and well posted on all of the methods that the company had employed in acquiring title thereto. It was only three years ago. in fact, that I went down to Humboldt County with C. A. Smith, a millionaire lumberman of Minneapolis, Minn., and sold him 30,000 acres of this same tract, which had been cancelled and relocated by citizens of Humboldt County. I shall have occasion later to make reference lo the Smith deal.
After the big frauds in Humboldt timber lands had been exposed, and the titles to the bogus entries suspended, and while the prosecutions against the company's agents were still pending, the whole county became seized with a feeling of depression and times were very dull there. I continued to work in the logging camps until 1888, when I decided to seek fresher pastures in Oregon.
Upon my arrival in the new field, I found the land business booming, every hotel in the timbered sections of the state being crowded with timber land speculators, cruisers and locators. I went into the locating business the first thing and continued to do a land office business for two years. This was in 1889 and 1890, and during all this time, the woods were fairly alive with timber men.
My earlier experiences in California enabled me to grasp conditions quite readily, and become acquainted with the most desirable tracts in short order; consequently I soon got into the swim. Moneyed men were here from Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and other Middle West States, eager to make investments and grasp the unlimited opportunities offered of reaping big returns, and as a result, thousands of men were sent into the forests of Tillamook and Clatsop Counties, Oregon, as well as throughout various sections of Washington, to file on timber claims, and in nearly every instance, the entrymen had contracted in advance to transfer their titles to some lumber company, or syndicate of Eastern capitalists.
The Timber and Stone Act of June 3, 1878, was the favorite method of acquiring title at that time, as the Forest Reserve Lieu Land Act of June 4, 1897, (commonly known as the "scripper law,") had not then gone into effect.Page 20
