Roads and Railways—Early History
By J. GASTON
IN all ages of the world the development of nations and the progress of civilization have been in direct proportion to the construction of highways for travel and transportation between contiguous and distant communities. The absence of means of travel and transportation has been the characteristic of barbarism; and the development of such means has always marked the dawn of commerce, progress, and prosperity. This principle has been clearly illustrated in the history and settlement of Oregon. The native Indian population built no roads, not even trails; and they had no intercourse with surrounding tribes except the casual canoe or the occasional pony. Everything stood still in barbaric solitude, until Lewis and Clark, one hundred years ago, aroused the red man from the silence of ages.
The first wagon road constructed to let population into Oregon within the territory, now composing the States of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and a part of Montana, which has been used continuously since its original location in 1845, is the road over the Cascade Mountains south of Mt. Hood, known as the "Barlow Road." It was located by Joel Palmer and Samuel K. Barlow, and was opened much of the distance over the mountains in great danger and distress by the starving, freezing immigrants of 1845. The awful trials endured by the pioneers who opened that old road, where the heroic mothers of Oregon carried their children over the ice and snows of the Cascade Range, can never be comprehended by the gentle women who, in palace cars, with every luxury of modern life, visit the Lewis and Clark Exposition. To the courage, fortitude, and energy of these unconquerable souls is due the honor of founding civilization, establishing law and education, and maintaining religion on the Pacific Coast of North America.
This old "Barlow Road" was also one of the first roads to receive a charter from the provisional government, and the only one constructed under such a charter. The road leading from the East into Southern Oregon was opened subsequent to the Barlow route, and was mainly the work of the Applegates who settled in Umpqua Valley; and the greater portion of it, like the "Oregon Trail," was in no sense a constructed road, but a trace passing over open ground. But as soon as the Territorial Legislature was organized we find the public interest in constructing free highways fully manifested, along with ample provisions for free public schools, and for seminaries, academies, and colleges.
The wagon road era may be considered the first stage in the development of Oregon. Owing to the great distance between this section and the centers of population in the Union, and to the fact of its being beyond the pale of foreign immigration, the increase of population was slow; so that
