Oregon 1859: A Snapshot In Time, by Janice Marschner

As far as an idea for a book goes, this one is certainly appealing. 1859 was the year when Oregon became a state of the United States, and looking at the state of Oregon during its first year of existence gives a picture of how it is that Oregon developed during its territorial days and what areas formed the core of Oregon’s population at the beginning, and can also offer some comparison with how Oregon is today. In many ways, the essential problems of Oregon’s contemporary situation can be found in the way that Oregon developed–from the beginning there were close divides in terms of Oregon’s identity and history, whether it would be turned towards proslavery Southern settlers (based out of Salem, always a hotbed of corruption it seems) or pro-business Yankees and British (mostly based in Oregon City and thereabouts). We see the importance of floods to the survival of towns as well as the way in which property speculation shaped Oregon’s early history, especially in the settlement of Portland. We can also see what is missing in Oregon–early settlement of the coastal lands as well as the Western parts of the state that would find themselves struggling to deal with a state that had established certain patterns of voting and politics that were inimical to their interests.

The author does not appear to be particularly interested in politics, at least in the large scale, but is very interested in looking at it in the small scale, at the level of individual politicians and other leaders (whose biographical shorts take up a large portion of the book), including the names of the early settlers of the state to presumably help people with their genealogical research. While not all of the early centers of Oregon’s population became major centers in later periods, there were at least some areas that were settled early on that found themselves advantageously placed for long-term dominance within their respective areas as well as within the state of Oregon as a whole. If Oregon City’s early lead faltered when it comes to its disadvantageous real estate situation with a narrow strip of land in front of a high bluff, areas that had more room to grow like Portland, Salem, Corvalis, and Medford were early centers of population that found themselves well-poised to grow. As one might expect in a region as dependent on water as the West, being able to find reliable water sources as well as land that could be developed without the fear of flooding proved to be highly important. Early centers of population that found themselves bypassed by the railroad also tended to fare poorly, making transportation a key element in helping areas to gain a population as well as maintain their places of importance within counties as well as the state as a whole. It is striking to see just how early counties were placed with borders similar to our own in the Western part of the state compared with how poorly developed and populated the eastern part of Oregon was at the beginning, something which has had serious and negative consequences for the well-being of the state as a whole.

In terms of its contents, this particular book is divided into 19 chapters, one for each of the 19 counties of Oregon in 1859–fully 18 of them in the western part of the state, 17 of which still survive as counties to this day, in a bit more than 250 pages. The book begins with a discussion of Oregon counties in 1859 compared to nowadays–where the eastern part of the state has far more counties than the one it had at the beginning of statehood, as well as a preface. After a lengthy introduction where the author talks about the early history of Oregon and how it obtained statehood, the book contains, in alphabetical order, the following chapters based on the early statehood counties: Benton, Clackamas, Clatsop, Columbia, Coos, Curry, Douglas, Jackson, Josephine, Lane, inn, Marion, Multnomah, Polk, Tillamook, Umpqua, Wasco, Washington, and Yamhill. Of these counties, Umpqua no longer exists and Wasco has been divided into the counties that make up the Eastern part of the state. In each of the chapters we read about early settlements and the names of people who lived in them in the 1860 census or in records in 1859 where these can be found, and maps show which areas were settled at statehood along with which ones remained to be settled later, and what happened to the settlements over time. After this the book ends with a bibliography and index.