amounting in value to $52,000. The university school was opened in 1876, when the fund arising from the sale of its lands reached $75,000, nearly $10,000 of which sum arose from sales of the Oregon City claim, previous to the legislative act which restored that property to the heirs of John McLoughlin.[1]
The land appropriated to the erection of public buildings having been all sold arid the funds applied to these purposes, there remained, in 1885, unsold of the state lands of the above classes some three million acres, then held at from $1.25 to $2.50 an acre, besides such of the swamp-lands as might revert to the state, the tide and overflowed lands of the sea-shore, and the salt-springs land. Owing to the greater ease with which the level lands were cultivated, the prairies were first selected, both by private claimants and government agents.[2] The principal amount of the state lands still unsold in 1885 were the brush lands of the foot-hills and ridges of western Oregon, the timbered lands of the mountains, and the high table-lands of eastern Oregon, which, compared with the fertile and level valley lands of the state, were once esteemed comparatively valueless. This, however, was a hasty conclusion. The brush lands, when
cleared, proved to be superior fruit lands; the high plateaus of eastern Oregon, owing to a clayey soil not found in the valleys, produced excellent wheat crops, and the timbered lands were prospectively valuable for lumber. In fact, it became necessary for the government, in 1878, to impose a fine of from $100 to $1,000 for trespassing on the forest lands, for their protection from milling companies with no right to the timber. At the same time the government of-
- ↑ Or. Laws, 1872, 47-53, 96-7; Nash's Or., 162; Victor's Or., 178. Much information may be gleaned concerning the status of schools and the condition of the public funds from Or. School Land Sales Rept, 1872; Or. Legisl. Docs, 1868, doc. 4, 41-3.
- ↑ I find the principal statements here set down collected by the clerk of the board of land commissioners, M. E. P. McCormac, for the Portland Standard, Jan. 7, 1881; Ashland Tidings, Jan. 29, 1877; Sac. Union, Jan. 15, 1872; S. F. Post, Sept. 9, 1873.
