OTHER TOWNS OF THE WALLAMET VALLEY.
Ill
and few a more desirable one for other reasons. It has for a
background Spencer’s Butte, so named in honor of the Secretary
of State, in 1841, by Dr. White of the Methodist mission. At
the head of the valley, it combines many advantages; Lane
County, of which it is the county-seat, extending from the sea-
coast to the Cascade Range, and including grain- and stock-lands,
timber- and mineral-lands, with abundant water-power.
Eugene, with about four thousand inhabitants, is the seat of the University of Oregon, founded in 1872, and opened for the reception of students in 1876. Its affairs are managed by a board of regents appointed by the governor of the State for a term of twelve years. It has a permanent endowment of eighty thousand dollars, realized from the sale of lands granted by the general government for university purposes, and a fund of fifty thousand dollars donated by Mr. Henry Villard. It also receives an annual appropriation of five thousand dollars from the State. But there is need of more endowments to enable this to become what it should be, a place of universal education. Two handsome brick buildings, a growing library of valuable books, astronomical, surveying, and chemical apparatus constitute the present visible features of the institution, to which I would add, as not least, though last, the collection of Professor Thomas Condon, illustrating the geology, mineralogy, and natural history of the Northwest. This collection, the result of the labor of a lifetime, is already well known, and justly noted for laying open the pre-historic record of Oregon. Professor Condon is the discoverer of the dwarf fossil horse of Oregon, which is claimed by Eastern scientists, to whom he imparted his discovery.
Eugene is on the line of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and has a good country trade. Undoubtedly railroads will be built to the mouth of the Siuslaw River, and into Southeastern Oregon, from this point. A road into the Klamath Yalley leads from here by the Diamond Peak pass.
Three miles east of Eugene is the town of Springfield, a thriving place, with flouring- and saw-mills, and several manufactories. Following up McKenzie’s Fork of the Wallamet to a branch called the Mohawk, we find a region cut off from the main valley by a range of hills, which is celebrated f
