Era of the Miner, the Cowboy, the Farmer, the Boomer, and the Railroad
Builder
Early Gold-hunters--Gold in California--Effects of that Discovery on
the Columbia River Country--Growth of Towns on the Columbia--Discovery
of Gold in the Colville Country--Gold on the Clearwater--Stampede to
the Idaho Mines--Cowboys Rush in with the Miners--Sudden Development
of Industries at Walla Walla, Lewiston, and Other Towns--Profits and
Fare in the Mines in 1861--The Hard Winter--Development of the Farming
Industry--The Boomers--The Hard Times--The Railroad Age--Beginning of
Railroading in the Willamette Valley--Ben Holladay--Transcontinental
Railways--Henry Villard--His Great Building and his Downfall--The
Present Railroads on the River--Dr. D. S. Baker and the Pioneer
Railroad on the Upper River.
The age of gold in the Columbia pressed hard upon that of the trappers.
But it dawned first far south.
The Spaniards had sought the precious metals with boundless energy. Richly
had the treasures of the Montezumas and the Incas rewarded their reckless
cupidity. But as they moved northward they met with nothing but
disappointment. The El Dorados of their ardent fancy had vanished as they
turned toward Oregon and California.
In 1848 the guns of Stockton and Fremont thundered the salvos of American
occupation over the Sierras. Just as the sovereignty of Uncle Sam was
acknowledged, the long-sought discovery of gold startled the world.
In 1838 a gay, mercurial Switzer, Captain Sutter, had made his way with a
band of trappers across the plains to Oregon, and thence had gone to
California. A dashing adventurer, without money, but with boundless
_sang-froid_ and _bonhommie_, Sutter had marvellously interested all whom
he met and in some inexplicable manner had got money and credit sufficient
to build a fort and start an immense ranch on the Sacramento, almost on
the site of the present capital of the Golden State. "Sutter's fort"
became one of the most notable places in California. In 1844 James W.
Marshall went to the Columbia, but after only a year's stay made his way
to California. In 1847 he entered into partnership with Sutter in a
sawmill enterprise at Coloma on the south fork of the American River.
There, while at work in the mill-race on the 19th of January, 1848,
Marshall discovered shining particles. Gold!
The discovery was made, and soon the secret was out. And then--! There
never was anything quite comparable to what followed. The first and
greatest of the great stampedes for gold took place.
When the tidings reached Oregon it was as though a prairie fire were
running over the country. Men went fairly mad. Throngs, hardly stopping to
take their ploughs from the furrow, mounted their horses, galloped off up
the Willamette, through the lonely valleys of the Umpqua and the Rogue
River, over the Siskiyou, and down the Sacramento, where a fortune could
be had for the digging.
All the stress and strain of American life and history reached the utmost
intensity in the fever strife for gold on the Sacramento. The Willamette
and Columbia were almost equally stirred. During the first two years of
the gold excitement homes on the Columbia were well-nigh deserted. Then
the Oregonians began to drift back again. Some came with gold-bricks in
their pockets and sacks of gold-dust in their packs. Some came broken in
health and spirits, sick with disappointment. Some did not come at all,
and their bones found unmarked graves in the pestilential ditches of the
Sacramento.
But the shrewder Oregonians perceived that they had better than a gold
mine in the trade with California. Grain, fruit, eggs, lumber,--these were
in such demand that frequently twenty ships at a time were moored by the
dense forests of the lower Willamette waiting for cargoes. Gold-dust was
the universal medium, and it seemed to be cheaper than anything else. Four
bushels of Oregon apples brought five hundred dollars in gold-dust in San
Francisco. Tons of eggs were sold for a dollar apiece in the gold mines.
Portland, the lonely little village on the Willamette, with just enough of
a foothold by the edge of the forest to keep from rolling into the River,
sprang at a bound into the rank of a city. The huge firs were dug out, and
wharves went in. The face of nature, even, as well as that of industry and
politics, was transformed by that gold-dust in Marshall's mill-race on the
Sacramento.
But, most of all, the disposition of the people was changed. The serene,
idyllic, pastoral age passed, and the fierce lust for wealth, the
boundless imagination, the fever in the veins, came on. Why should there
not be gold as well by the Columbia as by the Sacramento! The men who had
come down the Columbia in search for homes and grass-land for cattle, now
began to retrace their steps and turn again up the River in search of the
precious metals. Nor was it long before discovery of gold in the region
tributary to Colville was made known. The first discovery was at the mouth
of the Pend Oreille River. A regular stampede ensued. Other discoveries on
a greater scale were soon to follow. During the early days of the gold
excitement of California, a Nez Perce Indian had wandered on to the
Sacramento. He made acquaintance with a group of miners, who became
impressed with his general force and dignity. Among these miners was E. D.
