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Rh otherwise, but the belief in the mysterious strait still continued, and various reputed entrances were platted on the charts of sailors as leading to it both from the Atlantic and Pacific sides, and these voyages were encouraged by the seafaring nations. England offered a reward of twenty thousand pounds to the successful navigator.

Captain George Vancouver as late as 1791 sailed the seas for the same search, and at the same time to grasp an English hold upon Spanish possessions far to the Northwest. He had sailed with Captain Cook on his two previous voyages. Vancouver, in his exploration, charted this Port Orford harbor, and named the cape nearby as Cape Orford in honor of his friend the Earl of Orford. For over 200 years the straits of Anian still continued to be a mystery. All above the 43rd degree of latitude of the Pacific Coast was an undiscovered country through the seventeenth and three-fourth of the eighteenth centuries. At last, through the more searching explorations of Cook and Vancouver, the Anian bubble burst and was no longer a mystery.

But this section of the Oregon coast, and indeed from Cape Mendocino to the Columbia River, for another sixty years remained largely unexplored until 1850, when another navigator, and he an American—sailing by, discovered this harbor, and in the Sea Gull on June 9, 1851, determined to acquire its possession, which his experienced eye could perceive would become valuable. This navigator was Captain William Tichenor. His ship reaching Portland in her regular journeys from San Francisco, he at once made notification and entry in the Surveyor General's office at Oregon City for one section of land, embracing this site and naming it Port Orford—transferring and adopting Vancouver's name of "Orford" from the