Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 60/Review: Oregon's Iron Dream, a Story of Old Oswego and the Proposed Iron Empire of the West
A readable an interestingly biographical history of a dream which rebounded from repeated failures, each time more lusty and vigorous; until, in the wide-reaching minds of such pioneers as Simeon G. Reed, William S. Ladd and others, it became a veritable great city, a "Pittsburgh of the West," which was to rise, breathing the smoke and fire of progress, in the beautiful park-like environs of "Old Town" among the big trees and short grass and the "streets like roadways" winding through openings among the immense firs and rhododendrons.
Once this had been a favorite playground of the powerful Clackamas Indian tribe; then came American families to file donation land claims: the Wallings, Tryons, Bullocks, Durhams and others.
But the heart of the book lies in the bed of iron ore, first discovered, says Mrs. Goodall, by General M. M. McCarver, a man prominent in mid-west history as well as in that of the Willamette Valley, and founder of Tacoma on Commencement Bay.
The story is traced from Matthew Patton's stip mine of the early 1850s to 1868 when the first iron was cast by the Oregon Iron Company smelter, "equal in every respect to any casting," through the lawsuits which forced the sale of the property in 1877; a new mine and a narrow guage railroad and a second furnace of the Oswego Iron Company and again the closing.
The grand and final dream was reached in 1882; it became a three million dollar corporation, for this time Oregon pioneers had money as well as courage and enthusiasm. Four thousand tons of fire brick, clay and cement came from England. But even here was disappointment. Not until 1888 did they begin actually raising the great smokestack, 160 feet high, installing a furnace of fifty-ton capacity, a blowing engine of 100 tons and 800 horsepower capacity.
"Old Town" became "New Town," its Furnace Street still lined with immense firs, sheltered two big boarding houses for the workmen. There was a brick yard and charcoal kilns whose yellowish-brown smoke, always hovering, sometimes became "smog." Production rose-but then the drop in pigiron prices, and the dream died. "New Town" became for a time "Ghost Town."
But the spirit of Oregon pioneers was not dead. The history of modern Oswego is factual, vigorous but without the haze of romance surrounding the old dreams.
In a separate chapter, Mrs. Goodall had given an account of the transportation problems and conflicts from the logged-off, mud-hole trails to
the Boone's Ferry Road and the Macadam Road from Portland; and the great early thoroughfare—the river traveled by everyone, who transported their goods in canoes and bateaux, in sailing ships, in the squat barges and river boats. Here, too, are famous names: Newell, Ainsworth, Hoyt, Kamm; and the nostalgic names of the side and sternwheelers, the T. J. Potter, Harvest Queen, Bailey Gatzert.
The book is handsomely illustrated with photographs and especially with the beautiful endpaper picture map drawn by Donald Cobb.
Evva Williams
Portland, Oregon