Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/342

244 bankers, four; billiard rooms, six; bakers, two; contractors and builders, seven; brokers, eight; butchers, seventeen; dentists, three; restaurants, five; hotels, sixteen; insurance agents; three; lawyers, twenty-three; livery stables, seven; manufacturers, sixty-three; photographers, five; physicians and surgeons, fifteen; plumbers, two; real estate agents, three; retail dealers in merchandise, one hundred and thirty-three; retail liquor dealers, one hundred and five; theater, one; wholesale merchants, thirty-nine; wholesale liquor dealers, twelve. There was assayed gold dust valued at two million nine hundred and thirty-four thousand one hundred and seventy-seven dollars. These are the figures of a busy little city. The number of voters was one thousand seven hundred and twenty-three.

The old courthouse, now being replaced by the new and elegant structure of steel, stucco and porcelain brick, was completed in 1866. In a charming letter by Judge Deady to the San Francisco Bulletin of that date, we get a description of the panorama seen from the top of the new courthouse as follows: "But to return to Portland. On every side of me I saw its varied and sometimes motley structures of wood and brick, densely packed together, and edging out toward the limits of the natural site of the city—green semi-circle of irregular shaped fir clad hills, on the west and south, and the water of the bright Willamette curving outwardly from the north to the south. A radius of a mile from where I stood would not more than reach the verge of the town. Across the Willamette, and upon its east bank, I could count the houses and orchards in the suburban village of East Portland. This place is yet half town, and half country, but it is destined at no distant day to furnish an abundance of cheap and comfortable homes to the thrifty and industrious artizans and laborers whose hands are daily turning this raw clay and growing timber into temples and habitations all of civilizd man." A beautiful picture and well fulfilled.

In 1866 Portland men built and commenced operating the only furnace for making iron on the Pacific coast. The Oregon Iron Company's Works at Oswego, were completed this year and commenced running by putting out ten tons of pig iron daily. W. S. Ladd was president and H. C. Leonard, vice-president of the company. Mr. Leonard is still with the city he helped so much to build, enjoying life to the full for an octogenarian.

The assessed value of property was four million one hundred and ninety-nine thousand one hundred and twenty-five dollars. The export of produce reached the following figures: Flour, one hundred and forty-nine thousand and seventy-five dollars; salmon, twenty-one thousand seven hundred and ninety-four dollars; bacon, seventy thousand and sixteen dollars; apples, sixty-eight thousand eight hundred and sixty dollars; wool, sixty thousand, eight hundred and forty dollars, making an aggregate of four hundred and fifty-five thousand, four hundred and fifty-seven dollars. The shipment of gold dust, bars, etc., reached the large sum of eight million, seventy thousand, and six hundred dollars, which, it is possible, was an over estimate.

The screw steamship Montana and the side-wheeler Oriflamme appeared on the line to San Francisco, and the little screw steamer, Fideliter, to Victoria. The population was six thousand, five hundred and eight, of whom three thousand and twenty-four were Chinese.

During 1867 there began in earnest, agitation for a railroad through the Willamette valley to Portland, a full account of which appears elsewhere. Propositions were made by the newly formed railroad companies that the city guarantee interest on bonds to the value of $250,000, and a committee appointed by the city council made a favorable report, setting forth the advantage to the farmers and the country towns of cheap transportation to the seaport and the reciprocal advantage to the city from increased trade and commerce. The movements of the time, of which this was a sign, stimulated building and the sale of real estate. The Methodist church at the corner of Third and Taylor streets, was erected this year, 1867, at a cost of thirty thousand dollars. A schoolhouse, with a main part fifty-six by eighty feet and two wings, each twelve by forty feet, was built