Willamette Landings/The Lower Willamette and the Towns That Grew

by Howard McKinley Corning

THE LOWER WILLAMETTE AND THE TOWNS THAT GREW

Cultivation of the land, not the founding of towns, was the primary purpose of the pioneers. Many an immigrant, his last dollar spent to reach the fertile land of promise, could only turn to the soil for livelihood.

Most of them selected claims convenient to waterways which would furnish routes of travel not only on social and political errands but, most important of all, on trips to and from the centers of trade.

The earliest points of commerce were the Hudson's Bay Company stores at Vancouver, on the Columbia, and the fur station at Champoeg, a small supply depot operated almost exclusively for trappers of the company and ex-trappers turned farmers.

With the American invasion of the Pacific Northwest, Dr. John McLoughlin, Chief Factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, foresaw the early decline of the fur trade and the rise of agriculture and industry. Modifying the company's usual policy of non-assistance to settlers, the "White-Headed Eagle” of the Columbia district shared with some of the more needy the resources of the great fur company. Through that assistance many Americans were enabled to obtain and maintain a foothold in the new country.

Although there were a few exceptions, early Oregon settlements tended to be communal in character. There was the group of French-Canadian trapper-settlers on French Prairie, with Champoeg as its center; and the teaching unit of the Methodist Church to the south where the missionaries had established a school primarily to teach the Indian children-an event that actually stimulated the occupation of the Oregon County. But town-founding was not a motive of either group.

A few individuals, however, did envision towns in the wilderness. The first of those forest municipalities was a mere figment of fancy platted on paper in 1832 by Hall J. Kelley, a Boston schoolmaster. The "city" he proposed sprawled over the moist, sometimes flooded lowland peninsula that thrusts like a wet thumb between the Columbia River and the upper mouth of the Willamette. For several years Kelley made urgent appeal to East Coast dwellers, seeking to enlist west-bound settlers who would bring to reality his dream of an Oregon empire. This appeal served to fire the imagination of one Easterner, Nathaniel J. Wyeth, also of Boston, who in 1832 and again in 1834 led an expedition across the continent to set himself up in business as a trader in the new country.

Ignoring Kelley's townsite, Wyeth built Fort William (around which he hoped to establish a town) on the west side of Sauvie or Wappato Island. But circumstances moved against him and he retraced his way eastward, never to return.

In 1829, Dr. John McLoughlin, anticipating needs not to be supplied by the soil or wilderness bounty, laid claim to the area immediately adjacent to the east shore of the river at “the Falls.” Because of settlement on French Prairie, where wheat-raising was begun, a flour mill was needed. To make the operation of one feasible, the Hudson's Bay Company, in 1832, blasted out sufficient rock from the fall's eastern fringe to clear a narrow but free-flowing mill-race. A flour mill and sawmill were soon in operation. In the middle 'thirties three log cabins were erected and a field planted to potatoes. McLoughlin, in 1840, found it expedient to establish a trading station there, for the receipt of furs and the issuing of supplies to the Hudson's Bay Company trappers.

Strategically situated on the main water artery up the Willamette Valley , the Falls soon became the principal trading point and overnight stop for travelers. Portage of boats and supplies around the falls was necessary; usually one night was spent in rest. There Jason Lee, and his companion missionaries, tarried for sleep on trips up and down the river in 1834 and after. There evangelizing members later returned to establish a mission.

In 1841 Lieutenant Wilkes wrote in his report: “We reached the falls about noon where we found the missionary station under charge of Rev. Mr. Waller. The Hudson's Bay Company have a trading post there and are packing fish which the Indians catch in great quantities.”

In the same year the Island Milling Company built saw and gristmills on an island in mid-stream at the falls. George Abernethy, a Methodist Mission settler of 1840, opened a Mission store and in competition with the Hudson's Bay Company bought wheat from the settlers and salmon from the Indians, and shipped these products to Honolulu to be traded for sugar, molasses and other needed commodities. A boat transported passengers from Clackamas Rapids, three miles below the Mission community, to the foot of the falls.

In 1842 a small overland migration of 137 persons under Dr. Elijah White arrived and began to build houses for winter shelter. The following year, Dr. McLoughlin, who from the first claimed the entire falls property but generously shared its advantages for settlement, hired Sidney Walter Moss to survey a townsite at the water's edge. He thereupon called the location Oregon City. It was the first townsite south of the Columbia River.

In 1843, following preliminary steps toward the formation of provisional government in the Pacific Northwest, Oregon City became the first seat of government. In 1844 the first legislature met there. In that year the town was replatted, the first brick house built—by Abernethy—and the first furniture factory opened. In 1846 the first issue of the Oregon Spectator was pulled from a hand-press operated by William G. T'Vault.

