "Every dollar you get is so much taken directly from our pockets."

A further advent.i.tious help that Portland got was by being made the headquarters of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, which brought to its wharves the produce of the Columbia River traffic as well as that of the Willamette. It might be natural to bring to and to leave at Portland wharves the wheat of Western Oregon, but there seems little sense in bringing grain down the Columbia, and then up the Willamette, to be deposited in Portland, thence to be transferred partly in ships, partly in barges and river-steamers, to Astoria, where alone the loading of the ships could be completed.

The present style of the Portland and Astoria newspapers is to make very light of the Columbia bar. In fact, they boldly state that to hardly any port is so good an approach vouchsafed as to Portland; they instance London and Philadelphia, Glasgow and New Orleans, as parallel instances in position; and "The Oregonian" is never weary of singing the praises of their Tom Tiddler's ground of a city.

But it has not always been so with them. "The Astorian" stated, on the 30th of January, 1880, that there were thirty vessels off the bar, unable to enter. The same paper, on the 23d of March, 1880, published this item of news: "Pilots on the bar all agree that, unless some measures are adopted for permanent improvement of the channel, it will not be longer considered safe for vessels to enter or cross out with more than eighteen feet draught of water." "The Astorian" in the same issue also informed us that "Captain Flavel has been making personal inspections of bar-soundings, ... and is himself fully satisfied that it is only a question of very brief time, so rapid and broadcast is the shoaling process, when it will be impossible for deep vessels to cross; the North Channel, along Sand Island from the head, is filling up as fast as does the South Channel"; while "The Oregonian" told us as recently as December, 1880, that "the Gatherer, with railroad-iron for the Northern Pacific Railroad Company, was compelled to lighter four times between Baker's Bay and Kalama, at heavy expense. The Chandos, sailing from this port within the past two weeks, lightered thirteen hundred tons. The A. M. Simpson lightered eleven hundred tons; and the last departure, the Edwin Reed, getting off on a winter rain-flood, sc.r.a.ped over the shoals with all but two hundred and eighty tons of her load, the lightest lighterage of a wooden vessel for many months. The report has gone forth that to reach Portland a ship must be dragged up a hundred miles or more of river over four bad bars, and at the shipping season lighterage at enormous cost is necessary. Naturally enough, we now have no large ships."

[Sidenote: _SHIPPING ABUSES AND EXACTIONS._]

The abuses of the present system of shipping are many and great, and all on the principle of making hay while the sun shines. Hear a shipmaster who published his experiences in October last:

"On the fourth day we got two tugs and crossed the outer bar and anch.o.r.ed in Baker's Bay, where the ship had to be lightened to twenty feet and six inches draught before she could cross the inner bar and reach Astoria. This lighterage cost two dollars per ton, and had to be paid by the ship. As four other ships arrived about that time which required lightering also before they could proceed farther, we were detained at Baker's Bay for nine days, having the expense of a full crew on board all that time. The distance from outside of the outer bar to Astoria is about fourteen miles, for which the towage is $500, pilotage $192, and that was in the middle of a beautiful day, ship also using her own canvas and hawser. I believe this charge is almost equal to salvage. The pilots are hired by the owner of the tugs, who collects the pilotage, paying the pilots $100 a month for their services.... As the pilots have no boat of their own, they are obliged to go in the tugs, which are all owned by one man. I was just fourteen days from the time I anch.o.r.ed off the bar till I reached the dock where I was to discharge cargo, and for towage and pilotage alone from the bar to the dock, paid $1,009."

Portland is the Oregon headquarters of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, a corporation formed by the fertile genius of Mr.

Henry Villard in June, 1879, by the amalgamation of the Oregon Steamship Company, owning the ocean-going steamers between San Francisco and Portland, and the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, owning the river-boats plying on the Columbia and Willamette. Here are the termini of the East and West Side Railroads (originally formed by Mr.

