Introduction to History of Oregon
Archeologists have found evidence that prehistoric hunters lived in Oregon more than 13,000 years ago. It is believed that they moved into southern Oregon from the Great Basin area of Utah and Nevada. Little is known of these people or their descendants.
On the eve of European exploration in the 16th century, there were an estimated 125,000 Indians from about 125 tribes in the Pacific Northwest. The principal tribes in Oregon were the Tillamook, Suislaw, and Kalapooia along the northern coast; the Klamath and Modoc in the southwest; and the Umatilla and the Cayuse in the northeast.
Important dates in Oregon1579 Sir Francis Drake possibly touched the Oregon coast.1792 Robert Gray sailed into the Columbia River.1805 Meriwether Lewis and William Clark reached the mouth of the Columbia.1811 John Jacob Astor founded Astoria.1819 A treaty between the United States and Spain fixed the present southern border of Oregon.1843 The Willamette settlers at Champoeg organized a provisional government.1846 A treaty made the 49th parallel the chief boundary between British and U.S. territory in the Oregon region.1848 Oregon became a territory.1850 Congress passed the Oregon Donation Land Law.1859 Oregon became the 33rd state on February 14.1902 Oregon adopted the initiative and referendum.1912 The state adopted woman suffrage.1937 Bonneville Dam was completed.1950's McNary and The Dalles dams were built on the Columbia River.1964 Heavy floods damaged western Oregon.1982 Construction was completed on a second powerhouse at Bonneville Dam.1991 Barbara Roberts became Oregon's first woman governor. She held office until 1995.Exploration
The coast of southern Oregon was probably seen on voyages of exploration by Bartolome Ferrelo of Spain in 1542–43, England's Sir Francis Drake in 1579, and Sebastián Vizcaíno of Spain in 1602–03. After that it was ignored for almost 175 years. When the Russians started a fur trade in the Aleutians in the mid-18th century, however, the Spanish became alarmed. Missionaries were sent northward from Mexico, and the navigators Juan Perez in 1774 and Bruno Heceta in 1775 sailed up the Pacific coast and claimed the Northwest for Spain.
The English, also interested in trading for furs, sent Captain James Cook to the area in 1778, and George Vancouver in 1791–94. Both explored and mapped the area. New England merchants in the newly independent United States sent out two ships in 1787. Robert Gray, captain of one of them, landed on the Oregon coast, probably at Tillamook Bay, the next year. On a return trip in 1792, Gray discovered the mouth of a river he named after his ship, the Columbia.
Fur Trade
British and American fur traders in the Oregon country—an indefinite term for the Pacific Coast between Spanish-held California and Russian-held Alaska—could send their pelts only by ship because of the lack of an overland route. In 1805 an American expedition under Meriwether Lewis and William Clark reached the mouth of the Columbia, having discovered an overland route from the East to the Pacific. They spent the winter in quarters called Fort Clatsop, on the south bank of the river near present-day Astoria.
David Thompson, a Canadian fur trader, explored the Columbia River for the North West Company during 1807–11, and planned to establish a post at the mouth. Before he could act, however, John Jacob Astor of the American Fur Company built a trading post, Astoria, at the site. After the outbreak of the War of 1812, the British seized Astoria.
In 1818 the United States and Britain signed a treaty agreeing to joint occupation of the Oregon country. The Spanish claim to the area was relinquished in 1819 by a treaty with the United States that drew the boundary between Oregon and Spanish California at the 42nd parallel. The Russian claim was resolved in treaties with the United States in 1824 and Britain in 1825, the boundary of Russian Alaska being established at 54°40' north latitude.
Meanwhile, in 1821, the Hudson's Bay Company absorbed the North West Company and took over the Oregon fur trade. For more than 20 years the only government in the region was that provided by the company factor (agent), John McLoughlin, often called the “Father of Oregon." A new post, Fort Vancouver, was built on the north bank of the Columbia in 1825. It served as company headquarters in the region and was the chief settlement in the Pacific Northwest.
Early Settlement
Jason Lee was sent in 1834 by the Methodist Church in the United States to work among the Indians in Oregon. He established missions where Salem, Oregon City, and The Dalles now are, and petitioned the United States government to establish jurisdiction over Oregon. A second missionary effort was started by Marcus Whitman in 1836 north of the Columbia near present Walla Walla. Both missionaries gave glowing reports of the Oregon country, attracting settlers to the region.
Mountain men (trappers and traders from the Rocky Mountain area), including Jedediah Smith, attempted to encroach on the Hudson's Bay Company's fur trade, and traced a route, the Oregon Trail, through the mountains. In 1841 a small group of pioneers, led by Dr. Robert Newell, arrived in the Willamette Valley. They were the first settlers to reach Oregon by wagon over the Oregon Trail. A much larger group, some 100, came the next year, and in 1843 nearly 900 arrived in what was called the Great Migration, Most of these early immigrants were farm families from the valleys of the Missouri, Mississippi, and Ohio rivers.
