Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 11.djvu/141

Rh Thus the peculiar conditions obtaining in Oregon that necessarily controlled the policy of the state with its lands during the first half of the period of statehood were:

(1) The lands available for selection could not be ap- preciated by the early settlers, their experience had given them no basis from which to anticipate the values they were to have in the future. The lands whose values were seen had been pretty much all appropriated as the beginning of settlement with the right of each family to 640 acres antedated the beginning of the surveys by nearly a decade and a half.

(2) During these early decades the inflow of settlers to then remote and isolated Oregon was slow, affording no basis for a speculative demand for the almost unlimited areas of unoccupied lands.

(3) Furthermore, the separation of the different sections of the state by high and steep mountain ranges, and deep river canyons vetoed such a spreading out of the settlements as took place in the Mississippi valley. Extension of settlement even under these conditions there was into eastern and southern Oregon for the sheep and cattle business on the ranges. But for these purposes the lands for a long time were virtually treated as commons and no sale values created for them.

Princely sums are being received almost every day now by its sister states, Washington and Idaho, in the sales of their lands — timber, fruit and alfalfa lands similar to those Oregon might have selected and retained. To have anticipated such a future for the Oregon state lands, however, under the conditions of this earlier period would have called for more than a prophet's vision. The wonderful possibilities in these lands have all been revealed, — and we might even say, — created, since then. For, the development of transportation facilities, exhaustion of the timber supply of the East, organization of the fruit industry, and progress and prosecution of the work of reclamation of desert lands have all contributed.

Dominant Influence of the National Land Policy Upon the State Policy— There has been yet another condition affecting