From 1845 to 1849, George Abernethy was the first Provisional Governor of the Oregon Country, which extended from the Pacific Ocean to the Rocky Mountains and from California to Northern British Columbia. After arriving in Oregon in 1840 as part of the Methodist Mission at Champoeg, he was involved in a series of meetings that ended in the celebrated May 2, 1843, vote to organize a Provisional Government under the United States rather than Great Britain.
The 90-ton glacial erratic rock at the top of this 1/4 mile-long trail is a stranger from a distant location- it was transported here thousands of years ago on an iceberg in the wake of a cataclysmic flood.
During the last Ice Age, 13,000-15,500 years ago, a giant glacier dammed the Clark Fork River in what is today southwest Montana and created a huge lake- Glacial Lake Missoula. At 3,000 square miles, the lake held nearly 500 cubic miles of water.
Indians inhabited Oregon’s inland valleys for thousands of years before Euro-Americans began to arrive in the late 18th Century. In the early 1780s, and again in the 1830s, diseases spread by seafarers and fur trappers swept through Oregon’s valleys killing most of the native population. The opening of the Oregon Trail in the 1840s incr4eased pressure to remove the remaining Indians from their homelands. In 1856, the U.S.
This portion of the southwest Oregon is homeland to the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Indians. They thrived here for thousands of years before contact with Euro-Americans. Living in plank-house villages, they followed a seasonal round of resource use. Moving from summer camas meadows and salmon fisheries along the rivers to the high country, they picked huckleberries and hunted for deer in the fall. By late fall they returned to the valleys to collect acorns and prepare for winter.
James W. Nesmith, born in New Brunswick, Canada on July 23, 1820, was among the first emigrants to trek the Oregon Trail in 1843. He filed a land claim near present day Monmouth in 1844, and the following year took part in the formation of Oregon's Provisional Government. Nesmith was elected to the Territorial Legislature in 1847, and was instrumental in the formation of Polk County.
Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, a contingent of JapaneseI-Class submarines sailed from Yokosuka via the Marshall Islands to take up positions off Hawaii and the coast of North America. Five of these vessels carried midget two-man submarines and 11 carried aircraft.
Jedediah Smith, making the first recorded overland trip from California, followed the Oregon Coast northward and on July 13, 1828 camped with seventeen trappers on the north bank of Smith River Channel five-eighths of a mile northeast of this point. The following morning, while Smith and two companions went forward to find a river crossing, the Indians came into camp and massacred all but one man. Smith and the survivors escaped to Fort Vancouver, whereupon John McLaughlin sent an expedition to the Umpqua, recovering some of Smith's furs and equipment.
Pioneer, statesman, philosopher. Leader of migration to Oregon in 1843. Leader of Provisional Government of Oregon in 1844-1849. First Surveyor General in 1844. Trailblazer, Fort Hall, Idaho, to Willamette Valley, in 1846. Member of Constitutional Convention for State of Oregon in 1857. Settled here in 1849, one-half mile west of this spot. His house was scene of first Court of Provisional Government, Southern District, 1852.
This marks the land claim of Joseph L. Meek, famed and unlettered ”mountain man,” who arrived in 1840 after driving from Fort Hall to Walla in the first wagon on that part of the Oregon Trail. He was a founder of the Provisional Government; served as the first sheriff, the first marshal, the first census taker. He carried word of the Whitman Massacre to Washington D.C., where President Polk, whose wife was his cousin, received him. Named marshal under the New Territorial Government, he accompanied Governor Lane to Oregon.
The Pioneer Road here detoured the Columbia River Rapids and Mount Hood to the Willamette Valley. The road at first followed an old Indian trail. The later name was Barlow Road. Travel was difficult. Wagons were snubbed to trees by ropes or held back by drags of cut trees. Early travelers named the hill from the resemblance of native leaves to laurel.
Oregon City - supply point for pioneer emigrants was first located as a claim by Dr. John McLoughlin in 1829. The first provisional legislature of the Oregon Country was held here in 1843 and land and tax laws formulated. Oregon City was the capital of the Oregon Territory from 1845-1852. The first Protestant church (Methodist) west of the Rocky Mountains was dedicated in 1844 and the first newspaper (Oregon Spectator) and the first Masonic Lodge were established in 1846.
Oregon City - once known as Willamette Falls - was early the site of an Indian salmon fishing village. The Falls furnished the power for a lumber mill which began operation in 1842, a flour mill in 1844, a woolen mill in 1864, and the first paper mill in the Pacific Northwest in 1867. The first long distance commercial electric power transmission in the United States was from Oregon City to Portland in 1889.
The main village of the Siuslaw Indian Tribe was situated west of this location near the mouth of the North Fork of the Suislaw River. A.R. McLeod, Hudson Bay Company fur trader, and a company of ten men led an exploring party into this valley in July, 1826. He and his party were the first White men to cross the river bar and camp in this area. McLeod bartered with the Suislaws for Beaver and otter furs.
On Oct. 30th, 1792 off the point in the Columbia River where the Sandy empties its waters the boat crew from the H.M.S. Chatham (Vancouver’s Voyages) were the first white men to sight the snow clad peak which Lt. Wm. R. Broughton named Mt. Hood in honor of the British Navy. He called the stream Barings River. Later in november 1805 Lewis and Clark called it the Quicksand river. Still later by common use it became known as Sandy River.
The pass located east of here through the Cascade Range was once called Wiley Pass after Andrew Wiley. Wiley with other Willamette Valley pioneers explored it in 1859 while searching for a route to move their livestock to the grass lands of central Oregon for summer grazing. In 1864 the Willamette Valley and Cascade Mountain Military Wagon Road Company was formed and submitted plans to the U.S. Government for a Military Road to be built along the route as far east as the mouth of the Malheur River.
Few Oregon communities have had a more colorful history than Scottsburg. It was named for Levi Scott, a pioneer of 1844, who homesteaded here and founded the town in 1850. There was a lower town at the head of tidewater on the Umpqua River which became the site of business houses and mills. A mile upstream was the upper town, the distributing and shipping point for the mining regions and communities of southern Oregon. As many as 500 pack animals could be seen loading here at one time.
Aircraft proved their military worth during World War I -- initially for observation purposes, and later for the support of ground troops and bombing. When the United States entered the war in 1917, air supremacy was hotly contested and airplane production was vital to the war effort. Early airplanes were constructed of linen stretched over a wood framework.
This highway is reverently dedicated to Oregon's sons. Members of the 41st division, both living and dead, who wore the Sunset emblem and offered their all in complete devotion to the cause of world peace.
One of the Oregon Country's most picturesque fur-traders, Thomas McKay, is buried near Scappoose. He was a daring leader, famous storyteller and could drive a nail with a rifle ball. A Canadian, he arrived with Astorians as a teenage boy; served with North West Company, became a clerk with the Hudson's Bay Company, established a grist mill at Champoeg. Alexander McKay, a victim of the Tonquin Massacre was his father and Dr. John McLaughlin was his stepfather. He ranged widely, built Fort Boise, Idaho, guided goldseekers to California.
Oregon's Historic Tillamook Forest Fire of 1933 spread over 240,000 acres of forest land, fires in 1939 and 1945 brought the total to 355,000 acres. Over 13 billion board feet of timber were killed.
