Coast Mountains to the sea. The eastern portion of it, along the Wallamet, is open prairie; while the western is first rolling, then mountainous. All that has been said of the other grain-raising sections applies equally to a considerable portion of Benton County; although this county is more celebrated for fine stock than for any other product. Wool-growing is one of the special interests of Benton, for which its grassy hills particularly adapt it—as also for the dairy business.
In the future development of the country, Benton County should rank high as a manufacturing district; for, besides the woolen factories it is capable of supporting, the lumber-mills it can supply from its mountain forests, and the flouring-mills its grain-fields can keep running, it has extensive beds of coal near the coast in localities where various other manufactures can be carried on, convenient to shipping points.
Perhaps the coast side of the county may sometime be reckoned most valuable for these reasons; and on account of the cod, salmon, and oyster fisheries. A wagon-road from Corvallis, the county-seat, to Yaquina Bay, gives this county an advantage over others that are quite cut off from the sea-coast by the inaccessibility of the mountains. The best dairy-lands in Western Oregon are those creek-bottoms and tidelands along the coast, where the grass is perpetually green and of excellent quality. Yaquina Creek and Alseya River are two streams rising in St. Mary's Peak, and flowing—the first into Yaquina Bay, and the other into the ocean.
The Alseya really falls into a bay, into which vessels of light tonnage can come in fair weather. The immense cedar forests which border this river make
