Page:The Overland Monthly, volume 1, issue 1.djvu/28

 on this account Portlanders do not generally trace their genealogy farther back than to Messrs. Lovejoy and Pettygrove, who succeeded Overton in the possession of the land in the fall of 1843 or spring of 1844. At this time the site was covered with a dense forest of fir timber. In 1844, a log dwelling was erected by the proprietors, near the corner of Washington and Front streets. In the summer of 1845 a portion of the land was surveyed into blocks and lots. A block contained eight lots of fifty feet front, and one hundred feet in depth. In the following winter Pettygrove erected the first store house —long called the old "shingle store," because its walls were covered with shingles on the outside instead of sawn boards. The lot on which the building stood is now the southwest corner of Washington and Front streets. It could have been bought at that time for less than $100; to-day it will command two hundred times that sum, or $400 a front foot. The lot is now covered by a three-story brick building, the corner room of which (twenty-five by seventy feet) rents for $250 a month in gold. During this summer (1848) the embryo city was christened Portland. At the same time it narrowly escaped being overburdened with the ambitious name of Boston.

It happened in this way: Mr Lovejoy being a native of Massachusetts of course desired to call the place after the capital of his state. On the other hand, Mr. Pettygrove being a Maine man preferred Portland. The dispute was finally settled by an appeal to the simple modern substitute for the ancient wager of battle, a game of heads or tails. Mr. P. tossed a copper cent, which he carried as a souvenir of other days, and as good fortune would have it, Portland won.

In 1846, some lots were disposed of to settlers, and a wharf and slaughierhouse constructed on the bank of the river.

From this time forth the new town was an existing fact, though it was not until the year 1851 that Oregon's ancient capital—Oregon city—situate at the great falls of the Wallamet, gave in, and acknowledged that the commercial sceptre had departed from her people. In the mean time Portland was described by strangers and tourists as "a place twelve miles below Oregon city."

In October, 1848, the proprietorship of the town changed hands, Mr. Pettygrove, who had bought out Gen. Lovejoy, selling to Daniel H. Lownsdale. The price paid was $5000 in Oregon leather, tanned by Lownsdale in a yard belonging to him and adjoining the town site. In 1849, Stephen Coffin and W. W. Chapman became interested as proprietors of the town with Lownsdale. At this time, there were not to exceed one hundred people settled in the town. The discovery of gold in California in 1848 had the effect to turn the attention of the Oregonians towards the mines, and for two or three years all progress and improvement in Oregon, in both country and town, was seriously checked. During this year (1849) a portion of the citizens organized an association and elected trustees for the purpose of building the Portland school and meeting house, being the first enterprise of the kind on the Pacific coast. The house was built at a cost of $2,200, on First street, and was used as a school house and place of holding secular and religious meetings and sometimes courts for many years. In the course of time the association ceased to exist, and the possession of the school house lot became an element in municipal politics and a subject of prolonged legal controversy; one incidental effect of which was to preserve in some measure the facts connected with the settlement of the town and its early "school and meeting house."

In 1850, shipping began to arrive freely from California and the Sandwich