From the very beginning the town had a significant life. There all civil and military action affecting the well-being of the new country was taken. There the majority of settlers rested after the long westward journey and there they re outfitted for the final miles of travel to permanent homesites in the Willamette and adjacent valleys. A few remained, however, to build the town. "As settlers advanced," wrote Eva Emery Dye in a sketch of Oregon City published in Joseph H. Gaston's Portland, Its History and Builders, in 1911, "the Indians moved their camps to the first bench, the second, and finally to the third. ... sixty feet back under the rocks the Indians used to lie in wet weather and look down upon the building of the settlement."

The Cayuse War east of the Cascade Range, in the late 'forties, and the capture and hanging in 1850 of the Marcus Whitman murderers, created great excitement in local life. Late in 1847, to avenge the deaths of the missionary, his wife Narcissa, and eleven others, the “Oregon Rifles” was organized at Oregon City. That was the second military force organized for the protection of Oregon Country settlers.

In 1849 the Mounted Rifle Regiment crossed the plains to Oregon, to provide Federal protection for the newly created Oregon Territory. This regiment was stationed at Oregon City for more than a year.

The ’fifties were years of growth. A female seminary was opened in the town, and the Willamette Iron Works began the manufacture of sawmill parts. Oregon City found itself in competition with Linn City, a companion town with industrial ambitions, across the river. “Gold rush” money from California and from the southern Oregon mines stimulated commercial development. Finally, in 1864 Oregon’s first woolen mill utilized the power of the falls. Soon afterward a paper mill, the first on the Pacific Coast, began the manufacture of paper.

Down river, another small town was bidding for growth. Linnton, situated on the west bank of the Willamette just above Sauvie Island, was platted in 1844 by M. M. McCarver and Peter H. Burnett, immigrants of the previous year. McCarver had dreams of a city that would stand at this point near the Willamette’s mouth and where his only conceivable handicap lay in not securing nails soon enough to build his city before some other enterprising individual built one of promise elsewhere. But growing impatient, he departed for the Puget Sound country where he later founded Tacoma. Linnton, however, was not doomed, but struggled on as a shipping point through the decades and into another century, eventually to become a small lumber-mill town.

Of Linnton townsite, and another greater city to be, Jesse A. Applegate, son of Lindsay Applegate, wrote in Recollections of My Boyhood:

“Not long after passing Linnton we landed on the west shore, and went into camp on the high bank where there was little underbrush among the pine trees. No one lived there and the place had no name; there was nothing to show that the place had ever been visited except a small log hut near the river, and a broken mast of a ship leaning against the high bank. There were chips hewn from timber, showing that probably a new mast had been made there. We were at this place a day or two and were visited by two men from the prairie country up the river, then known as the ‘plains.’”

“Where we should locate was the all-absorbing topic of conversation at this camp in the woods. It seemed to be difficult to decide where to settle down in such a vast unappropriated wilderness. We were then actually encamped on the site of the city of Portland, but there was no prophet with us to tell of the beautiful city that was to take the place of that gloomy forest.”

Every townsite founder on the lower Willamette believed he had indisputable reasons why his chosen location would become the great city of Oregon. First, the lower river was the natural gateway to the expansive upper country. Along the Willamette must pass much of the valley trade and from its mouth must go the deep-sea commerce of the entire region. Where then would the future great city stand? Surely at the head of navigation. And where was the feasible head of navigation? At the foot of Willamette Falls? Just below the rock-strewn mouth of the Clackamas River? Was Swan Island an obstacle in the channel? Was there any reason why ships should sail farther inland than the head of Sauvie Island where the Willamette divided its channel? Each town founder of the ’forties and early ’fifties, claimed the advantages of his location and invited public settlement.

“The situation of Portland,” reported the British officers Henry J. Warre, and M. Vavasour, visiting the country in 1845, “is superior to that of Linnton, and the back country easier of access.” That the site faced deep water added to its promise as a port. Conscious of these factors, A. L. Lovejoy and Francis W. Pettygrove surveyed the Portland townsite in 1844–45. The property had been obtained by them from William Overton, a destitute Tennessean, who late in 1843 landed there from an Indian canoe. Lacking the filing fee required by enactment of the provisional government, Overton interested Lovejoy and Pettygrove in the property, offering them one-half ownership if they would secure the title. The quick eye of Lovejoy saw the advantages of this spot where Indians sometimes camped, and the three men soon completed the transaction. But before improvement could be made, Overton became restless and sold his interest to Pettygrove for fifty dollars.

