Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/953

Rh D. W. Craig as foreman and right hand man, he overthrew all opposition, dismantled their guns, licked the republican party into shape, and laid the foundation for free Oregon." Abraham Lincoln read the Argus, and leading eastern journals testified their admiration of him as a writer. In six weeks after he was inaugurated, Lincoln appointed Adams collector of customs for the district of Oregon, the first appointment made by Lincoln in the state.

In 1864 D. W. Craig bought the Argus and moved it to Salem, where it became merged in the Statesman, and the old Spectator press went to Roseburg. In 1866 D. C. Ireland, formerly with the St. Paul Pioneer, came to Oregon City and started the Enterprise that is still the popular local paper with Edward E. Brodie as editor. A former reporter on the Enterprise was Ella RhodesRhoads [sic], now Ella Higginson, whose books published by Macmillan of New York, have become a permanent part of American literature. In 1906, in conjunction with the Enterprise, H. A. Galloway published the Daily Star, which aroused local pride and gave the town a new impetus, and in 191 1 Mr. Brodie launched the Morning Enterprise, a newsy little daily. In 1882 the Oregon City Courier, democratic, was established, that later combined with the Herald, populist, into the Courier-Herald, and is now the Courier again, under the efficient management of W. A. Shewman.

Around Willamette Falls centers the dramatic history of Oregon City. Gateway to the interior, every enterprise paid tribute to that upheaval of rock that for half a mile cuts the river in two, and lifts the shores into precipitous benches like colossal stairways. With the river the only highway, all travel, freight and immigration, must halt at the foot of the falls, and portage over almost insurmountable obstacles to the head beyond. This created the old immigrant road on Canemah hill that wound directly up over a basaltic bluff overlooking the cataract below. This was the immigrants' entrance to the Upper Willamette, and in due time back came loads of grain down the rocky stairway, to mill and to market, slow-going ox-teams in long trains, fifty, sixty and seventy wagons a day, creaking up and down where today it seems impossible for wheels to go.

This old hill road was superseded by a shore road on the bank of the river to Canemah in 1852, when Captain Peter H. Hatch blasted a highway out of solid rock under the bluff, costing $20,000, made up by popular subscription in Oregon City. This has since been further widened for railroad and trolley lines. This river road now became a scene of still busier traffic, teamsters working all day and night, freighting ever increasing merchandise around the falls. Main street of Oregon City used to run where the basin now is, and warehouses at Canemah above, and where the Hawley mill is below, were bursting with the surplus of the fertile valley.

A still further advance was made when D. P. Thompson, Asa L. Lovejoy and the Dement brothers constructed a horse railway, transferring from boats at Canemah, along Main and Water streets, to a warehouse dock at the foot of Eighth street below the present court house. Two boats ran constantly on the lower river, and nine on the upper, bringing fruit, grain, cheese, butter, eggs, poultry and other farm products from the interior down the river to Portland and the Columbia. The next step was a water basin blasted out to take the place of the land portage.

Canemah, an Indian word for "canoe-place" had always been a deep-water landing above the falls. Between Hawley's paper mill and the woolen mill, a sandspit below a reef of rocks had been for ages the landing below the falls. From here a wagon road ran up a little canyon into Main street. The frontage is deep, ships from the Pacific came up there on the high tide of June, and to connect the two was a future scheme of business adventure.

The chasm under Hawley's present warehouse was blasted out by Dr. McLoughlin, and his mill was between the site of Hawley's warehouse and the river. Bolts in the rocks yet show where it stood. He also had blasted a small