Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 26.djvu/458

 tree, 75 feet high in some places. On the high mountains it is generally a shrub. It is found generally on the slopes of the southern Cascade Range and the Sierra Nevada.

, Lincoln County. This is a station on the line of the Southern Pacific Company between Corvallis and Yaquina. George T. Smith, postmaster at Chitwood, states in 1925 that the station and post office were named for Joshua Chitwood, who lived near the present site of the community when the railroad was built down the Yaquina River. This railroad was built between 1881 and 1885. For particulars of this construction see Scott's History of the Oregon Country, volume IV, page 334.

, Lake County. This creek flows into Sycan Marsh from the east, and was named for a well-known Indian chief of the Piute or Snake tribe.

, Lake County. Christmas Lake is a small body of water in township 26 south, range 18 east, about 25 miles east of Fort Rock. The name is one of the puzzles in Oregon nomenclature, and it is frequently asserted that John C. Fremont discovered and named the lake in question, which is not a fact.

A map of the Oregon territory accompanying Senator Lewis F. Linn's report, prepared under the direction of Col. J. J. Abert in 1838, shows a river flowing from a lake near what is now known as Warner Valley, the river being labeled "Christmas River." It is not clear where this name was obtained, but it is possible that such a stream may have been named by Hudson's Bay Company men. Peter Skene Ogden visited central Oregon as early as 1825, and may have had something to do with the name of Christmas River.

During the second exploring expedition of then Captain Fremont, which left Kansas in May, 1843, its leader conducted the party through the Deschutes Valley, and after discovering and naming a number of geographic features, he arrived in the Warner Valley and on Decem-