Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/465

 ity, two hun-

dred thousand ties — off land that Mr, A. L. Alderman had cut wild hay from, now, this stand of timber would run our present mills for two hundred and fifty years. But they will cut more as the years pass; but the increased production of lumber will correspondingly increase the business and wealth of the city.

Will the timber ever be exhausted? No! if wise counsel and common sense principles prevail. The evergreen trees of this region grow with great rapidity. In 1877, in building the Dayton, Sheridan and Dallas Railroad, the writer of this page took cross ties enough off of one-quarter section of land near Dayton in Yamhill county to construct the entire forty miles of railroad — over one hun- dred thousand ties — off land that Mr. A. L. Alderman had cut wild hay from, thirty-two years before. By a common sense, honestly enforced system of pro- tection to the growing timber, Oregon will have its forests on the rugged moun- tain lands for all time — forests and timber do not only furnish all the lumber needed or demanded, but a cover for harmless game birds and animals that would produce large supplies of food. The whole question of success or failure — a beautiful, healthy and prosperous woodland, or a burnt over desert of rocks, barrens and worthless streams — is one of common sense and common honesty.

THE PIONEER — CYRUS A. REED.

The pioneer of all this lumber prosperity to the city deserves to be remem- bered here. Cyrus A. Reed, the builder of the first sawmill in Portland, was born at Grafton, New Hampshire. He came to San Francisco in 1849, o" the wave of gold hunters' excitement. From San Francisco he came up to Port- land in 1850. He was a sign painter by profession; but had received a good education, and was inspired by ambition to do something worthy of note in the world — and was an honest man of industrious, sober and frugal habits. In April, 1850, he opened a school here in Portland and taught for three months with an average attendance of white, red and black pupils, of sixty-two. After completing the term of school teaching, he took up the sawmill proposition. The sawmill was operated three or four years and then burned down. Then Mr. Reed removed to Salem and engaged actively in building up the fortunes of the state capital ; platting a fine residence addition, selling the lots, building a fine residence, and then the first large brick building in the city known as the "opera house," containing a large theater auditorium, and rooms and accommo- dations for a hotel. During the war of the rebellion, Mr. Reed was appointed by the governor and served as adjutant-general of the militia of the state, and upon his rolls and work was organized the present Oregon National Guard. Reed had a natural talent for landscape painting, and produced at odd hours many fine works on Oregon scenery. His most important work was a panorama of the Willamette valley, painted on canvass covering thirty feet lengthwise of the canvass, and was so perfect a representation of the valley that it was taken to the eastern cities and exhibited from town to town to advertise Oregon. Cyrus A. Reed was the first, the original, "booster" for Oregon.

OTHER MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES.

There are now in the city one thousand eight hundred manufacturing plants, covering nearly all lines of manufacturing industries, and employing over twenty thousand people. From the great lumber mill plants, employing two to three hundred men each, down to the latest plant— The Marvelo Factory, making a new patent level, and carried on by one single man—the inventor — there is a constant, ever noisy increasing hum of constructive industry. From the great logging engine, in the depths of "the continuous woods, where rolls the Oregon" that drags out a stick of timber eighty feet in length and four feet in diameter, down to the tiny gas attachment which automatically puts out the gas when Mr.