Ben Holladay, a name very familiar to Oregon ears), but until this spring of 1881 owned and worked by the committee of European bondholders, into whose hands the lines in question fell by virtue of the securities they held. And in Portland also are the head offices in Oregon of the Scotch system of narrow-gauge railroads, now being constructed by means of Scotch capital attracted to the State by the successful working of the land-mortgage company referred to above.

It will be seen, therefore, that there are abundant reasons for predicting that a large portion of the business of Oregon will center in Portland, for many years to come, at any rate. The more cause that Portland men should welcome the development of the other portions of the State, with which in the future profitable business is certain to arise, as new industries are started, existing interests widen and strengthen themselves, and new centers of population and business find their places in the growing State. Time will show whether the sanguine hopes of the Portland people that their city will hold the virtual monopoly of the trade of the Northwest are well founded or not. There can, in my mind, be little doubt that she will have a very formidable rival in the city on Puget Sound which will spring up, as by magic, when the Northern Pacific Railroad there receives and discharges pa.s.sengers and freight. It will be an evil day for Portland when the wharves at Tacoma find the grain-ships alongside, and the cars pouring in the grain of Eastern Oregon and Washington Territory. And some little effect on her tolls will be produced when Yaquina Bay is opened, and the cars of the Oregon Pacific are there delivering the freight of Middle and Southern Oregon.

Portlanders rely on what they call the concentration of capital to pull them through. They have yet to learn the sensitiveness of the movements of their divinity--how p.r.o.ne she is to follow the current of trade to its points of receipt and delivery. And should that day ever dawn, when figures show her "supremacy" to have departed, not one single sigh will escape these valley counties, which Portland has levied tribute on, and done her best to keep in bondage till the end of time.

[Sidenote: _UP THE COLUMBIA RIVER._]

Pa.s.sing eastward from Portland up the Columbia, in one of the large and comfortable boats of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, a day's journey brings you to the Dalles. I have already mentioned how rapidly this town is growing, as the point of distribution for the greater portion of Northeastern Oregon, and the point of reception for vast quant.i.ties of grain, wool, hides, and other productions of that pastoral and agricultural country.

Taking a Willamette River boat, notice in pa.s.sing the Oswego Iron-Works, seven miles from Portland, and then the village of Milwaukee, with large and well-appointed nurseries, whence many of the orchards of the State have been supplied.

The steamer will then stop at the wharf of Oregon City, just below the great falls of the Willamette. Notice the magnificent river throwing itself over the rocky ridge which shows one or two black points of rock amid the foam of the falls. See the lofty hills on either side, clad with vegetation to their very tops, while the little town is crowded on the narrow strip down by the river on the eastern side. What a water-power is yet running to waste, though lumber-mills, flour-mills, and woolen-mills take their tribute as it pa.s.ses!

On the west side are the locks. Here the steamer crosses the river from the city, and you get a pretty view of this, one of the earliest settled towns in the State. It dates from the Hudson Bay Company's rule, and the oldest inhabitant can tell you story after story of the early days, when the meetings were held here which virtually determined the allegiance of the infant State.

Iron-ore has been prospected in plenty in these hills above the town, but waits for development.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Columbia Point below the Dalles.]

[Sidenote: _SALEM._]

Pa.s.sing up the river, the next important place we meet is Salem, the capital of the State. The State Capitol stands on elevated ground about a mile back from the river, with a large, green s.p.a.ce in front, planted with ornamental trees and shrubs. The scene from the great windows at the back is really grand, Mount Jefferson being in full view, and the line of the Cascades in ridge after ridge displayed in all their beauty. Fronting the Capitol buildings at the other side of the Park are the Court-House and offices of Marion County, also a substantial and handsome pile. On the southern side of the Capitol stand the buildings of the Willamette University.

The town of Salem is now growing. It has the advantage of a splendid water-power, called Mill Creek, which is turned to good account before it reaches the Willamette just below the city. On it are placed the Pioneer Oil-Mills, where linseed-oil and linseed-cake are produced, of excellent quality and moderate price; also a large building now used both as an implement-factory and as a flour-mill; this has lately changed hands, and it is too soon yet to speak of its success. Below this are placed the "Salem Flour-Mills" of Kinney Brothers & Co. Their brand is recognized and approved in all the markets of the world--as it ought to be, if the best of wheat turned into the best of flour, and its sale honestly and intelligently carried out, can command success.