Pearce, and to him the Indian gave a vivid account of his home in the
wilds of what is now Idaho. He told also a tale of how he with two
companions were once in the high mountains, when they beheld in the night
a light of dazzling brilliance, with the appearance of a refulgent star.
The Indians looked at this with awe as the eye of the Great Spirit. But in
the morning they summoned courage sufficient to investigate, and found a
glittering ball that looked like glass. It was so embedded in the rock
that they could not dislodge it. It was clear to them that this was some
great "tomanowas." On hearing this fantastic story, the mind of Pearce was
kindled with the idea that perhaps the Indians had found an immense
diamond. He determined to seek it. After several years he made his way up
the Columbia and reached Walla Walla. From that point he ranged the
mountains of Idaho, but for a long time met no success. With a company of
seven men, he entered upon an elaborate search, which finally so much
aroused the suspicion of the Indians that they ordered him from the
country. Nothing daunted, however, he induced a Nez Perce woman to guide
the party from the Palouse to the Lolo trail, from which they reached an
unfrequented valley on the north fork of the Clearwater. There one of the
party, W. F. Bassett, tried washing a pan of dirt, with the result that he
got a "colour." This was the first discovery of gold in Idaho, and the
spot was where Oro Fino afterwards stood.
Fall was coming on, and after digging out a small amount of dust, the
party deemed it wise to return to the settlements for a more thorough
outfitting. Accordingly, they went to Walla Walla and located with J. C.
Smith, to whom they imparted their secret. So impressed was Mr. Smith with
the tidings that he organised a party of fifteen, with whom he returned
just at the opening of the winter of that same year, 1860. Soon shut in by
deep snows in inaccessible mountains, the little company built five rude
huts, and in the intervals of the storms they dug for gold along the
streams, meeting with such success that in March Mr. Smith made his way to
Walla Walla with $800 in gold-dust. The dust was sent to Portland. Now
ensued another gold excitement and stampede almost equal to that of '49 in
California.
As the miners rushed into Idaho, every other species of industry rushed up
the River with them. The cowboy came side by side with the miner. In fact,
already following close on the heels of the Indian war, had come an
inrush of cattle, horses, and sheep. During the last years of the decade
of the fifties, stockmen had driven from the Willamette Valley thousands
of head of stock to the rich pasture lands of the Walla Walla, Umatilla,
and Yakima. When the gold discoveries of 1860 and 1861 became known, the
activities of the cowboys were multiplied, added bands of stock were
driven in, all the wild and extravagant features of a combined cowboy and
mining age, vendors of "chain-lightning and forty-rod," gamblers,
prostitutes, murderers,--and with them missionaries and teachers,--became
reproduced again on the shores of the Columbia, Snake, Clearwater, Salmon,
Walla Walla, and other rivers of the Inland Empire. It was another of
those wild eras in which the worst and the best that are in human nature
jostled each other at every turn.
Transportation problems followed close upon the cowboy and the miner. The
Oregon Steam Navigation Company, organised in 1860, began within a year to
run steamboats from Portland to Lewiston, with portage railroads around
the Cascades and the Dalles. Stage lines were started from Umatilla, Walla
Walla, and Lewiston, within a year or two after the gold discoveries of
Oro Fino. Prairie-schooners, huge waggons, sometimes three in tandem
fashion, drawn by a team of twenty mules, with jingling bells, driven with
a "single line," formed the approved system of hauling freight over the
mountain roads. In addition to the stages and prairie-schooners, however,
thousands of mules and horses were driven with pack-saddles over the
trails and roads. Then was the time when "throwing the diamond hitch"
became a fine art. Then was the time, too, when it behooved stage-drivers
and packers to be handy with a "gun," for "road-agents" were plentiful and
vigilant. Many a man with a pack-saddle loaded with gold-dust, or
sometimes with whiskey or even "canned goods," "passed in his checks"
under some over-shadowing tree or behind some sheltering rock.
Both the distresses and the successes of that epoch are well illustrated
by extracts from some of the newspapers of the time. From issues of the
_Washington Statesman_ of Walla Walla, we learn that flour was at one time
a dollar a pound; beef, thirty to fifty cents a pound; bacon, sixty;
beans, thirty; rice, fifty; tea a dollar and a half; tobacco, a dollar and
a half; sugar, fifty cents; candles, a dollar. Some of these staples could
not be had at all. Physicians, when they got into the mines, would charge
twenty dollars a visit. Board was from five to ten dollars a day,
frequently more.
