Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/203

 NOTES ON OHKGON CONDITIONS IN THE FIFTIES. 195 Captain Augur having two companies of the Fourth Infantry at Fort Hoskins. Most of the officers named in the foregoing subsequently distinguished themselves and became Generals in rank, the most notable case being that of Lieutenant P. H. Sheridan. Prior to the dates named Forts Dalles, Lane and Orford were in existence, being commanded in 1853 and 1854 by Major G. J. Rains, Major G. W. Patton, Captain A. J. Smith, Lieutenant A. V. Kautz and Lieutenant R. Williams. In the fifties the Columbia River was commonly known in official circles as the Oregon River, the war secretaries usually so speaking of it in their orders and reports. Columbia Bar- racks was another name for Fort Vancouver. The War Department then was much taken up with military roads. In Oregon a number of such roads were located, among them one from Camp Stewart to Myrtle Creek, one from Myrtle Creek to Scottsburg, one from Vancouver to The Dalles and one from Astoria to Salem. Lieutenant John Withers, Lieutenant George H. Derby and Lieutenant George H. Men- dell, all of the Engineer Corps, had charge of these road en- terprises in 1855, 1856 and 1857. Lieutenant Withers had a bit of unpleasantness with Colonel W. W. Chapman, the well- known Oregon pioneer, who enjoined him in the Territorial Court, but Hon. S. F. Chadwick came to the assistance of the army officer, and had the injunction set aside. Lieutenant Derby suggested that sixteen feet wide for the road from Astoria to Salem was sufficient, instead of one hundred feet in his orders. He found it difficult to get laborers at $60 a month, owing to a gold discovery at Colville. He opened twelve and two-thirds miles of the road at the Astoria end, and Lieutenant Mendell added forty miles more in 1857. It was only a trail over much of its length, available for pack animals and the driving of live stock. Mendell thought that $600 a mile would construct a fair road from Astoria to Tualatin Plains, a distance of about fifty miles. In 1855 there were two United States Land Districts in Oregon the Willamette and the Umpqua, with offices at