Fifty Years in Oregon was written by Theodore T.
Geer, a grandson of Joseph Carey Geer and a shirttail ancestor of
ours.
I have put much of the book on
this website. I started because several
chapters describe the early roots of our family history in Oregon. I
kept going because
I found many of the chapters from this perspective on the early
settlers and the history of Oregon to be quite
interesting.
But Oregon is so full of
interesting places that one finds a pleasant summer resort at almost every turn.
Not only to the snowy peaks and to the beaches do its people go for recreation
in the vacation season, but to the heart of its mountain ranges, along its
rivers, and to many points in the interior where an elevation of from three to
five thousand feet affords a change that is delightful. Even in the Willamette
valley, in the midst of a rich and thickly settled agricultural section, are
hundreds of groves of native firs and oaks where the heat is never excessive,
splendid water abounds and all the pleasures of the mountains and the coast are
abundantly supplied by nature.
Indeed, one of the most
attractive spots on the Pacific Coast of this character is Gladstone Park,
within a mile of Oregon City and ten miles of Portland. It is near the
Willamette River and is reached by the main line of the Southern Pacific and by
the electric cars from Portland. Here eminent men of the United States, men
prominent on the platform in all the professions, lecture annually, and the
intellectual treat afforded, together with the pleasures and benefits of an
outing, supply all the wants of a large part of the population of that section
of Oregon with the minimum of effort and the least sacrifice of the comforts of
home life.
I recall a most delightful
ten days spent at Gladstone a few years ago when Robert J. Burdette, of Los
Angeles, was one of the speakers. His wife and mine were prominently engaged in
different lines of work there and the four of us were much together. I had
intended to go to Portland some day that week, and my wife suggested to me one
morning that I go on that particular day, since she and Mrs. Burdette intended
to entertain a score of their lady friends at luncheon. So I went.
When I returned in the
afternoon, Burdette said: “Well, young man, you don’t know what you missed by
being away today. I dined with twenty women, and not another man was present.”
After my wife had explained
that Burdette and I were invited to join the company, but that she had not so
understood the arrangement, I said to him: “Well, how did you make it
with so many women on your hands and no male assistance?”
“Oh,” he replied, “I was like
the fellow who was engaged to the Harrison girl. He met a friend one day and
said to him, ‘You want to congratulate me — I am engaged to Ellen Harrison.’
‘What,’ said his friend, ‘one of those twins? Why, nobody on earth call tell
those girls apart — nobody ever did. When you call to see Ellen, how do you
manage to tell ‘em apart?’ ‘Why, I don’t try,’ replied the self-satisfied
prospective Benedict.”
One afternoon Burdette and I
were sitting in front of our tent discussing men and things when we drifted into
the pleasant pastime of repeating such quotations as we could recall, humorous
and otherwise, in the course of which I said:
“I once read in one of the
after-dinner speeches in Tom Reed’s ‘Modern Eloquence’ — I forget who made the
speech — this verse, which I thought was particularly good:
A famous American preacher Said “the hen is a beautiful creature,” And the hen just for that Laid an egg in his hat And thus did the Henry Ward Beecher.
At this recitation we both
laughed in appreciation of a really good thing. I thought, however, Burdette was
a little lame in his manifestation of mirth over the humor of the verse, but I
merely said: “That is a very clever thing.
I wonder who is the author of it.”
“Well,” said he, with a
perceptible degree of embarrassment, “the fact is, I wrote that when I was
editor of the Burlington Hawkeye some twenty years ago. Do you like it?”
And Gladstone Park is only
one of many resorts. Ashland, in Jackson County, near the California line, has
its annual Chatauqua exercises in one of the finest natural groves on the
Pacific Coast, on the slopes of the Siskiyou Mountains, which overlook the
famous Rogue River valley, famous for its peaches, pears and grapes; Grant’s
Pass, cozily situated in the heart of a beautiful chain of mountains on the
Rogue River, is a famous resort within itself; Roseburg, located on the historic
Umpqua River, has a climate which is unsurpassed any where and its people are
prosperous and comfortable; Eugene, the seat of the University of Oregon, has
its Coast connections at Siuslaw and its famous, health-giving Mackenzie River
resorts back toward Crater Lake; Corvallis, with its popular Agricultural
College, a little city which boasts of having “the biggest college and the
smallest jail in Oregon,” the “college always being full and the jail empty,” is
on the road to Newport on the Yaquina Bay, one of the most popular beach resorts
in the State; Albany, with its own Chatauqua and the Calipooia Mountains not far
away, full of ozone in the heated season; Salem, the State capital, the most
beautiful “home city” to be found anywhere, is within easy reach of Silver Creek
Falls, Mehama and other mountain resorts that have been liberally patronized for
forty years; Oregon City, the oldest town in Oregon, aside from Astoria, has the
famous Willamette River Falls, beautiful, and harnessed to contribute to the
comfort of mankind; Portland, known over all America as the City of Roses,
destined to become in the near future the largest on the Pacific Coast and
itself a summer resort; La Grande, situated in that most attractive gem, the
Grand Ronde valley, with its adjacent Blue Mountains and the nearby Hot Lake;
Baker City, with its elevation of three thousand five hundred feet, located at
the point where Powder River enters the splendid valley of the same name, within
a few miles of the Auburn Mountains on the west and those of Eagle Creek on the
east always covered with snow; Medical Springs, owned for forty-five years by
that prince of pioneers and good fellows, Dunham Wright, where the water boils
out of the ground hot enough to cook an egg in four minutes; Pendleton, that
inland city noted for the hustle and rustle of its business men, the capital of
Umatilla County, which every year produces one per cent of all the wheat raised
in the entire United States, namely, five million bushels, which has its
Meachem, Wenaha Springs and other delightful mountain resorts such as only the
Blue Mountains can boast — all these, gentle reader, and hundreds more, are to
be found in Oregon.