But as an offset to the expense and frequent positive suffering, we gather
the following item from an issue of the _Statesman_ in December, 1861:
S. F. Ledyard arrived last evening from the Salmon River mines, and
from him it is learned that some six hundred miners would winter
there; that some two hundred had gone to the south side of the river,
where two streams head that empty into the Salmon, some thirty miles
south-east of the present mining camp. Coarse gold is found, and as
high as one hundred dollars per day to the man has been taken out. The
big mining claim of the old locality belongs to Mr. Weiser of Oregon,
from which two thousand six hundred and eighty dollars were taken out
on the 20th, with two rockers. On the 21st, three thousand three
hundred and sixty dollars were taken out with the same machines.
The _Statesman_ for December 13, 1861, contains the following:
During the week past not less than two hundred and twenty-five pack
animals, heavily laden with provisions, have left this city for the
mines. A report in relation to a rich strike by Mr. Bridges of Oregon
City seems to come well authenticated. The first day he worked on his
claim (near Baboon Gulch) he took out fifty-seven ounces; the second
day he took out one hundred and fifty-seven ounces; the third day, two
hundred and fourteen ounces; and the fourth day, two hundred ounces in
two hours.
As an ounce of gold was worth sixteen dollars, it will be seen that Mr.
Bridges of Oregon City had truly "struck it rich."
Within a year, a million and a half dollars in gold-dust had been taken
from those mines. Anticipated demands led cattlemen to rush still larger
numbers of stock into the upper Columbia Basin, and traders brought in yet
larger supplies of goods into Walla Walla and Lewiston, as well as the
mining camps themselves. A considerable part of these goods, we regret to
narrate, consisted of material for spirituous refreshments. That the said
refreshments were of a stalwart character may be inferred from a
reminiscence of a traveller to Walla Walla, who relates that upon going
into one of the numerous saloons, he found the floor covered with sawdust,
and upon asking for whiskey, he received with it a whisk-broom. Feeling
puzzled as to the intent of the latter, and not wishing to reveal his
ignorance, he waited till another man came in. Waiting for developments,
he found that the object of the broom was to sweep off a place on the
floor to have a fit on, for the whiskey was sure to produce one. After
having got through his fit, the happy (?) purchaser would return the broom
and go on his way.
[Illustration: An Oregon Pioneer in his Cabin. Photo. by E. H.
Moorehouse.]
Just as miners, cowboys, and traders were plunging eagerly into every form
of enterprise, the famous "hard winter" of '61 descended upon the country.
It was almost a Minnesota winter. There was snow on the ground from
December 1st to March 22d, something never known before or since in the
Columbia Basin. Cattle could find no food and perished by the thousands.
Miners were found frozen into the stiff crust. In the rude cabins, with
wide cracks into which the snow drifted, the few women and children in the
Inland Empire fought a distressing and frequently losing fight. Even in
the Willamette Valley where houses were more comfortable, supplies more
plentiful, and the weather less severe, the conditions were hard enough.
At Portland the price of hay was eighty dollars a ton. In Eastern Oregon
it could not be obtained for any price, and the maintenance of life by
cattle depended entirely on their endurance.
But with the coming on of tardy spring, the rush up the River was resumed,
and the game went on. Seven millions in gold was reported in 1862, besides
almost as much, as was estimated, taken out in ways of which no record was
reported.
At Florence in February, 1862, flour was a dollar a pound; butter, three
dollars; sugar, a dollar and a quarter; coffee, two dollars; boots, thirty
dollars a pair.
The enormous profits, as well as enormous expense, of developing those
mines hastened the coming of the farmer. Among the throng that passed
madly into the mountains for gold, and among the throng that drove the
wide-horned cattle over the bunch-grass hills, there were a few keen-eyed
observers who asked themselves if wheat and corn and potatoes and barley
and fruit-trees might not grow on those broad prairies, and especially
along the numerous watercourses descending from the Blue Mountains.
A farm here and there at some favourable point beside some favouring
stream, followed in two or three years by a flour-mill, then a few apples
whose bright red cheeks and fragrant smell showed that the upper Columbia
lands could match those of the Willamette, then an experimental
wheat-field or barley-field on the high bunch-grass prairies,--and, almost
before people realised it, the farmer was standing up beside the miner and
the stockman, as tall and broad and important as either. The plough and
the hoe and the mowing-machine took their places beside the pick and
gold-pan and quirt and schapps and spurs as symbols of Columbia River
nobility.
