the Umatilla River, and is a thriving new town of two hundred and fifty inhabitants. There are two or three other small towns in the county, each the centre of an agricultural district. Two saw-mills manufacture all the lumber consumed in the county, which as yet has not more than 2,875 inhabitants, nor more than 8,000 acres of land under improvement.
Union County contains the valley of the Grand Ronde, a circular, grassy plain on the Grand Ronde River, long celebrated for its beauty and fertility. Here, in the early times of overland immigration by wagons, the weary immigrant found food for his cattle and rest for himself, after the long, exhausting march over the hot and sterile plains of Snake River. This valley is thirty miles in diameter, well watered, and very productive in cereals, fruits, and vegetables, of all kinds common to the temperate zone. About 15,000 acres are under cultivation in this valley. The yield of grain-crops is unusually large, wheat often yielding from forty to sixty bushels per acre, and barley and oats, from sixty to eighty. A considerable amount of land in this valley is subject to overflow, which makes it greatly esteemed as grass land, and for its annual product of hay. Timber is conveniently near on the encircling mountains, and water abundant.
The climate of Grand Ronde Valley is subject to greater extremes than that of Walla Walla, or Umatilla, being nearly 1,000 feet higher than the latter. Snow seldom remains on the ground more than three weeks, the winter being short, and spring plowing and gardening commencing in March. Although stock should be provided with shelter and food, yet cattle and sheep are often left to winter without either; and do very well without, in ordinary seasons.
