Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/726

 ber 25, 1849. Its principal feature was its enormous water-power, estimated at a million horse-power. It had early a woollen-mill, a grist-mill, a lumber-mill, a paper-mill, a fruit-preserving factory, and other minor manufactures. The population of Oregon City is, according to the tenth census, 1,263, although it is given ten years earlier at 1,382. It is on the line of the Oregon and California railroad, and has river communication with Salem and Portland. A few miles north of the county seat is Milwaukee, founded by Lot Whitcomb as a rival to Oregon City, in March 1850. It is the seat of one of the finest flouring mills in the state, and is celebrated for its nurseries, which have furnished trees to fruit-growers all over the Pacific coast. Its population is insignificant. A rnile or two south of Oregon City is Canemah, founded by F. A. Hedges about 1845, it being the lowest landing above the falls, and where all river craft unloaded for the portage previous to the construction of the basin and breakwater, by which boats were enabled to reach a landing at the town. It afterward became a suburb of Oregon City, boats passing through locks on the west side of the river without unloading. About half-way between the falls and Portland was established Oswego, another small town, but important as the location of the smelting- works, erected in 1867 at a cost of $100,000, to test the practicability of making pig-iron from the ore found in that vicinity, which experiment was entirely successful. Other towns and post-offices in Clackamas county are Clackamas, Butte Creek, Damascus, Eagle Creek, Glad Tidings, Highland, Molalla, Needy, New Era, Sandy, Spring water, Union Mills, Viola, Wilsonville, Zion.

Clatsop county, named after the tribe which inhabited the sandy plains west of Young Bay, at the mouth of the Columbia, was established June 22, 1844, on the petition of Josiah L. Parrish. The present boundaries were fixed January 15, 1855, giving the county 862 square miles, most of which is heavily timbered land. The value of farms, buildings, and live-stock is a little over $307,000; but the assessed valuation of real and personal property is a trifle over $1,136,000, and the gross value nearly double that amount.

The principal industries of the county are lumbering, fishing, and dairying. The population is about 5,500, except in the fishing season, when it is temporarily at least two thousand more. ''Resources Or. and Wash., 1882, 213; Comp. X. Census'', 367. Astoria, the county seat, was founded in 1811 by the Pacific Fur Company, and named after John Jacob Astor, the head of that company. It passed through various changes before being incorporated by the Oregon legislature January 18, 1856. Its situation, just within the estuary of the Columbia, has been held to be sufficient reason for regarding this as the natural and proper place for the chief commercial town of Oregon. But the application of steam to sea-going vessels has so modified the conditions upon which commerce had formerly sought to establish centres of trade that the custom house only, for many years, compelled vessels to call at Astoria. It has now, however, a population of about 3,000, and is an important shipping point, the numerous fisheries furnishing and requiring a large amount of freight, and in the season of low water in the Willamette, compelling deep-water vessels to load in the Columbia, receiving and handling the immense grain and other ex ports from the Willamette Valley and eastern Oregon. Its harbor is sheltered by the point of the ridge on the east side of Young Bay from the storm-winds of winter, which come from the south-west. There is but little level land for building purposes, but the hills have been graded down into terraces, one street rising above another parallel to the river, affording fine views of the Columbia and its entrance, which is a dozen miles to the west, a little north. Connected by rail with the Willamette Valley and eastern Oregon, the locks at the cascades of the Columbia at the same time giving uninterrupted navigation from The Dalles to the mouth of the river, Astoria is destined to assume yet greater commercial importance. There are no other towns of consequence in this county. Clatsop, incorporated in 1870, Skippanon, Clifton, Jewell, Knappa, Olney, Mishawaka, Seaside House, Fort Stevens, and Westport are either fishing and lumbering establishments, or small agricultural settlements. Westport is the most thriving of these settlements, half agricultural and half commercial.