Lovejoy, a native of Massachusetts, had read the glowing literature circulated in the East by Kelley, and under its influence emigrated to Oregon in 1842 with the Elijah White party. En route he was detained by Marcus Whitman at Waiilatpu, and with him made a return ride in the dead of winter. The following spring he joined the “Great Migration” and again set out for Oregon. This time he reached “the settlements.” That same year of 1843, Pettygrove, a native of Maine, entered the Columbia River aboard the bark Victoria. With him came his family and a stock of merchandise. The latter he exchanged at Oregon City for a quantity of French Prairie wheat, which he then shipped abroad. With money thus obtained he built the first log cabin on his Portland claim.

A few lots sold before the town had any name. That name was ceremoniously chosen—not at Portland but at Oregon City—by the flipping of a coin. Lovejoy wished the new town to be named Boston, while Pettygrove wanted it to be called Portland. Two of three tosses fell in Pettygrove’s favor, and Portland became the name of the new town among the fir stumps.

Growth started slowly. For nearly three years the majority of emigrants paused there only briefly, then passed on to settle in the ample Tualatin Plains or around Oregon City, or on the broad prairies higher up the Willamette.

One of the first to linger was James Terwilliger, who erected a blacksmith shop. Pettygrove put up a store but for a time had little business. Sailing vessels, with growing frequency anchored in the river and enjoyed more trade exchanging imported cargo for furs and wheat, than did Pettygrove as a merchant. On an adjacent claim Daniel H. Lownsdale started a tannery. Presently a road mounted westward out of town.

Next, John Waymire came to build the first double log cabin and did also a small hauling business with a pair of oxen. He also started a sawmill with an overhead whipsaw brought from Missouri. In operating it the man beneath received a face full of sawdust each time he pulled the blade down.

The products of a shingle mill, begun about that time by William Bennett, were sold to the incoming settlers; among them were Col. William King, the town’s first politician, and Dr. Ralph Wilcox, a physician, who, besides tending the local ill, became Portland’s first school teacher. Another merchant, J. L. Morrison, dealt in flour, feed and shingles.

Meanwhile, a rival town was growing nearby. A few miles up the Willamette on the opposite shore, Lot Whitcomb had platted Milwaukie in 1848. Whitcomb claimed loudly that his wharves stood at the all-time head of navigation. The towns above, he vigorously pointed out, were cut off from that advantage by the gravel bar which the inflowing Clackamas had dumped into the Willamette channel. Only a few deep-sea vessels had then ever negotiated that obstruction. The fall’s towns hotly protested Whitcomb’s claim, although finally acknowledged the “sand-bagging.” Consequently, as a port, Milwaukie prospered for several years.

But there were shoals lying a few miles downstream, and with Portland harbor so readily accessible, Milwaukie was, in the early 1850s, abandoned by sea-going commerce. Thereafter her livelihood was maintained by riverboats and by her sawmills. In later years she became a town of moderate size, largely detached from river life.

Discovery of gold in California in 1848 brought increased business to Portland. Although many men left to seek their fortunes, enough remained to handle the extensive trade with the distant gold-fields. More and more vessels put in for cargo, with lumber the chief commodity for shipment. Gold dust augmented grain and peltry as mediums of exchange.

The arrival of Captains John H. Couch and George H. Flanders in 1849 gave Portland great impetus as a seaport. Couch was interested in several vessels, and was soon doing a large buying and selling trade with the back-country ranchers who hauled produce to Portland docks for ocean shipment, principally to the Sandwich Islands. He also induced other craft to tie up in Portland harbor. Nathaniel Crosby who earlier had founded a "paper" town he named Milton, on Multnomah Channel, engaged in similar commerce, and built Portland's first commodious residence. New settlers staked claims and felled timbers. The town's perspectives widened.

In 1850–51 Portland townsite owners—her founders had been replaced by Stephen Coffin, William W. Chapman, and Daniel H. Lownsdale—began negotiations that led to the purchase in California of the sidewheel steamer Goldhunter. At Milwaukie, Lot Whitcomb, builder of the riverboat that bore his name, also acted as agent for a line of ocean vessels.