The "boomer" was the logical result of the development of mine and range
and farm and garden and orchard. If people were going to eat and travel
and raise wheat and cattle, they must inevitably buy and sell. And if they
were going to buy and sell, they must needs "boom." The decade of the
eighties was the great age of the boom in real estate along the Columbia
and its tributaries. Then, as also upon Puget Sound, cities were founded
with most extravagant size and expectations--on paper. Farm lands changed
hands rapidly. If a man could raise nothing else on his land, he could at
least raise the price. That was the time when the boomer boomed, the
promoter promoted, and the sucker sucked. It was a great age, but alas, it
was followed by an awakening, similar to that which follows a night of
carousal, when the next day brings a dark-brown taste in the mouth and a
very heavy head. The decade of the nineties was dolorous along the River
and in the mines and forests and farms and town-lots and additions and
suburbs adjoining.
[Illustration: Old Portage Railroad at Cascades in 1860.]
[Illustration: A Log-boom Down the River for San Francisco. Photo. by
Woodfield.]
Interlocked with the days of miner, cowboy, rancher, and boomer, was
another age of equal importance and one that was both result and cause of
the others. This was the age of the railroad builder.
Transportation by the River was a great feature of traffic in the fifties
and sixties. But, during the second of those decades, the people of
Portland began to realise that the time had arrived for rails as well as
sails. The first great transcontinental railroad, the Union Pacific and
Central Pacific, was in active process of building between California and
Omaha. A fever of railroad building spread to the Columbia River people.
Railroads were projected from Portland on both sides of the Willamette, up
the valley, with the view of ultimate connection with California. Surveys
were made by S. G. Elliott from Marysville, California, to Portland in
1863. It was October, 1870, when the first train reached Salem, the
capital of the State. The road was known as the Oregon Central Railroad,
and its manager and ultimately its chief owner was Ben Holladay, the most
famous railroad man of that period in Oregon. In 1871 and 1872, railroad
building was extended on the west side of the Willamette. The lines on
both sides were reorganised under Mr. Holladay's control as the Oregon
and California Railroad.
Meanwhile the air was full of discussion of a transcontinental line to the
Pacific Northwest. The conception of a Northern Pacific railroad was
nothing new. Away back in 1853, Governor I. I. Stevens and Captain George
B. McClellan had made a reconnaissance across the Rocky and Cascade
Mountains and over the great plains of the Columbia, for the purpose of
ascertaining a route for a northern line. They pronounced the route
feasible, but the time had not yet come for such an undertaking. In a
letter to McClellan of April 5, 1853, Governor Stevens states the route to
be from St. Paul to Puget Sound by the great bend of the Missouri River.
It is interesting to note that this is nearly the course afterwards
followed.
Work on the Northern Pacific was begun in the vicinity of Kalama on the
Columbia in 1870. The financial panic of 1873 resulted in the failure of
Jay Cooke & Company, the backers of the enterprise, and for several years
railroad work was at a standstill.
In 1879 there came to Oregon the greatest railroad builder of that era,
Henry Villard. He was a true financial genius, daring, far-seeing,
persistent, and self-reliant. With the quick grasp of a statesman, Mr.
Villard perceived that the Columbia River was the key to a boundless
opportunity. He saw that a central line up the Columbia with branches
north, east, and south-east, might be thrust like a wedge between the
Northern Pacific and the Union Pacific and control both. In pursuance of
this conception he made three rapid moves. The first was the
incorporation of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company. The second was
the formation of the "blind pool" and the Oregon and Transcontinental
Company. The third was the acquisition of a controlling interest in the
Northern Pacific Railroad. The three years up to and including 1883 were
years of almost feverish activity along the River. The line of the Oregon
Railroad and Navigation Company between Wallula and Portland was pushed on
with tireless energy. Rock bluffs were split off by enormous charges of
dynamite, or were tunnelled through. The road was indeed built so hastily
and the curves were in some cases so extreme that much work had to be done
over at later times.
[Illustration: Lumber Mill and Steamboat Landing at Golden, B. C. Photo.
by C. F. Yates.]
A part of Villard's plan in pushing the work so hastily was to divert the
Northern Pacific system to the River, and make Portland rather than Puget
Sound the western terminus. The undertaking seemed to be crowned with
success. The connection was made. A gorgeous celebration, the greatest
ever held in the Columbia River country, commemorated, in October, 1883,
the completion of the transcontinental railroad to tide-water on the
Columbia River. But in the very hour of victory, the sceptre fell from
Villard's hands. His downfall was as sudden and dramatic as his rise. By
clever jobbing of the market, the Wright interests regained possession of
the majority of the Northern Pacific stock, the transcontinental pool
broke, and at the very time that Mr. Villard was being worshipped at
Portland as the financial god of the North-west, he learned that his
gigantic enterprise had fallen into the hands of the enemy. But in spite
of defeat the work of Villard was assured, and his name and fame as the
champion railroad builder of the Columbia River was established.
