islature would have consented if they had agreed to have the new county attached to Clarke for judicial purposes; but this being objected to, and the population being scarce, the legislature declined to create the county, which was however established in January 1854, and called Wasco.[1] In the matter of other county organizations south of the Columbia, the legislature was ready to grant all petitions if not to anticipate them. In 1852–3 it created Jackson, includ-
- ↑ Or. Jour. Council, 1852–3, 90; Gen. Laws Or., 544. The establishment of Wasco county was opposed by Major Rains of the 4th infantry stationed at Fort Dalles in the winter of 1853–4. He said that Wasco county was the largest ever known, though it had but about thirty-five white inhabitants, and these claimed a right to locate where they chose, in accordance with the act of Sept. 27, 1850. Or. Jour. Council, 1853–4, app. 49–50; U. S. Sen. Doc. 16, vol. vi. 16–17, 33d cong. 2d sess. Rains reported to Washington, which frustrated for a time the efforts of Lane to get a bill through congress regulating bounty warrants in Oregon, it being feared that some of them might be located in Wasco county. Or. Statesman, March 20, 1855; Cong. Globe, 33d cong. 2d sess., 490. Wm C. Laughlin, Warren Keith, and John Tompkins were appointed commissioners, J. A. Simms sheriff, and Justin Chenoweth, judge.
year and built a house upon it. A Mr Bigelow brought a small stock of goods to The Dalles, chiefly groceries and liquors, and built a store the following year; and William Gibson moved his store from the garrison grounds to the town outside. It was subsequently purchased by Victor Trevitt, who kept a saloon called the Mount Hood.
In the autumn of 1852, companies K and I of the 4th inf. reg., under Capt. Alvord, relieved the little squad of artillery men who had garrisoned the post since the departure of the rifle regiment. It was the post which formed the nucleus of trade and business at The Dalles, and which made it necessary to improve the means of transportation, that the government supplies might be more easily and rapidly conveyed. The immigration of 1852 were not blind to the advantages of the location, and a number of claims were taken on the small streams in the neighborhood of The Dalles. Rumors of gold discoveries in the Cascade Mountains north of the Columbia River were current about this time. H. P. Isaacs of Walla Walla, who is the author of an intelligent account of the development of eastern Oregon and Washington, entitled The Upper Columbia Basin, MS., relates that a Klikitat found and gave to a Frenchman a piece of gold quartz, which being exhibited at Oregon City induced him to go with the Indian in the spring of 1853 to look for it. But the Klikitat either could not or would not find the place, and Isaacs went to trade with the immigrants at Fort Boisé, putting a ferry across Snake River in the summer of that year, but returning to The Dalles, where he remained until 1863, when he removed to the Walla Walla Valley and put up a grist mill, and assisted in various ways to improve that section. Isaacs married a daughter of James Fulton of The Dalles, of whom I have already made mention. A store was kept in The Dalles by L. J. Henderson and Shang, in a canvas house. They built a log house the next year. Tompkins opened a hotel in a building put up by McKinlay & Co. Forman built a blacksmith shop, and Lieut. Forsyth erected a two-story frame house, which was occupied the next year as a hotel by Gates, Cushing and Low soon put up another log store, and James McAuliff a third. Dalles Mountaineer, May 28, 1869.
