owning ten thousand horses of improved blood. Yale is the county-seat, besides which there are several other settlements.
Immediately north of Malheur is Baker County, named after General E. D. Baker, who fell at Ball’s Bluff. It embraces the valley of Burnt River, and shares with Union County the valley of Powder River, whose soil, according to a miner from that region, is so fertile that, if a crowbar should be left sticking in the ground overnight, it would be found in the morning to have sprouted tenpenny nails.”
But Baker County is more celebrated for its mineral than its agricultural products, about half its population being engaged in mining. There are several large lumber-mills in the county, and the exports are chiefly lumber, wool, and live stock, although marble, limestone, and granite are abundant, and fruit is marketed to some extent.
Baker City, on the O. R. and N. line, and having connection with the Northern Pacific, is the county-seat and chief town. It is, in fact, rapidly developing into a city of considerable importance, having a population of four thousand five hundred. It calls itself the Gateway of the Inland Empire, or at least the Southern Gateway of the same, and is earning its honors by a legitimate course of improvement. A stock company with a capital of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars has been formed for the purpose of bringing the waters of Powder River in irrigating ditches to Baker City and surrounding country. A railroad is being constructed forty or fifty miles west into the mining districts at the head of the John Day River, which will not only facilitate mining operations, but will open up a white-pine belt of great value, where a large mill is about to be erected. A project not quite so far advanced is that of building a railroad twenty-five miles east into the Seven Devils country in Idaho, where smelting ores of gold, silver, and copper are found,—copper predominating. The traffic on the upper Snake River is at present supported by these mines, which Baker City desires to make tributary to itself. The Union Pacific also contemplates a branch line to the Pine Creek mines, sixty-five miles northeast of this city.
There is no doubt of the enviable position of Baker. Colonel J. W. Virtue, owner of the well-known Virtue Mine, and the
