Gold is found in paying quantities at many points in Southern Oregon, and also in the gold-bearing black sand of the sea-beach, all along the southern and central portions of the State. The finely comminuted condition in which the gold occurs in the black sand has been a serious obstacle in the way of its profitable working; but the combined chemical and mechanical processes recently adopted bid fair to prove thoroughly successful. The Governor of the State estimated the product of Oregon in gold and silver in the year 1876 at not less than two million dollars.
The gold-mines of Baker County, and the gold and silver mines in Grant County in Eastern Oregon, have also recently been more fully developed, and with great success.
With the inflow of foreign capital, now begun in earnest, those best qualified to judge predict for Oregon a very high place among the gold and silver producing States of the Union.
The mineral district in Grant and Baker Counties will be shortly rendered accessible and profitable by the expected completion, both of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company's line and of that of the Oregon Pacific, having eastward connections at Boisé City in Idaho, some fifty miles eastward of the eastern boundary of Oregon.
The timber of Oregon is of world-wide fame. It will take many years to exhaust the districts even now accessible to river, railroad, or harbor; and the opening up of the various portions of the State to be traversed by the railroads either now or shortly to be put in hand will bring to market the timber from hundreds of square miles of woodland yet untouched.
The following general statement is chiefly extracted from the "Report of the Government Commissioner of Agriculture" for the year 1875:
Baker County has a timber area of five hundred square miles, principally pine and fir. Benton County has a belt of timber-land of one eighth of a mile wide by forty-five miles in length, lying along the Willamette River, and another belt in the Coast Mountains of twenty-five by thirty miles.
This timber is principally pine and fir; there are also large quantities of splendid spruce; alder and white-oak, laurel and maple are also found. Alder grows from twenty-four to thirty inches in diameter, and is worth for cabinet-making purposes from thirty to forty dollars a thousand feet at the factory. There is a belt principally of spruce timber, a mile wide and how many miles long I can not say, heading northward from Depot Slough, a stream running into Yaquina Bay, many of the trees being eight and nine feet in diameter, and two hundred and fifty feet high.
I have seen a hundred and thirty pines cut for ships' spars on one homestead near Yaquina Bay, not one of which snapped in the felling, and which ran from eighty to one hundred and twenty feet in the clear, without a branch, and about as straight and level as a ruler. And this lot were cut from but a very few acres of the wood, and where it was easy to convey them to the tidal stream which floated them to the harbor. It was a pretty sight to watch the team of five or six yokes of oxen hauling the long, white spars from the wooded knoll on which they grew—the red and white colors of the oxen and the voices of the teamsters and lumbermen lending life and cheerfulness to the somber forest.
TIMBER.Clackamas is one of the best timbered counties in the Willamette Valley, fully one half of its area being in heavy timber. Pine, fir, spruce, white cedar, white oak, maple, and ash are found. About two thirds of the area of Curry County is covered with forests of yellow, red, and white fir, sugar-pine, white cedar, spruce, white and other oaks, and madroño. The timber-lands of Douglas are principally covered with the different varieties of evergreens and oaks. There are thousands of acres which would yield from three to six hundred cords to the acre not yet taken up. Not over one third of the area of Lane County is woodland. This embraces the different varieties common to the Pacific coast.