a great part of the year by the badness of the road over the mountains, and the uncertainty of the route by sea. But the Astoria and Albany Railroad Company has promised to open up this country. When the road is constructed there will be a market for the lumber, fish, game, fruit, hay, vegetables, dairy products, and coal of this region. It will traverse, so it is said, the valleys of the Miami, Nehalem, and Wilson Rivers, entering the Wallamet Yalley near Forest Grove. It is estimated that there are ten million dollars’ worth of “stumpage” in Tillamook County. The lumber which will be manufactured there will furnish business for a railroad.
The town of Tillamook, on the Trask River, is the county-seat, with a population of .six hundred, and has a saw-mill, bank, church, school-house, court-house, and two newspapers. Bay City is located on Tillamook Bay, at the head of deep-water navigation, about five miles from the sea. Its present population is about two hundred, but its future, I am told, is considered assured. The Bay City Land Company have taken it in charge, and what land companies can do has been demonstrated. “A young man willing to work,” going there now, might turn out a millionaire at forty. The experiment is worth trying, and doubtless will be tried.
The valley of the Nehalem River, which is the northern boundary of Tillamook County, is the seat of the Nehalem Cooperative Colony of Western Oregon, an association which is putting in practice Edward Bellamy’s socialistic ideas. According to the report of the chief of the department of production of the colony, the experiment is resulting favorably. The colony consists of twenty-five men, six women, and thirty-five children. The society put in three thousand dollars four years ago, and now owns a plant for which they have been offered one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, their property including four thousand acres of land.
The water on the bar at the entrance to Tillamook Bay is from ten to thirteen feet at low tide, with good anchorage inside. When the jetty system has been applied, the channel deepened six or eight feet, and a light-house erected, the entrance will be safe for any vessels except those of the largest size.
A light-house was erected on a rock about a mile from the
