Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 11.djvu/321

OREGON timbered with fir, spruce, and cedar. Extensive coal deposits are found, some of which are developed and yield largely. Coos Bay is one of the best harbours on the Oregon Coast. Eastern Oregon embraces all the state east of the Cascade Mountains, forming a parallelogram 275 miles long and 230 miles wide. It is a great inland plateau of an altitude varying between 2000 and 5000 feet. The southern half of this plateau belongs to the Great American Basin, while the northern portion slopes towards the Columbia river valley. In the north-eastern part of the state, between the Snake and Columbia rivers, are the Blue Mountains whose summits are more than 6000 feet high, and whose streams are used for the purpose of irrigation. The Government is reclaiming large tracts by irrigation in this section. Here also is the most valuable and important mineral belt of the state. In the southern portion of Eastern Oregon are several short mountain ranges from 2000 to 3000 feet high which are a continuation of the longitudinal basin-ranges of Nevada. Irrigation is contributing largely towards bringing this section into prominence. The Klamath irrigation project, under the supervision of the United States Government, contains about 200,000 acres and is making rapid progress.

RESOURCES
All the four great natural resources — viz: forest, fisheries, soil, and minerals — are present in almost inexhaustible supply awaiting development.

Lumber
Oregon has approximately three hundred billion feet of standing merchantable timber (or nearly one-fifth of the standing merchantable timber in the United States), valued at $3,000,000,000. Timber covers about 57 per cent of the area of the state. Apart from the value of this timber as a source of lumber supply, it serves an important purpose in maintaining a perpetual flow of water in the mountain streams by retarding the melting of snow and holding a continuous supply of moisture in the ground during the summer. The most densely timbered area of the state is west of the Cascade Range, due to the greater rainfall in that section. The average stand of timber on the forested area west of the cascades is 17,700 feet B.M. to the acre. Localities where the stand is 50,000 feet per acre for entire townships are common in the coast counties of Clatsop and Tillamook. Some sections are found where a yield of 150,000 feet to the acre is estimated, many of the trees scaling 40,000 feet or more of commercial lumber. The Douglas fir sometimes attains a height of 300 feet, and five to six feet in thickness. Bridge timbers more than 100 feet in length are obtained from these trees. About 66 per cent of the timber is of this variety, which yields more commercial product to the acre than any other tree in North America. Three per cent of the merchantable timber of Oregon is hardwood, such as ash, oak, maple, and myrtle. There are about ninety-five species that attain to the dignity of trees; of these thirty-eight are coniferous, seventeen deciduous softwoods, and forty hardwoods. At present the lumber industry is one of Oregon's chief sources of revenue. The output of sawed lumber for 1906 was 2,500,000,000 feet valued at $30,000,000. The output of other forest products (piling, poles, shingles, ties, etc.) brought the total forest product from the state for that year to the sum of $60,000,000, which is about the average annual production. Portland is the largest lumber shipping port in the world. The work of preventing destructive forest fires is carried on by the United States Government on its forest reserves, and the state maintains a patrol of 300 men to protect the forests of the state.

Minerals
There is a great wealth and variety of minerals to be found in Oregon, including gold, silver, copper, iron, asbestos, nickel, platinum, coal, antimony, lead, and clay, salt and alkali deposits, and an inexhaustible supply of building stone (including sandstone, limestone, and volcanic rock). Gold is found to a greater or less extent in seventeen counties, and is the only mineral mined to any notable extent. It is found especially in the Blue Mountains. A large number of quartz mills are operated in Eastern and Southern Oregon, and in these districts placer mines yield largely. There are two pronounced copper zones in the state — one in Baker County, the other in the south-western section. Oregon coals are lignitic, the largest bed uncovered being in the vicinity of Coos Bay. The largest iron beds in the state are in the Willamette Valley. The ore is of limonite variety, showing about fifty per cent of metallic iron.

Fisheries
Oregon is unequalled by any other state in salmon fisheries and canning. The most notable species of salmon is the Columbia River Royal Chinook. The fish industry in the state produces upwards of $5,000,000 annually. Reckless overfishing threatened to exhaust the supply and to imperil the industry, until the state regulated it by law and provided for it by hatcheries. The state through its department of fisheries operates at the annual expense of $50,000 ten salmon hatcheries, from which nearly 70,000,000 young salmon are liberated annually. Thus the Columbia River is made to produce year after year practically the same supply of salmon. In addition to the canneries, cold storage plants are operated, practically the whole output of which is shipped to European markets.

Agriculture
Late years have seen a great expansion in all lines of farming. In 1908 the total production of the farms of the State represented a gross value of about one hundred million dollars. Owing to the lack of a large rural population, however, only a fraction of the agricultural lands of the state yield even a respectable revenue. The most thickly settled agricultural sections are the great Willamette Valley in Western Oregon (where nearly everything grown in a temperate climate thrives), and a stretch of nearly five hundred miles of rich bottom land along the Columbia River and the shore line of the coast counties. The great wheat and meat producing section of the state is in Eastern and Central Oregon. The Columbia River Basin in Eastern Oregon is one of the best grain districts in the world. Wasco, Sherman, Gilliam, Morrow, and Umatilla counties produce from ten to fifteen million bushels of wheat annually. The soil is mainly a volcanic ash and silt, very fertile and generally deep. Hood River, among the best-known apple regions in the world, is included in this district. Umatilla County may be taken as typical of this section: its wheat crop average about 5,000,000 bushels annually, while the alfalfa lands, comprising about 50,000 acres, yield three crops each year, totalling seven tons to the acre. Live stock is also an extensive industry: there are in this county about 350,000 sheep (with fleeces averaging 9 1/2 pounds) and 30,000 cattle. Most of the sheep and a large proportion of the cattle of the state are raised in central Oregon which comprises about twenty million acres. This immense territory has been hitherto without any railroad communication whatever, and is at present devoted to range systems of husbandry. South- eastern Oregon, comprising Klamath and Lake Counties, is a stock and dairy section. On 1 Jan., 1909, the live stock of the state was valued at $54,024,000. The revenue to the state form dairy products was $17,000,000. In Southern Oregon poultry raising has become quite an industry, and this section practically supplies the large cities on the coast.

MEANS OF COMMUNICATION
Oregon is bounded on three sides by navigable water: the Pacific Ocean on the west, the Columbia River on the north, and the Snake River on the east. Nine inlets on the western coast provide harbour facilities. Of these Coos Bay ranks next in importance to the Columbia harbour. Ocean-going vessels enter the Columbia, and find at Portland the only freshwater port on the Pacific coast. Deep