Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/213



PLACE OF RIVER IN NORTHWEST HISTORY 193

The Stites road runs up the Clearwater, passing through the county of the same name. This road by its proposed branches and the rafting possibilities of the northern tributaries of the Clearwater will be in touch with one of the largest bodies of standing white pine in the United States. It is estimated that there are thirty billion feet of standing timber tributary to the Northern Pacific, and its Stites branch.

The Camas Prairie road serves parts of Nez Perce and Lewis counties, and all of Idaho, the greatest grain producing section of this state. It is also connected by branch line, with Win- chester, the home of the Craig Mountain Lumber Company, with a mill of a capacity of 100,000 feet a day.

The Nez Perce & Idaho road (Johnson road) starting from Lewiston and terminating at Nez Perce, the county seat of Lewis county, serves the Tammany section at this end of the line and Lewis county at the other, while there is an area of about 5,000 square miles on Craig Mountain intervening. When this is opened up it will throw on the market a large body of standing timber as well as some of the finest farming and stock-raising country in Central Idaho.

Upper Snake river serves the famous Salmon and Grand Ronde rivers' stock countries, as well as the mines, timber, etc.

But this is the day of good roads. (Lewiston is located on both the Idaho and Washington Highways.) The auto, the jitney bus, the gasoline truck, and hundreds of passengers and thousands of tons of freight will reach the river by these means. It is estimated in the eight counties above mentioned that there are grown annually about 16,000,000 bushels of wheat, about 5,250,000 bushels of barley, 5,750,000 bushels of oats, and about 20,000 tons of hay. There are in this section also about 100,000 head of cattle, 75,000 horses, and 150,000 head of sheep, and many hogs. There are also located in this section two of the largest sawmills in the United States and hundreds of smaller ones, besides many and various other interests. Just what this may mean in dollars and cents each one can estimate for himself by examining the following traffic tables, the one representing the rates to Portland by rail and the other by water.