Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/269

Rh trading establishments located at the upper and lower falls; and in fact, the map of that portion of Oregon north of the Columbia had marked upon it in the spring of 1852 nearly every important point which is seen there to-day.

Of the general condition of the country south of the Columbia at the period of the division, something may be here said, as I shall not again refer to it in a particular manner. The population, before the addition of the large immigration of 1852, was about twenty thousand, most of whom were scattered over the Willamette Valley upon farms. The rage for laying out towns, which was at its height from 1850 to 1853, had a tendency to retard the growth of any one of them. Oregon City, the oldest in the territory, had not much over one thousand inhabitants. Portland, by reason of its advantages for unloading shipping, had double that number. The other towns, Milwaukie, Salem, Corvallis, Albany, Eugene, Lafayette, Dayton, and Hillsboro, and the newer ones in the southern valleys, could none of them count a thousand.