Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/729

 to Nevada farmers. The valuation of assessable real and personal property is between two and three millions. In that part of the county which touches the sea-coast lumbering and fishing are important industries. Gold-mining is still followed in some localities with moderate profits. The population is between nine and ten thousand. Roseburg, named after its founder, Aaron Rose, was made the county seat in 1853. It was often called Deer creek until about 1856-7. It is beautifully situated at the junction of Deer creek with the south fork of the Umpqua, in the heart of the Umpqua Valley, has about 900 inhabitants, and is the principal town in the valley. It was incorporated in 1868. Oakland is a pretty town of 400 inhabitants, so named by its founder, D. S. Baker, from its situation in an oak grove. ''Deady's Hist. Or.'', MS., 79. It is on Calapooya creek, a branch of the Umpqua River, and the Oregon and California railroad passes through it to Roseburg. Wilbur is another picturesque place on the line of this road, named after J. H. Wilbur, founder of the academy at that place. It is only an academic town, with two hundred population. Canonville, at the north end of the Umpqua canon, has a population of two or three hundred. Winchester, named for Colonel Winchester of the Umpqua Company, the first county seat of Douglas county, Galesville, named from a family of that name, Myrtle Creek, Camas Valley, Looking Glass, Ten Mile, Cleveland, Umpqua Ferry, Cole's Valley, Rice Hill, Yoncalla, Drain, Comstock, Elkton, Sulphur Springs, Fair Oaks, Civil Bend, Day Creek, Elk Head, Kellogg, Mount Scott, Patterson s Mills, Round Prairie, are the various smaller towns and post-offices in the valley. Scottsburg, situated at the head of tide-water on the lower river, named for Levi Scott, its founder in 1850, and by him destined to be the commercial entrepot of southern Oregon, is now a decayed mountain hamlet. The lower town was all washed away in the great flood of 1861–2, and a whole street of the upper town, with the military road connecting it with the interior country, was made impassable. Another road has been constructed over the mountains, and an attempt made to render the Umpqua navigable to Roseburg, a steamer of small dimensions and light draught being built, which made one trip and abandoned the enterprise, condemning Scottsburg to isolation and retrogression. Gardiner, situated on the north bank of the Umpqua, eighteen miles lower down named by A. C. Gibbs after Captain Gardiner of the Bostonian, a vessel wrecked at the entrance to the river in 1850 laid out in 1851, was the seat of customs collection for several years, during which it was presumed there was a foreign trade. At present it is the seat of two or more lumbering establishments, a salmon-cannery, and a good local trade.

Gilliam county was set off mostly from Wasco, partly from Umatilla, in the spring of 1885. First county officers: commissioners, A. H. Wetherford, W. W. Steiver; judge, J. W. Smith; clerk,—Lucas; sheriff, J. A. Blakely; treasurer, Harvey Condon; assessor, J. C. Cartwright. The town site of Alkali, the present county seat, was laid off in 1882 by James W. Smith, a native of Mississippi. First house built in the latter part of 1881, by E. W. Rhea.

J. H. Parsons, born in Randolph co., Va, came to Cal. in 1857, overland, with a train of 30 wagons led by Capt. L. Mugett, and located in San José Valley, where for twelve years he was a lumber dealer. In 1869 he went to British Columbia and was for 8 years engaged in stock-raising on Thompson's River, after which he settled on John Day River, Oregon, in what is now Gilliam co. He married, in 1877, Josephine Writsman, and has 4 children. He owns 320 acres of bottom-land, has 5 square miles of pasture under fence, has 2,000 head of cattle, and 200 horses. His grain land produces 30 bushels of wheat or 60 bushels of barley to the acre.

Grant county, called after U. S. Grant, occupying a central position in eastern Oregon, contains over fifteen square miles, of which only about one-ninth has been surveyed, less than 200,000 acres settled upon, and less than forty thousand improved. It was organized out of Wasco and Umatilla counties, October 14, 1864, during the rush of mining population to its placers on the head waters of the John Day. ''Spec. Laws, in Or. Jour. Sen.'', 1864, 4.