From the Cascades’ frozen gorges,
Leaping like a child at play,
Winding, widening through the valley,
Bright Willamette glides away.
Onward ever, lovely River,
Softly calling to the sea,
Time that scars us, maims and mars us,
Leaves no track or trench on thee.
And now that we have fairly entered the Willamette, it becomes speedily evident that we are in the near vicinity of a large and prosperous city. Steamboats, an occasional steamship, sailing ships, sometimes huge four-masted steel ships towed by coughing tugs, long booms of logs in tow of some spluttering stern-wheeler, scows of every description, gasoline launches, rowboats,—a motley fleet, they seem to be making they way with all possible haste upon the stream.
Willamette Falls, Oregon City, Ore.
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse.
We are indeed approaching Portland, the metropolis of the Columbia, the “Rose City,” in many respects the most interesting and attractive of Western cities. The approach to Portland is one hard to match for stately beauty. The city occupies both sides of the Willamette, the main business part on the west side, but the larger residence part on the east.
The first settler on the original site of Portland was a man named Overton. Lownsdale, Chapman, and Lovejoy bought him out. Then Captain John H. Couch in 1845 located a donation land claim on what is now the northern part of the west side city. At that time the site was somewhat cut up with gulches and clothed in the densest of dense forests, with perfect jungles of every species of undergrowth. But duller eyes than those of the gallant mariners, Couch, Flanders, Ainsworth, Pettygrove, and Lovejoy, could have seen beneath the tangled thickets the making of a city, though it may well be questioned whether even they, in their wildest flights of fancy, ever pictured the scene of to-day, where the city of these sixty years’ building now sits, a queen upon her circling throne of hills. The location of Portland is almost ideal. The hills to the west rise to a height of about eight hundred feet, but many fine homes are located there, and car lines cross the hills in many directions. Above the fogs and smoke these high-line homes have every possible charm. On the east side of the Willamette the land is a level bench with limitless room for expansion. There are a few picturesque elevations on the east side, as Mt. Tabor and Mt. Scott, and these have been used for homes with the taste which characterises the entire city.
Portland is the centre of every species of transportation facility. It has one of the most extensive and well-equipped electric railway systems in the United States. In addition to the urban lines, there are interurban lines in every direction, to Vancouver, Troutdale, Oregon City, Milwaukee, Hillsboro, and Salem, the last named the capital of the State and fifty miles distant. We find also that four transcontinental railroads have a terminus in Portland, the Southern Pacific, the Northern Pacific, the Union Pacific, and the Great Northern. Steamship lines run to Alaska, Puget Sound, San Francisco and other California ports, to all the coastwise ports of Oregon, to the Hawaiian Islands and the Orient, and to Mexico and South America. Sailing ships convey the products of the North-west to all the ports of the world.
As a result of these facilities for commerce we find such figures as the following: During the year 1907 there entered and cleared at Portland twelve hundred and twenty ocean-going vessels, registering more than 1,700,000 tons, net, and with a carrying capacity of 3,500,000 tons. In the cargoes of this total, were 175,000,000 feet of lumber and 18,000,000 bushels of wheat, flour included. Portland has in fact reached the front rank as a wheat and flour shipping port, being in the class with Galveston and New York, some of the time having led both of them. In December, 1907, Portland’s record of wheat shipments, exclusive of flour, was 3,000,000 bushels. The Bureau of Statistics of the Department of Commerce and Labor gave the value of all breadstuffs shipped from Portland for the eleven months ending November 30, 1907, at $10,536,234. During the same period the shipments of the same commodities from San Francisco totalled $4,143,592, while from the three Puget Sound ports of Seattle, Tacoma, and Everett, the aggregate was $13,989,178. During November, 1908, there were shipped 903,000 bushels of wheat, 180,145 barrels of flour, 209,246 bushels of barley, and 9,752,552 feet of lumber. During the year 1908 the value of wheat and flour reached a total of $18,340,405, while the lumber exports aggregated 162,089,998 feet.
Among the Big Spruce Trees, near Astoria, Oregon.
Photo. by Woodfield, Astoria.