Agitation for United States control of the Oregon country grew. Despite the popular slogan “54–40 or fight," in 1846 the boundary separating Canada and the United States on the Pacific coast was set at the 49th parallel.
From Territory to Statehood
The Territory of Oregon was created in 1848 and organized in 1849, with Joseph Lane as the first territorial governor. It included the present states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, and portions of Montana and Wyoming. The capital was first at Oregon City, and later at Salem. Population in 1850 was some 10,000. That year Congress enacted the Donation Act, which gave public land to settlers willing to cultivate it.
The gold rush to California beginning in 1849 benefited Oregon by creating a market for farm products and other supplies. Then gold was discovered in Oregon in 1851, along the Illinois River in the southwestern corner of the territory, bringing hordes of prospectors. New strikes were made the next year, and population grew rapidly.
The northern half of the region was detached to become the Territory of Washington in 1853. On February 14, 1859, Oregon, with its present borders, was admitted as the 33rd state of the Union. (The remaining area was attached to Washington Territory.) The population in 1860 was 52,465. In 1861 gold strikes were made in northeastern Oregon, and for several years there were numerous discoveries in the region between the John Day and Owyhee rivers. Although Oregon's gold boom was short-lived, it helped to promote development of the state.
Indian Wars
At the beginning of white settlement in Oregon, most of the Indians were friendly. As more and more settlers came, however, some of the tribes became hostile in response to the encroachment on their lands. The Whitman mission was wiped out by Cayuse Indians in 1847, and three years of warfare followed. The Rogue River Indians rose against the whites in 1853 and 1855–56.
Beginning in the 1850's, the federal government began negotiating treaties with the Indians for cession of their lands and placement of the Indians on reservations. Several tribes fought for their homelands and their freedom. The major conflicts were the Modoc War (1872–73), the Nez Percé War (1877), and Bannock-Paiute War (1878). By the end of the 1870's, all the Indians of Oregon were on reservations.
Economic Development
Oregon's most critical need in its early years was overland transportation to connect it with the rest of the country. This was supplied in 1883 with the junction of the Northern Pacific Railroad and an Oregon line, the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, near the mouth of the Snake River. The next year, connection was made with the Union Pacific. Completion of the transcontinental railroad led to Oregon's first major boom. The period from 1880 to 1890 saw population, property values, and agricultural and lumber production rise significantly. Grants of land offered to settlers by the railroads led to an increase in population from some 175,000 to more than 300,000 during 1880–90.
The state's first export product was wheat, which was first grown principally in the Willamette Valley, and then also in eastern Oregon. Cattle raising was the main livestock industry from the 1860's. By 1890, however, the number of sheep raisers had increased to the point where a bitter rivalry developed over the use of rangelands. This competition erupted in the mid-1890's into a bloody conflict known as the Sheepshooters War, which lasted for a decade.
The expansion of sheep raising led to the establishment of several wool mills, with Pendleton becoming a major wool market. The canning of salmon, begun in 1866, grew steadily for almost 70 years. Lumbering had its start during the gold rush, and expanded after 1890.
State politics in the late 19th century was controlled by the cattle “barons," timber companies, railroads, and utilities; corruption and fraud were widespread. In the early 1900's, reformers led by William S. U'Ren secured adoption of a series of reform measures, among them the initiative and referendum (1902), direct primary (1904), and recall (1908). These laws represented the first enactment in the nation of a system of direct voter participation in lawmaking. The Oregon System, as it was called, was later adopted by many other states.
The early 1900's were another period of economic boom for the state, but prosperity had begun to fade by the start of the second decade. World War I (1914–18), however, provided new markets for Oregon's farms, mills, and factories. The Great Depression of the 1930's brought falling farm prices and widespread industrial unemployment, especially in lumbering. Recovery was aided by hydroelectric projects, many undertaken by the federal government, and by the onset of World War II, which led to increased agricultural and industrial production.
Hydroelectric units completed in 1943 at Bonneville Dam supplied the abundant, cheap power needed to attract industry to the state. Many companies that built plants here during World War II retained their Oregon sites for postwar manufacturing, and new industries moved in. Further construction on the vast Columbia Basin project provided additional sources of power. An important transportation facility, the Astoria bridge, spanning the mouth of the Columbia River, was constructed during 1962–66. The state suffered its greatest natural disaster in December, 1964, when massive floods struck.
In the 1970's. Oregon was one of the states in the forefront in dealing with such problems as the energy shortage, environmental pollution, and unrestricted growth. During the early 1980's, the state's economy, with its heavy dependence on the lumbering and wood-products industry, was hard hit by a decline in construction activity. By the late 1980's, however, the economy had improved significantly, the result of growth in the service and retail trade sectors. In 1990 Barbara Bowers, a Democrat, became the first woman to be elected governor of the state.
In 1994, voters in Oregon approved a referendum allowing physician-assisted suicide. A second, modified referendum was approved in 1997 and the law went into effect in the following year, making Oregon the first state to allow physicians to assist patients in ending their lives.