Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 4.djvu/205

 Responding to a request for an account of the operations of Dr. D. S. Baker as a promoter and financier of transportation enterprises, and particularly of the Walla Walla and Columbia River Railway, I herewith submit some scraps of history.

Dr. Dorsey S. Baker was born in Wabash County, Illinois, October 18, 1823. He studied the profession of medicine at the Philadelphia Medical College. Crossed the Plains to Oregon with the emigration of 1848, and went to California in 1849. The practice of his profession was remunerative, but his strong predilection for business led him to abandon a profession always distasteful.

He engaged in the hardware business in Portland in the early fifties, and subsequently built a flouring mill at Oakland, in Southern Oregon, and it was his boast that he brought to Oregon the first pair of mill stones ever used in the State. In 1861 he removed to Walla Walla, then a trading post adjacent to the army garrison established some years previously. He engaged in the mercantile business, being associated with William Stephens. The firm name was D. S. Baker & Co., afterward changed to Baker & Boyer, when his brother-in-law, John F. Boyer, was taken into the firm. The firm did a large business with the stockmen and settlers, and in outfitting miners and packers flocking by thousands to the Oro Fino and Florence mines, and later to Boisé, Idaho, and Montana. Sales were large and profits good, and the firm of Baker & Boyer flourished.

Doctor Baker was a man of keen business judgment and great foresight. It is probably not an over statement to say that the State of Washington has not numbered