After the Wright interests had regained possession of the Northern
Pacific, that great system was pushed to Puget Sound. The Oregon Short
Line was carried to a connection with the Union Pacific system. Thus two
independent transcontinental lines reached the River. Yet later the
Southern Pacific system acquired control of the Oregon and California
Railroad, and, by joining the sections, connected the Columbia River with
the Golden Gate. Through connecting lines the Canadian Pacific Railroad
gained access to the Columbia River. There are, therefore, four distinct
transcontinental railroad systems into the valley of our River. Two more
are rapidly approaching completion. As a logical result, too, many local
and connecting lines have been built. The Astoria and Columbia River
Railroad, on the Oregon side of the River, joins Portland to Astoria and
Seaside and the other resorts of the ocean beach. The Oregon Railway and
Navigation Company has continuous connection on the south side of the
Columbia and Snake rivers to Riparia on the latter stream, and thence by a
road on the north side, owned jointly with the Northern Pacific, to
Lewiston, Idaho. The most remarkable of all these connecting and joint
roads is the Portland, Seattle, and Spokane Railroad, commonly called the
"North Bank Road." This is supposed to be the joint property of the
Northern Pacific and Great Northern railroads. It is one of the many
monuments in the West to the financial genius and tireless energy of James
J. Hill. It was completed in 1908, between Pasco and Portland, and at
the first of the year following, from Pasco to Spokane. It is said to be
the most expensively and scientifically built road in the United States,
having curves and grades reduced to a minimum, being, in fact, a
continuous descent from near Spokane to tide-water. Its builders evidently
expect stupendous traffic, and every feature of the line is adjusted to
such expectation.
[Illustration: A Typical Lumber Camp. Photo. by Trueman.]
Any account of the great railroads joining the Inland Empire to the River
and thence to the seaboard would be incomplete without reference to the
pioneer of them all, the "Strap-iron" narrow-gauge from Walla Walla to
Wallula. This line was forced by the exigencies of the times, but it
commemorates the rare commercial foresight and ability of a man, who, in
native business genius, ranks with the foremost in the history of the
Columbia Valley. This man was Dr. D. S. Baker, a native of Illinois, an
immigrant to the Columbia in 1848, and a settler in Walla Walla in 1860.
Perceiving the vast latent resources of the Inland Empire, he invested in
land, founded a bank, became a partner in a store, and during much of the
time was also actively engaged in his profession of medicine.
In 1863, the Oregon Steam Navigation Company was running boats from
Portland to Lewiston, over four hundred miles, having short railroad
portages at the Cascades and The Dalles. That was the most active era of
the mines in Idaho. Rates from Portland to up-river points were as
follows: freight from Portland to Wallula, $50.00 per ton; to Lewiston,
$90.00; fare from Portland to Wallula, $18.00; to Lewiston, $28.00. (The
rates had been much higher a year or two earlier.) From Wallula to Walla
Walla, freight was hauled by prairie-schooners at from $10.00 to $12.00 a
ton, thirty miles. Needless to say, the company piled up a fortune.
Dr. Baker saw the possibilities of the region and, almost unaided, with
every difficulty and discouragement, constructed a narrow gauge, with
wooden rails, on which strap-iron was fastened. An astonishing amount of
business was soon developed, steel rails were substituted, and the
business made a fortune for its builder. It was absorbed by the Oregon
Steam Navigation Company. But Dr. Baker's strap-iron road may be
considered the true progenitor of the railroads of the upper Columbia.
During these first years of the twentieth century, the shores of the River
have echoed with the sound of whistles on many a new road, but the
distinguishing mark has been the construction of electric roads. The lower
Willamette Valley, centring at Portland, has become fairly swarming with
electric roads. Spokane has become almost an equal centre of electric
lines, while Walla Walla is following close behind her larger sisters in
the procession. When lines already constructed from Spokane southward are
joined to a system projected from Walla Walla northward and westward,
there will be a complete system of independent electric lines from all
parts of Eastern Washington and North-eastern Oregon to steamboat
connections on the River, and thence to tide-water. The significance of
this as a commercial fact cannot be realised as yet.
[Illustration: A Logging Railroad, near Astoria. Photo. by Woodfield.]