The mills are fine buildings, fitted with the most modern and powerful machinery, and stand just on the edge of the Willamette, with a dock where the river-steamers can deliver wheat and receive flour. I believe that this last fall of 1881 they converted 600,000 bushels of wheat into flour. A switch from the Oregon and California Railroad runs from the main line to the mills on the other side, and is proving an immense convenience to the city generally as well as to the mills.

The steamboat pauses on its upward journey at Buena Vista, to take in and deliver freight for the pottery there, already extensive, and which by the excellence of its productions demonstrates that it only needs further capital and enlarged business relations to do an important share of the trade of the coast. The glaze on the ware is very good, made from a mineral earth found in the bank of the Willamette at Corvallis.

After pa.s.sing the mouth of the Santiam, the most considerable tributary of the Willamette, we stop at Albany. This is one of the best situated and most progressive towns in the State. Although with a little less than two thousand inhabitants at present, it has all the enterprise and "go" of a town in Europe of five times that number. There are here also three large flour-mills, the brands of some of which are known and prized in Liverpool, to which port cargoes are frequently sent.

Albany has a lumber-mill, foundry, twine-mill, and scutching-mill, fruit-drying works, sash and door factory, and soon will have woolen-mills also. The making of the place is the water-power of the Santiam River, brought in a ca.n.a.l for thirteen miles through the level prairie-land, but rushing through the town and supplying the mills and factories with a flow and force of water sufficient for double as many works as at present use it. The town is supplied with water for domestic purposes from the same source, of clearness and purity that it is hard to equal.

Albany has three newspapers, six churches, a very good collegiate school, and excellent common schools. It is a princ.i.p.al station on the Oregon and California Railroad, and also an important station on the Oregon Pacific, now so rapidly building, and its point of crossing the Oregon and California, and a junction for the branch line to Lebanon, away there under the slopes of the Cascades. Land in the neighborhood of the town, and indeed throughout the level portions of Linn County, ranging over an area of nearly twenty miles each way, is worth from twenty-five to sixty dollars an acre--the last sale I heard of, of one hundred and thirty-two acres, about five miles from the town, being at thirty-nine dollars an acre.

[Sidenote: _CORVALLIS AND EUGENE CITY._]

The next town we come to is our own Corvallis, appropriately named as the heart of the valley. It is indeed fitly placed as the valley starting-point seaward of the Oregon Pacific Railroad, being on the direct line east and west between Yaquina Bay, the Mount Jefferson Pa.s.s through the Cascades, Prineville, in Eastern Oregon, Harney Lake and Valley, the Malheur River and Valley, and Boise City--the meeting-place in the near future of divers transcontinental lines.

Corvallis has been too fully described in these pages to need further reference here. The commencement of energetic construction of the Oregon Pacific and the a.s.surance of its early completion have given an increased business-life to the place which impresses the visitor strongly with the idea of rapid future growth.

Continuing in our steamboat to the head of the Willamette navigation, we pa.s.s the little towns of Peoria and Harrisburg, and at last reach Eugene City. This, which is the chief town of Lane County, is blessed with a university, presided over by excellent professors, one of whom, Professor Condon, has a name and fame as a geologist far beyond the limits of his county and also of the State. I trust the time will soon come when the liberality of the Legislature of Oregon will provide the funds necessary to enable Professor Condon to complete and publish the systematic geology and mineralogy of Oregon, the materials for which are already to a large extent in his possession, the result of years of careful study and journeyings over the State.

Eugene City is a lively, pleasant little town, but has not yet attained any manufacturing or industrial development like some of the other towns in Oregon. This is to come.

