Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/745

 LUMBER AND SHIP-BUILDING. 727

Umpqua, and Rogue River valleys are scarcely less densely covered with forest. See Review Board of Trade, 1877, 33; Overland Monthly, xiii. 247--9; Sept Com. Ayric., 1875, 330-1; Moseltfs Or., 30; Or. Legis. Docs, 1876, doc. ii., 15.

The merchantable woods of Oregon are yellow fir, cedar, pine, spruce, cottonwood, hemlock, oak, maple, ash, alder, arbutus, and myrtle. Fir is the staple used in ship-building, house-building, fencing, furniture, and fuel. Cedar is used for finishing, and withstands moisture. Hemlock is used in tanning. Oak is utilized for farming implements and wagons; cot tonwood for staves; ash, maple, and myrtle for furniture. Veneering from the knots of Oregon maple received a diploma from the centennial exposition of 1876, for its beauty, fineness of grain, toughness of fibre, and susceptibility to polish. Noah s Or., 128. Combined with myrtle, which is also beautifully marked and susceptible of a high polish, but of a dark color, the result is one of great elegance in cabinet-work. A few vessels built at Coos Bay have been finished inside with these woods, presenting a remarkably pleasing effect. Half of all the wood used in the manufacture of furniture in San Francisco is exported from Oregon. As early as 1862 a set of furniture made of Oregon maple was sold in San Francisco for $800. Or. Statesman, May 12, 1G62. The furniture trade cf the state reached 750,000 annually, two thirds of which was for home-made articles. The Oregon Manufacturing Company of Portland in 1875 began to make first-class fashionable furniture from native woods, a building being erected by J. A. Strobridge on the corner of First and Yamhill streets, at a cost of $75,000, for the company s use. Portland West S/n,re, Aug. 1875; Hillsboro Wash. Independent, Dec. 2, 1875. The finest cabinet articles were made in Portland. Other smaller factories were scattered throughout the state, but Portland furnished a large proportion of the furniture sold by country merchants. According to a prominent Pacific coast statistician, John S. Hittell, Resources, 584-5, there were 150,000,000 feet of lumber sawed in Oregon in 1880-1. The greater part of this was cut at the mills on the Columbia, and the southern coast, several of which turn put 75,000 feet per day. The mill at St Helen cut from 40,000 to 75,000 in 24 hours. At Coos Bay and Port Orford there were mills that produce 21,000,000 to 37,000,000 feet annually. G dfry s Or. Resources, MS., 45; 8. S. Mann, in Historical Correspondence, MS. The Coquille mills saw 12,000,000 feet for San Francisco market annually. In eastern Oregon the Blue Moun tains furnished the principal part of the lumber made. The Thielsen flume, for carrying lumber from the mountains, is the largest, carrying 50,000 feet of lumber and 300 cords of fire-wood daily from the mills to the town of Milton, near the Oregon line. It was the property cf the Oregon Improve ment Company, and, including its branch, was thirty miles long. The Little White Salmon flume, built by the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company to bring lumber to The Dalles, was ten miles in length. HittelVs Resources, 584-5.

At St Johns, near the mouth of the Willamette, was the location of the Or egon Barrel Company, where barrels, pails, fruit-packing boxes, and cases for holding packages of canned salmon were manufactured; 0. B. Severance founder. The products of this factory were- worth about $15,000 annually. There was a similar factory at Oregon City in 18G3, and there was, in 1884, a large box factory at Portland, owned by John Harlowe & Co. Wood was used for fuel throughout Oregon, except in a few public and private houses, where coal was preferred. It was abundant and cheap everywhere west of the Cascade Mountains, the highest prices obtaining in Portland, where fir wood brought six dollars per cord, and oak eight. Most of the river steamers used wood for making steam as a matter of economy.

Ship-building, which depends upon the quality of timber produced by the country, is carried on to a considerable extent, the principal ship-yard being at Coos Bay. The oldest yard on the bay is at North Bend, where the brig Araijo was built by A. M. and R. W. Simpson in 1856, since which time twenty-two other vessels have been launched from this yard, with tonnage \n