Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/487

Rh In Tillamook County the dairy industry has raised the price of good grass land from twenty-five dollars and up, to one hundred and fifty dollars an acre; and the annual value of the output of cheese and condensed milk from that county now exceeds the value of grain, from any county in the Willamette valley. The number of butter making creameries in Oregon is over one hundred, and the milk condensing plants exceed fifteen, shipping as many cases of condensed milk from the produce of the farms as cases of fish are shipped from the Columbia river.

Himes' "History of the Willamette Valley" records the introduction of sheep into Oregon as follows : "Hon. John Minto, an early pioneer of Marion County, and an authority on this subject, says that the first sheep ever seen in Oregon were brought from California by a man named Lease, an American who had nine hundred head of sheep in the Sacramento valley in 1837. Ewing Young, while importing cattle and horses, as already related, met Lease and advised him to take his flock to the Willamette valley, Oregon. He accordingly drove one-half of his flock through to Oregon in 1837. These sheep were sold mostly to the retired trappers of the Hudson's Bay Company. It is believed that Lease brought a second flock of four or five hundred from California in 1842."

"In 1844 the first sheep from the eastern states were brought in by Joshua Shaw and his son, A. C. R. Shaw, who was superintendent of the penitentiary under Governor Gibbs. Another flock was brought in from the states by H. Vaughn. But the first well bred flock of any size was brought across the plains by Joseph Watt in 1848. Watt was a good judge of such stock, and taking a personal interest in the matter selected a flock of three hundred first-class sheep for the quality of their wool."

It is interesting for the reader to stop and think for a moment of the vast care and trouble it was to bring those defenseless animals on foot all the way from Ohio to Oregon, nearly three thousand miles. How they were protected from the cayotes, wolves, panthers, bears and Indians in their long journey and kept in health and strength to make their daily walk of eight or ten miles, is past all comprehension at this day, when everybody wants to ride in a palace car or dash off three hundred miles a day in an automobile. It is fortunate for Oregon and for mankind that there were such men to do such feats to settle the country. For it is certain if the task of settlement had been left to the degenerates of the present day, the country would have been taken by the Canadians or held by the Indians.

It may be of interest to remark, that the man, Jacob Lease, whose name touches Oregon in this single instance of ringing the first sheep to this country, was from Belmont County, Ohio, where the author of this book was born. Lease was a dreamer and adventurer. He had read the Spanish tales about the California paradise, and drunk it all in as real gospel, long before the discovery of gold, and determined to cast in his lot with the Spaniards. But before leaving