glance, this fact strikes the tourist with some surprise. But when he remembers that the shores of the Columbia are rough and heavily timbered, while the Wallamet Valley is an open, prairie country, his wonder vanishes. A town at this point was a commercial necessity, so long as the whole transportation business of the country depended on river communication. What effect to change commercial bases the opening of long lines of railroad will have, can hardly be determined before the drift of trade has defined itself. But, for the present, Portland is, in every sense, the chief town north of San Francisco.
From the relative importance of Portland to the other towns of the State, it deserves more than a passing notice. The site was first taken up, in 1843, by a man named Overton, from Tennessee. From him the title passed to Messrs. Lovejoy and Petty grove about the beginning of the following year, during which the first dwelling—a log-house—was erected near the river, at the foot of what is now Washington Street. At this time the "claim" was covered with a dense forest of firs, which began to be cleared off, and the land surveyed into blocks and lots in 1845. A second building for a store was erected this winter, near the first one. It was not, like the dwelling, of logs, but a frame covered with shingles, and went by the name of the "Shingle Store "long after more ambitious competitors had arisen.
The growth of the embryo town was by no means rapid, as the year of its "taking up" witnessed the first considerable immigration to Oregon. Of these one thousand immigrants, a few stopped in Oregon City, the recognized capital of the Territory, and the remainder scattered over the fertile plains, in quest of
