Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/312

CHAPTER XII.

1850—1868.

The First Ferry—The First Wagon Road—The First City Election—Land Titles, and Litigation Thereon—Judges, Matthew P. Deady and George H. Williams Decide the Laws Made by the Provisional Government Are Binding—The Public Levee—General Condition of the Country in 1856, by H. W. Scott, of the Advisory Board.

For the first years of Portland, the people were dependent solely on water transportation. To get to the town, or get away from it, the only chance was by canoes, sail boats, batteaux or steamboats. There was not a single wagon road, and no thought of one until the town proprietors saw that a wagon road from Portland out to the farms in Tualitin plains (now Washington county) was absolutely necessary to head off the movement to build the commercial city at St. Helens.

The first opening to Portland by a land route came from a trail from the Barlow road, into what is now known as East Portland. Etienne Lucier had been at work over there for a few years opening a little farm at the point where East Morrison street intersects Union avenue, and had opened a trail down to the river. And belated, stranded and misguided travelers began to work their way in from the direction of Milwaukee and Oregon City, and got down to the river by Lucier's trail. At first the Indians with their canoes would set people across the river, but soon it was discovered that a ferry right at that point would be valuable. And before James Stephens took notice of any rights he might have in the matter as claimant of the land, a bold speculator in ferry franchises "jumped" the Lucier trail and the ferry landing at the river end of it. And immediately, the man who had rigged a skiff and was engaging in the ferry business to accomodate travelers, was told he must not land his boat there under penalty of immediate death from a loaded shotgun in the hands of the would-be land claimant. The scene was watched with intense interest from the Portland shore. But the ferryman was equal to the occasion. As his boat neared the east shore, laying down his oars preparatory of taking a rope to make a landing, he snatched up a rifle from the bottom of the boat and in a twinkling had the bold bad man on shore covered with his gun, and the passengers landed without molestation.

This incident only shows how this city started and grew out of the most difficult and trying circumstances that ever attended the founding of any American city. There is not a single large city in the United States, except Portland, but what had for its foundations some sort of authority or law from a sovereign ruler or government. Portland was in a worse position than in a country where

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