Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/260

194 is just above where the government lighthouse on the lower end of the island is located. Here Wyeth assembled all his men, both from the overland party and from the ship, and all hands went to work laying the foundations of the city. A temporary storehouse was erected, the livestock was landed from the ship, and then the goods landed and stored. Ground was cleared, streets were laid out, and a row of huts built for quarters for the men; and the pigs, poultry, sheep and goats that had successfully made the trip from Boston, Mass., to old Oregon, were turned loose in the streets of "Fort William"—the name given by Wyeth to his great western city; and logs and boards were cut and sawed for permanent structures. Wyeth set up a cooper shop and set his coopers at work making barrels, into which he would pack the salmon they would catch in the Columbia to send back to Boston on the ship. And some salmon were caught, packed and actually shipped back to Boston. This was the beginning of the great salmon industry of the Columbia river, antedating Hume, Kinney, Cook and others, thirty-five or forty years—but it was the last of Wyeth's city—the ship got about half a cargo of fish under great difficulties; McLoughlin discouraged trading with Wyeth, as he was compelled to do by his company, and the whole scheme proved a failure. After the island was abandoned by Wyeth, the Hudson's Bay Company established a dairy down there under the care of a French Canadian named Jean Baptist Sauvie, which gave the modern name to the island and started the dairy industry where it has flourished ever since.

Another city was platted opposite Oregon City in 1843 by Robert Moore who came to Oregon from Pennsylvania. Moore named his city "Linn," in honor of Senator Linn of Missouri, the friend of Oregon. A few substantial buildings were erected on that side of the river and maintained a precarious existence until 1862, when they were all washed away by the great flood in the Willamette.

But Moore was not to enjoy a monopoly of townsite advantages opposite the original Falls City, for one, Hugh Burns, proceeded to lay out another city below that of Moore's, which he named Multnomah City, and commenced to build it up by starting a blacksmith shop and operating it himself.

Four years after Moore's venture, Lot Whitcomb, a man of push and enterprise from the state of Illinois, who built the first steamboat in Oregon, uniting with Seth Luelling, the founder of the fruit industry in Oregon, and Captain Joseph Kellogg, a prominent steamboat man of later days, united their capital and enterprise to build a city that should eclipse all others, and founded the town of Milwaukee—and which is still prospering.

And as we float down the Willamette in our townsite canoe, we come to the town of St. Johns, laid out in about 1850 by John Johns, where he erected and operated in a very quiet way, a country store for many years. But the tide of prosperity finally swung around to St. Johns, but not until after its founder had passed on to the city beyond this life, and now St. Johns is the most prosperous suburb of Portland.

And across the river, a little below St. Johns, we find the town of Linnton, which was planned and platted in 1844 by M. M. McCarver and Peter Burnett, both prominent in the provisional government. McCarver was a city builder, somewhat of the air-castle style. He was so sure that Linnton would be the great city of the Pacific coast that he declared the only thing in the way of that result would be the difficulty in getting enough nails to the townsite in good season. McCarver made nothing of Linnton; and then went over to Puget Sound, and along along with Pettygrove, one of the founders of Portland, laid out the city of Port Townsend, and early pulling up his stakes there, went to old Tacoma and made his final effort in city building.

Continuing on down the Willamette slough, our townsite canoe pulls up to the south bank of the river near the mouth of Milton creek, where we find the remains of a city started there in the year 1846 by Captain Nathaniel