Leaving the river for the railroad, we journey up to Roseburg, the capital of Douglas County, and the southern terminus of the Oregon and California line. No town can be more prettily placed, really at the head of the great valley country, with the vast mountain-forms behind frowning on the traveler who dares attempt to thread their pa.s.ses. As I have said, the Douglas County people trust to get a railroad outlet from Roseburg down to Coos. I hope they will succeed, and so open to ocean-transit the productions of a vast and fertile country.

Turning north again as far as Corvallis, we may there take the West-side Railroad and journey along the western side of the Willamette Valley and River.

The towns of Independence, Dallas, Sheridan, Amity, Lafayette, McMinnville, Forest Grove, and Hillsboro' lie in the district between Corvallis and Portland. Each and all are thriving, but I can do no more than mention them, though I fear so short a reference will be considered scant courtesy to the active, pushing people who are laboring with such success at the development of Polk, Yam Hill, and Washington Counties. The land is almost uniformly good; large quant.i.ties are being yearly grubbed and put under the plow, and several of my recently arrived English friends prefer the undulating land and gentle slopes of this side of the valley to any other part of Oregon, and have proved their preference by their actions. Land in these counties varies from ten to twenty-five dollars an acre in price.

[Sidenote: _COUNTIES: POPULATION, ETC._]

I think I will close this somewhat tedious chapter by setting out the counties of Oregon, their population, and the statement of their taxable property, furnished by the Secretary of State:

COUNTIES. Population. Taxable property of 1880.

Baker 4,615 $931,139 Benton 6,403 1,766,282 Clackamas 9,260 1,886,916 Clatsop 7,222 1,136,099 Columbia 2,042 305,283 Coos 4,834 832,335 Curry 1,208 219,333 Douglas 9,596 2,248,985 Grant 4,303 1,088,097 Jackson 8,154 1,449,623 Josephine 2,485 253,594 Lake 2,804 708,517 Lane 9,411 3,078,756 Linn 12,675 4,334,479 Marion 14,576 3,983,170 Multnomah 25,204 11,511,058 Polk 6,601 1,751,211 Tillamook 970 92,912 Umatilla 9,607 2,094,723 Union 6,650 1,265,603 Wasco 11,120 2,870,645 Washington 7,082 2,137,630 Yam Hill 7,945 2,547,833 ------ --------- Total of the State 174,767 $48,494,223 Increase over 1879 2,071,406

The proportion of taxable property held by each man, woman, and child in Oregon is therefore $277.47.

The population of the valley counties, properly so called, is 83,549--this leaves Portland and Multnomah County entirely out. The taxable property of these valley counties is $23,735,262.

The population of the whole of Eastern Oregon east of the Cascades is but 39,099. The value of its taxable property is only $8,958,724.

The population of that part of Eastern and Northeastern Oregon which is in any sense tributary to the Columbia or Snake Rivers is 28,180. The value of their taxable property is $6,256,547.

The average taxable property of the population of the valley counties is $282.68; that of the population of Eastern Oregon, $228.96.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Columbia Cascades Landing (Looking up stream).]

These figures will be seen to have an important hearing on the subject of the next chapter.

CHAPTER XXIII.

The transportation question--Its importance--Present legal position-- Oregon Railway and Navigation Committee's general report--That company --Its ocean-going steamers--Their traffic and earnings--Its river-boats --Their traffic and earnings--Its railroads in existence--Their traffic and earnings--Its new railroads in construction and in prospect--Their probable influence--The Northern Pacific--Terminus on Puget Sound--Its prospects--The East and West Side Railroads--"Bearing" traffic and earnings--How to get "control"--Lands owned by the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company--Monopoly--How threatened--The narrow-gauge railroads --Their terminus and working--Efforts to consolidate monopoly--The "blind pool"--Resistance--The Oregon Pacific--Its causes, possessions, and prospects--Land grant and its enemies--The traffic of the valley-- Yaquina Bay--Its improvement--The farmers take it in hand--Contrast and comparisons--The two presidents--Probable effects of compet.i.tion --Tactics in opposition--The Yaquina improvements--Description of works--The prospects for compet.i.tion and the farmers' gains.