Southern Oregon possesses several rivers and their attendant seaports. The most southerly is the Rogue River, which has a course of about one hundred miles, running through a very fertile but secluded valley. The bar at the entrance is shifting, and the channel very variable; but it is entered by both small steamers and by the coasting schooners which ply along the coast, with San Francisco as their port of delivery.
Coos Bay, some sixty miles to the north of the Rogue River, needs a fuller description, as it is the headquarters of the coal and lumber business of Southern Oregon. Detailed reports of the coal-basin give not less than seventy-five thousand acres of coal-bearing land, estimated to produce from the one vein at present worked not less than four hundred and fifty million tons of coal. As many as six workable seams are, however, known to exist, including one which has been prospected to eleven feet in thickness. Five coal-mines have been opened, which are capable of producing about two thousand tons of coal daily. The working of these mines is of an inexpensive character, much of the mineral being accessible from adits or galleries delivering their produce on the hill-sides.
The lumber shipped at Coos Bay is yielded by four large steam saw-mills, with an aggregate capacity of about one hundred and fifteen thousand feet per day.
There are also four ship-yards, from which between forty and fifty vessels have been launched, even up to two thousand tons burden.
The value of coal and lumber exported from Coos Bay was upward of $445,000 in the year 1877, according to the statistics collected by a committee of residents, when application was about to be made to Congress for an appropriation for the improvement of the harbor. It was then reported that a railroad was found to be practicable from Coos Bay along the Coquille Valley across the Coast Mountains. Such a line would then pass through the Umpqua Valley to Roseburg, with a practicable extension up the North Fork of the Umpqua River and through the Cascade Mountains into Eastern Oregon.
SHIFTING AND BLOWING SANDS.It was ascertained that the chief difficulty in improving the entrance to the port lay in the enormous quantity of movable and shifting sand, driven along the coast southward by the prevalent summer northwest winds, and then returned by the winter southwest gales.
So violent is this action that it is thus described: "Large tracts to the north of Coos Bay and along the rock separating its lower part from the sea, where once stood farms and pine-forests, are now buried to the tops of the highest trees. Immense quantities of this wind-borne sand are constantly going into the bay, and by its swift currents are carried out to form the bar, or be deposited in the bight to the east and north of the cape."
Let me quote a short description of this section of the country, on which before many years the tide of immigration must roll in. The writer is the Hon. B. Hermann, who is doing all in his power to draw public attention to his district:
"Ten-mile and Camas Valleys, being respectively ten and fifteen to twenty-five miles from the terminus of the Oregon and California Railroad at Roseburg, are without any other outlet. The cost of teaming to this point, added to the present exorbitant rates of railway freights, discourages the farmers of those sections in the cultivation of the soil. And yet some of the best and most extensive wheat-fields of the country are within those circuits, while a vast area is left annually to grow brush and weeds, and to remain of comparatively little value, which should otherwise contribute to the harvest of thousands of bushels of the finest grain.
"From Camas Valley, and along the Middle Fork of the Coquille River, until its junction with the main stream is reached, a distance of twenty-eight miles by survey, three fourths of the route is without even a wagon-road communication, travel being by trail, with ox and sled, saddle and pack horse. And yet there is found a goodly population, having substantial improvements, some very good farms in cultivation, with flouring-mills for the local accommodation.