Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/547

Rh We are indeed approaching Portland, the metropolis of the Columbia, the "Rose City," in many respects the most interesting and attractive of Western cities. The approach to Portland is one hard to match for stately beauty. The city occupies both sides of the Willamette, the main business part on the west side, but the larger residence part on the east.

The first settler on the original site of Portland was a man named Overton. Lownsdale, Chapman, and Lovejoy bought him out. Then Captain John H. Couch in 1845 located a donation land claim on what is now the northern part of the west side city. At that time the site was somewhat cut up with gulches and clothed in the densest of dense forests, with perfect jungles of every species of undergrowth. But duller eyes than those of the gallant mariners, Couch, Flanders, Ainsworth, Pettygrove, and Lovejoy, could have seen beneath the tangled thickets the making of a city, though it may well be questioned whether even they, in their wildest flights of fancy, ever pictured the scene of to-day, where the city of these sixty yearsbuilding now sits, a queen upon her circling throne of hills. The location of Portland is almost ideal. The hills to the west rise to a height of about eight hundred feet, but many fine homes are located there, and car lines cross the hills in many directions. Above the fogs and smoke these high-line homes have every possible charm. On the east side of the Willamette the land is a level bench with limitless room for expansion. There are a few picturesque elevations on the east side, as Mt. Tabor and Mt. Scott, and these have been used for homes with the taste which characterises the entire city.