Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/499



and of doubtful specie value on any liquidation of assets, the banks began to accumulate gold. Gold begot confidence as nothing else ever had before, and people more treely deposited their savings in banks. From a starving little near-to-shore business, the banks were enabled to extend accommodations to man- ufacturers and producers of wealth. And railroads that had been for twenty years creeping out slowly from Atlantic seaports to the Alleghany mountains, found sale for their securities, pulled on over the mountains and out into the great IMississippi valley, and on across the continent, reaching Portland, Oregon, a quarter of a century before they had expected to get to Chicago under the old paper money financiering days before the discovery of the gold. The flood of gold changed the whole face of affairs, put new life into all business and com- mercial undertakings, brought all the States and communities together under one single standard of values, and pushed the United States to the front as the greatest wealth-producing nation on the fact of the earth.

And here Oregon comes to the front again. The discovery which lifted Amer- ica above all the nations was made by an Oregonian. James W. Marshall, the discoverer of gold in California, was an Oregonian. He came to Oregon in the immigration of 184-4, and not finding much to do here, went down to California the next year. He was a handy sort of a man, could build a house, run a saw- mill, or keep store. In California he made himself useful to the old pioneer, Capt. Sutter and was taken into Sutter's business as a partner, and sent up from Sacramento into the Sierra Nevada mountains to select a site and build a sawmill. He selected the point at Coloma, on the south fork of the American river and built the mill. After turning the water on his mill wheel, he had occasion to go and look at the tailrace, and there on the 19th of January, 1848, discovered the shining particles of gold in the tailrace where the water had washed the sand from the gold. Two other Oregonians who had been employed by Marshall to help biiild the mill — Charles Bennett, of Salem, Marion county, and Stephen Staats of Polk county — were there at the mill at the time, and were called to look at the gold in the water and confirm the discovery. Bennett, having mined gold in Georgia and North Carolina in 1835-36, was the only one who knew what native gold looked like, and it was his decision that settled the question.

The discovery spread like wildfire, and Californians rushed in from all quar- ters. But it was not known in Oregon until five months after the discovery. And then the Oregonians went wild. Everybody that could get away, rushed to California, and nobody was left but old men, boys and women folks. Two- thirds of the Oregon men started for California. Only five men were left in Salem, and only a few women, children and some Indians were left at Oregon City. Pack trains were the first means to get to the gold fields; and after that a train of fift.y wagons started. The first account of the gold received in Oregon was on July 31, 1848. The little schooner Honolulu from San Francisco sailed in over the Columbia bar and slowly beat her way up the river, and finally tied up to an oak tree where the west end of the steel railroad bridge in Portland now stands. The captain of the schooner was in a hurry to discharge cargo and get away. He made haste to load up with all the meat and flour his ship could carry, and then bought up all the picks, pans and shovels he could find in town.