Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/89

Rh trips into the mountain wilds. Finally old age compelled him to enjoy these trips in reminiscences only, and many are the recitals he gave with accurate memory of events indelibly stamped to his children and children's children.

In the summer of 1846, after the Provisional government had been established, S. K. Barlow made application for a charter to make a wagon road over the Cascade Mountains south of Mount Hood. Permission was readily granted. About forty road workers started out under the personal supervision of Mr. Barlow. They improved the condition generally, cutting down grades here and there, building bridges, making corduroy, and widening the road everywhere. Two thirds of the immigration of 1846 came over this road and fully if not more than that proportion availed themselves of this continuous route in subsequent years. Thus the hazards and expense of the Columbia River route were obviated. A few miles extra on the long journey were less trouble than to make a transfer of goods to the bateaux at The Dalles.

The road was about eighty miles long; sixty-five miles of it were cut through the primeval forests, canyons, creeks, and rivers of the Cascade mountains and slopes. It began at the western side of Tygh Valley and followed the Indian path for about fifteen miles. In Mr. Barlow's first reconnoitering tour his observations led him to determine to blaze out the road over the natural passes he then and there discovered. Subsequently Mr. Rector approved of the route and together they confirmed its possibility, w which was afterwards fully determined to be the natural and most practicable route by immigrations from 1845 to the present day. The late Judge Matthew P. Deady said of this road: "The construction of the Barlow road contributed more towards the prosperity of the Willamette Valley and the future State of Oregon than any other