And, then, there is Astoria,
at the mouth of the majestic Columbia, six miles wide at this point affording a
full view out to the sea, with nothing to interfere with one’s looking directly
into the heart of the Flowery Kingdom save the limitations of one’s visual
powers. Astoria, where the most extensive fisheries on the Pacific Coast are
located and where each year more than one million dollars’ worth of the famous
Chinook salmon is caught, packed and shipped to the waiting markets of every
civilized country on earth. And Seaside, Gearhart, Ocean Park, Tillamook, the
last a most prosperous section of the State where everybody is a dairyman or
woman — and where hard times have never been known; Coos Bay, a delightful, and
also most promising and enterprising, section of the State, rich in resources
and as yet in the infancy of its development; Klamath Falls, Lakeview, Burns,
Ontario, Prineville and all the new towns of central Oregon, which is just now
beginning its industrial life through the impetus of two new lines of railroads
projected into it — these afford an attraction and opportunity to hundreds of
thousands of people who, for the lack of them, are leading sordid and
discontented lives elsewhere.
In all this vast section I
have named — and I have frequently visited every portion of it — there are no
extremes of climate, either of heat or cold. In all my life I have seen neither
a cyclone nor a thunderstorm such as Eastern people have described to me. I have
never known a case of sunstroke nor seen a person with the ague.
For forty years “Uncle
Charley” Benson was one of the best known farmers in Marion County. He was a
typical pioneer, a famous hunter, and nobody ever saw him wearing a coat or
vest. After having lived in Oregon for thirty years he visited one summer his
sister in Iowa, whom he had not seen since she was a small girl. Upon his
arrival at her home, when bedtime arrived, explaining that they were liable at
any time to be visited by a cyclone, she showed him the “cyclone cellar” — a
dug-out affair near by. She also told him that, if he heard them calling in the
night, to understand at once what was the matter and make a “bee line” for the
cellar.
He said upon his return home
that, after sweltering, totally devoid of any clothing, until one o’clock in the
morning on account of the almost unbearably oppressive heat, he had fallen
asleep when a loud shouting downstairs awoke him. Frightened out of his wits, he
went down three steps at a time, intending to go to the cellar. It was very
dark, however, and being a stranger, he lost his way and landed in a cistern,
made by scooping out the surface of the ground for a few yards square, in which
rainwater was caught and saved for domestic uses. By this time the storm had
broken in all its fury and “Uncle Charley,” being afraid to change his location,
remained in the water up to his chin, squatted down like a bullfrog, with his
head only protruding.
It was all over in twenty minutes, and the family,
discovering that “Uncle Charley” was not in the cellar, decided he had not
awakened. They were not much alarmed, since it proved to be merely an ordinary
“blow.” When the family reunion occurred at the close of the disturbance, and
“Uncle Charley,” tapping at the front door, had related his experience and
explained his mistake — his sister in the meantime bringing his clothing to him
— he said he had had enough; that he was more than delighted to have seen his
folks again, that they had talked over all the matters of interest, he guessed,
and that he would start back to Oregon the next day.
And he did!
Oregon has an area of
ninety-five thousand square miles, with a population of less than three-quarters
of a million. If it had as many people as Massachusetts, according to landed
area, its population would be at least thirty million — and there is no
comparison between the two States in the matters of natural, agricultural and
other resources. Our greatest need is people — of the right sort. These we are
getting, by degrees, and never so rapidly as now, as conditions here are
becoming better known in the Eastern States, and even in foreign countries. We
have depended upon private enterprise altogether for the dissemination of the
attractions which Oregon presents to the home-seeker, the State never having
engaged in advertising its own advantages to the home-builder or the capitalist.
The Legislature did, indeed,
a few years ago authorize the appointment by the Governor of a Board of
Immigration, but as it appropriated no money with which to prosecute its duties,
it fell by the wayside. I recall that in selecting its five members I afterward
discovered that they were all Republicans. This, of course, was unintentional,
and as the appointees had not yet been announced, I wrote to William M. Colvig,
of Jacksonville, that I was desirous of appointing him on the new Board of
Immigration, principally because I was hunting for a good Democrat who would not
shirk the responsibilities of the position. Colvig, besides being a very able
lawyer, is a born wag, and in his reply of acceptance said:
“With pleasure I will accept
your appointment and will so far try to fulfill your expectations of me that
within two years I hope to secure the immigration of five thousand Missouri
Democrats, not only because they would make splendid citizens, but, if possible,
I want to change the political complexion of this black Republican State.”
The joke was finally on
Colvig, however, for the stand the Democratic Party soon afterward took on the
question of expansion caused him to become a Republican on national questions,
and his threatened inroad on the Missouri Democracy was never carried into
effect.
Next Chapter -
Geer ends his book with a few notes on his second wife and his father's ultimate
return to their original homestead.
If you are interested in finding this book, Fifty
Years in Oregon, it can
often be located at Powell's Books in Portland
which is one of the largest used book stores in the United States or, through the
Alibris service
which catalogs used books from stores across the country. For more information on the Geer Family, visit the Geer Family website. Other resources
and references include:
