the legislative branches of the government could at once satisfactorily terminate.
The legislature amended the act laying out the judicial districts by attaching the county of Lane to the first and Umpqua to the second districts. This distribution made the first district to consist of Clackamas, Marion, Linn, and Lane; the second of Washington, Yamhill, Benton, Polk, and Umpqua; and the third of Clarke, Lewis, and Clatsop. Pacific county was not provided for in the amendment. The judges were required to hold sessions of their courts twice annually in each county of their districts. But lest in the future it might happen as in the past, any one of the judges was authorized to hold special terms in any of the districts; other laws regulating the practice of the courts were passed,[1] and also laws regulating the general elections, and ordering the erection of court-houses and jails in each county of the territory.
They amended the common school law, abolishing the office of superintendent, and ordered the election of school examiners; incorporated the Young Ladies' Academy of Oregon City, St Paul's Mission Female Seminary, the First Congregational Society of Portland, the First Presbyterian Society of Clatsop plains; incorporated Oregon City and Portland; located a number of roads, notably one from Astoria to the Willamette Valley,[2] and a plank-road from Portland to Yamhill county; and also the Yamhill Bridge Company, which built the first great bridge in the country. These, with many other less important acts, occupied the assembly for sixty clays. Thurston's advice concerning memorializing congress
- ↑ Or. Gen. Laws, 1850–1, 158–164.
- ↑ This was a scheme of Thurston's, who, on the citizens of Astoria petitioning congress to open a road to the Willamette, proposed to accept $10,000 to build the bridges, promising that the people would build the road. He then advised the legislature to go on with the location, leaving it to him to manage the appropriations. Lane finished his work in congress, and a government officer expended the appropriation without benefiting the Astorians beyond disbursing the money in their midst. See 31st Cong., 1st Seas., H. Com. Rept., 348, 3.
