THE QUARTERLY
of the
Oregon Historical Society
Copyright, 1917, by the Oregon Historical Society
The Quarterly disavows responsibility for the positions taken by contributors to its pages.
THE PIONEER STIMULUS OF GOLD
By Leslie M. Scott
First of the active forces of pioneer progress on the Pacific Coast was the quest for gold.^ This energy was general in area, from California to the Yukon. It drew world-wide interest and brought a cosmopolitan immigration by land and sea. It started activities not before known. It explored every nook and cranny of this vast region. The oxteam pioneers were a slow moving race before the gold era drove them from Middle-West habits to new industries of various farm production, transportation and trade. The resistant habits were strong in the Willamette Valley of Oregon — a district proverbial for retarded growth.^
The primitive life of the Oregon pioneers prior to the gold movement, the isolation, the remoteness from currents of the world and the Nation ; the hardships of family existence; the absence of nearly all the necessary comforts of the later day; the lack of markets and the narrow range of industry—all this is but faintly realized by the present generation.^
1 ThtgfAd dinrings of the pioneer time were placers, chiefly in the beds of
streams. The surface gold was gathered up in a short time in each locality. The
workings of cjuartz gold, bv costly machinery, came later and was carried on in
special localities; likewise "hydraulic" methods.
2 Settlement of Willamette Valley began some thirty years prior to the gold period.
3 Description of pioneer life, by Harvey W. Scott, appears in the Jewish Tribune, of Portland, December 19, 1909; The Oregonian, June i6, 1881; June 19. 1902.
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