CHAPTER XIV THE STATE OF OREGON The old Oregon Territory is divided into four roughly equal parts by the Cascade Mountains and the Columbia River; the mountain range forms the upright of a cross while the river is
the transverse.
Today Oregon and Washington are very
distinctly divided into
Eastern and Western parts; the "East
Side" and the "West Side" are understood by all, just as "Up State" is in New York. In the Fifties it was all "West Side."
The Columbia, however, was a
sufficiently well defined boundtwo sections the into which the bulk of the between ary had the Willamette poured valley, and the Puget migration Sound Country where later emigrants had sought the fertile valleys marked at one time by the Hudson's Bay Company as its legitimate field of activity. Squatters had encamped upon the farms and claims of the Puget's Sound Agricultural Comline
some pioneers, either more scrupulous or later in arrivhad ing, gone to other portions of the land west of the Cascades about the indentations of the Sound, some even going to the islands which dot its waters. From 1845, when the first American took up his abode in what is now Western Washpany
ington, to 1853, the stream of immigration grew in volume, excepting only in 1849 when the gold rush to California 1
temporarily checked its flood. When the distances and lack of roads are considered
it
is
not necessary to search farther for reasons why people of the region north of the Columbia soon began to cast about for means by which they could bring the machinery of government nearer to them. If one also takes into consideration the universal desire of Americans to have a finger in governmental affairs, and to lift a voice which may be heard, then the agitation for separate organization is wholly explained. South of the Columbia the population was increasing more rapidly than i
See Bancroft, Washington, Idaho and Montana, Ch.
i.