Portland was incorporated in 1851, and in the same year three brick buildings were erected. The advent of steam craft on the river added greatly to the town's prosperity. And as population increased, river commerce grew. Imports destined for distribution inland were unloaded at Portland wharves and transferred to riverboats. The Rev. Ezra Fisher of Oregon City, visiting the growing town in January, 1853, described it in unemotional but promising terms: "Portland is the principal port in Oregon. The present population is estimated at seven hundred souls. It contains thirty-five wholesale and retail stores, two tin shops, four public taverns, two steam sawmills, one steam flouring mill, with two runs of stones, six or eight drinking shops and billiard tables, one wine and spirit manufactory, a variety of mechanic shops and from eight to fifteen merchant vessels are always lying at anchor in the river or at the wharves...This is the place where nearly all the immigrants by water land and from which they will go to their various points of destination."

In 1854 Portland became the seat of government of the new Multnomah County, created out of parts of Washington and Clackamas counties. The assessed valuation of property in 1855 was $1,196,034; the population was 1,209. Added settlement constantly expanded the town's boundaries. Covered wharves, privately owned, were built along the waterfront, and a public levee was constructed. Many merchants who became active in the municipality in those years rose to leadership in commercial and civic life. Henry W. Corbett, William S. Ladd, Josiah and Henry Failing, Cicero H. Lewis, John C. Ainsworth and others in time became sustaining pillars in the industrial structure.' The Oregonian, begun in 1850, became a lusty mouthpiece for the growing commonwealth. Its successive editors, Thomas Dryer, Simeon Francis, and Harvey W. Scott were widely known.

The discovery of gold in Idaho and eastern Oregon in the early 1860's, brought a second boom to Portland's commercial life. Freight and passengers for the upper Columbia and many Snake River points, were taken aboard steamers at Portland's wharves. Rates of shipment, often exorbitant, were usually paid with little protest. Customarily, an empty wagon shipped aboard a riverboat was measured from tongue-tip to end-gate and assessed for the square feet it thus occupied; the tongue was then removed, placed under the wagon, and the wagon-bed piled full of a miscellaneous freight being paid for by another shipper. During that era the few villages east of the Cascades and on the route of the Oregon Trail assumed the aspects of towns, with much of their staple goods and building commodities coming from Portland merchants.

Oregon's first railroad—other than a few short portage lines—crept southward out of Portland in 1869, with the first locomotive laboring into Oregon City on Christmas Day and continuing to Parrott Creek. From there it slowly continued up the valley. This quicker route to market for Willamette Valley produce was destined to reshape the economic order of the towns located upon it. Increased prosperity came to Portland, although for some years yet the riverboats contributed greatly to the town's commercial leadership of the Oregon country.

"As we approach Portland," wrote Mrs. Victor in 1872, on a trip by boat up the river, "we observe its new, yet thrifty, appearance; the evidence of forests sacrificed to the growth of a town; and the increasing good taste and costliness of its buildings going up or recently built in the newest portions of the city. A low, level margin of ground, beautifully ornamented with majestic oaks, intervenes between us and the higher ground on which the town is built. Passing by this and the first few blocks and warehouses, with their ugly rears toward the river, we haul up alongside a handsome, commodious wharf, and begin to look about.

"Portland is, we find, a cheerful-looking town of about 9,000 inhabitants; well paved, with handsome public buildings, and comfortable, home-like dwellings. It is at the head of ocean steam navigation, and owes its prominence as the commercial town of Oregon to the fact. Here the smaller steamers which ply on the Wallamet River have hitherto brought the produce of the valley to exchange for imported goods, or to be shipped on sailing vessels to foreign ports; and here have centered the commercial wealth and political influence of the State.

"The river in front of Portland is about one-fourth of a mile wide, with water enough for large vessels to lie in; and the rise and fall of the tide amounts to a couple of feet. During the winter flood in the Wallamet, which is occasioned by heavy rains, the water rises about eight feet. For this reason the wharves are all built in two stories—one for low, and one for high water. The great flood of 1861-62 and that of 1870, brought the water over the wharves and even over Front street, which is twenty-five feet above low-water mark. The summer floods in the Columbia, occasioned by the melting of snow in the mountains where it has its source, back the water up in the Wallamet as far as Oregon City, which makes its necessary to abandon the lower wharves. These two rises keep the Wallamet supplied with water through the greater portion of the year. . ."

Portland was connected with the eastern states by transcontinental railroad, the Northern Pacific, in 1883. Henry Villard, leading spirit of this enterprise, feted the town in celebration of the achievement. Thereafter business increased and trade volume grew; heavy manufacturing established itself with an eye to the future in a town where the sputtering oil street lamps had already given way to sputtering gas jets. Before the 1880's closed, street railways— that in 1872 had begun as a single horse-drawn line along First Street—had fanned out, with tracks on Morrison Street and connecting laterals, all operating with electric equipment. Portland's first bridge spanned the Willamette in 1887, and the first California through-train arrived in town.