Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/735



bank of the Santiam River, ten miles from its confluence with the Willamette, and has fine flouring mills. The population is small. Silverton is another of the early farming settlements, which takes its name from Silver creek, a branch of Pudding River, on which it is situated, and both from the supposed discovery of silver mines at the head of this and other streams in Marion county, about 1857. It was not incorporated until 1874. Aurora was founded by a community of Germans, under the leadership of William Keil, in 1855. The colony was an offshoot of Bethel colony in Missouri, also founded by Keil in 1835. On the death of Keil, about 1879, the community system was broken up. Three hundred of these colonists own 16,000 acres of land at Aurora. Moss Pictures Or. City, MS., 82; Decides Hist. Or., MS., 78; S. F. Post, July 28, 1881. Other towns and post-offices in the county are Hubbard, named after Thomas J. Hubbard, who came to Oregon with Wyeth and settled in the Willamette Valley, Sublimity, Mohama, Fairfield, Aumsviile, Turner, Wliiteaker, Stayton, Woodburn, Bellpasie, Stipp, Brooks, Saint Paul, and Daly s Mill.

Multnomah county, which has taken a local Indian name, was organized December 23, 1854, out of Washington and Clackamas counties. Its boun daries were finally changed October 24, 1864. It is about fifty miles long by ten in width, and comprises a small proportion of agricultural land, being mountainous and heavily timbered. Less than 27,000 acres are tinder im provement, the value of farms, including buildings and fences, being $2, 283,- 000, of live-stock less than $200,000, and of farm produce not quite $400, 000. The gross value of all property in the county is over nineteen millions, and the valuation of taxable property about fourteen millions. The population is 26,000. The capital invested in manufactures is nearly two millions, and the value of productions approaches three millions. Portland, founded in 1845 by A. L. Lovejoy and F. W. Pettygrove, and named after Portland, Maine, by the latter, is the county seat of Multnomah, and the principal commercial city of Oregon. It was first incorporated in January 1851, at which time its dimensions were two miles in length, along the river, and extending one mile west from it. Portland Orer/onian, April 15, 1871. The city government was organized April 15, 1851. There is no copy of the incor poration act of 1851 in my library, but the act is mentioned by its title in the Oregon Statesman for March 28, 1851, and the date is also given in an article by Judge Deady in the Overland Monthly, i. 37. The first mayor chosen was Hugh D. O Bryant. The ground being thickly covered with a fir forest, there was a long battle with this impediment to improvement, and for twenty years a portion of the town site was disfigured with the blackened shafts of immense trees denuded of their branches by fire. The population increased slowly, by a healthy growth, stimulated occasionally by military operations and mining excitements. In 1850 shipping began to arrive from S. F. for lumber and farm products, and Couch & Co. despatched the first brig to China the Emma Preston. On the 4th of December of that year the first Portland newspaper, the Weekly Orefjonian, was started by Thomas J. Dryer. In March 1851 the steamship Columbia began running regularly between S. F. and Portland, with the monthly mails. The Columbia, after running on this line for ten years, was burned in the China seas. In 1853 the first brick building was erected by William S. Ladd. In 18G5 there were four churches, one public school, one academy, four printing-ofiices, four steam saw-mills, a steam flouring mill, and about forty dry-goods and grocery stores, the cash value of the real and personal property of the town being not much short of two and a half millions.

In 1856 the city government took the volunteer fire-companies in charge and purchased an engine. Pioneer Engine Company No. 1 of Portland, the first organized fire-company in Oregon, was formed in May 1851. Its foreman was Thomas J. Dryer of the Ore&lt;jonian, assistant foreman D. C. Coleman, secretary J. B. Meer, treasurer William Seton Ogden. Among the members were some of Portland s most honored citizens, but they had no engine. Vigilance Hook and Ladder Company No. 1 was the next organization, iu \n