Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/273

Rh the advanced age of 82 years. James Terwilliger was always an active man of affairs, stoutly defending his opinions of the right, and with true public spirit, contributing to the improvement of the town and the development of the country.

Pettygrove erected a building for a store and put in a very small stock from his remnants at Oregon City. The business of the town moved imperceptibly; in fact there was no business worth mentioning. When a ship would come in, all that had money, furs, or wheat, would buy of the ship, and trade in their produce, so that merchandise at the store was a mere pretense.

The first item of improvement that so attracted the attention of the country as to have Portland talked about, was the starting of a tannery by Daniel H. Lownsdale. This was the first tannery north of Mexico in all the country west of the Rocky mountains. As a matter of fact, many of the farmers up in the valley had been tanning deer and calfskins in a limited way, as nearly all the pioneer people knew something of the art of tanning skins. But the Lownsdale tannery was started as a business enterprise to accommodate the public and make profit to its proprietor. Hides would be tanned for so much cash, or leather would be traded for hides; or leather would be sold for cash, furs or wheat. Here was a start in a productive manufacturing business, and Lownsdale's tannery was the talk of the whole country, and advertised Portland quite as much as it did the tannery. This tannery was not started on the townsite, but away back in the forest a mile from the river, on the spot now occupied by the "Multnomah field" of the Athletic Association. After running the tannery for two years, Lownsdale sold it to two newcomers—Ebson and Ballance—who in turn sold it to A. N. King, who then took up the mile square of land adjoining Portland on the west, known as the King Donation Claim, and which has made fortunes for all his children by the sale of town lots. Amos N. King was not much of a town lot speculator. It was a long time before he could muster up courage enough to ask a big price for a little piece of ground. He stuck to his tannery, and made honest leather for more than twenty years before he platted an addition to the city.

A leading citizen of those early days of Portland was John Waymire, who built the first double log cabin, and made some effort to accommodate strangers and traders who dropped off the passing batteaux to look at the new city, by furnishing meals and giving them a hospitable place to spread their blankets for the night. Waymire further enlarged his fortunes by going into the transportation business with a pair of oxen he had driven two thousand miles all the way from old Missouri, across the mountains and plains. As the new town was the nearest spot to Oregon City where the ships could safely tie up to the shore and discharge cargo, Waymire got business both ways. With his oxen he could haul the goods up to his big cabin for safety, and then with his oxen he could haul the stuff back to the river to load into small boats and lighters for transportation to Oregon City. In addition to the transfer business, and the hotel business, Waymire started a sawmill on Front street. The machinery outfit would not compare well with the big mills along the river in Portland at the present time, being only an old whip-saw brought all the way from Missouri, where it had been used in building up that state. The motive power being one man standing on top of the log, pulling the saw up preparatory for the down stroke, and another man in the pit under the log who pulled the saw down and got the benefit of all the sawdust. Waymire was the one busy man in the new town, and prospered from the start. He knew well how to turn an honest penny in the face of severe financial troubles. With the money made in Portland he went up to Dallas, in Polk county, in later years and started a store, thinking it safer to rely on the farmers for prosperity than takes chances on such a strenuous city life. There he sold goods "on tick" (credit), as was the custom of the country, and not being a good bookkeeper, he wrote down on the inside board walls of his store with a piece of chalk the names of his