part from that half million who blazed the Oregon Trail. Probably most of the settlers in Montana entered from the East by a more northerly route, the Yellowstone Trail, and even from farther north through the Dakotas.

Colorado numbered 34,277 souls in 1860 and 39,864 in 1870. This does not account for many more deflections en route to the Oregon country. Utah absorbed a much larger number. The Mormons and others settling in the Great Basin of Salt Lake came westward largely from Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri, although some came in from the Southwest. That basin had been known to the Spanish at a much earlier date by way of the Old Spanish Trail. In 1850 the population of Utah was 11,380 and had increased to 40,273 by 1860. In this number must have been many who followed the Oregon Trail as far as Green River and then deflected to the southward through Fort Bridger to Salt Lake. The census of 1870 recorded a population of 86,786, but, of course, many of these additions were due to the remarkable birth rate of the Mormons and some emigrants came in that decade by the iron horse over the Union Pacific which drove the "golden spike" at Promontory Point, Utah, on May 10, 1869.

Still there remains a large part of that cavalcade to be traced to its ultimate destination. An examination of the population statistics will assist in accounting for large numbers. Southern California had been settled to some extent for three-quarters of a century." Gold was dis covered on January 24, 1848. At first people were incredulous, but once the actuality was realized the wildest excitement ensued and the news spread like wildfire, starting an unparalleled scramble to reach the Eldorado. The rush began in May. People came from all parts of the world, and by every known route and conveyance. The majority, however, came overland from the Mississippi Valley. According to Bolton and Adams,

There were not many people in California to share in this good fortune, for in 1847 the total population (not including Indians) had been only about ten thousand. But gold wrought a miracle of numbers. So fast did people come when they heard the news that in 1850 there were one hundred thousand-83,000 were from the United States, of whom 75,000 were newcomers from east of the Rocky Mountains.14

In the mad rush and excitement undoubtedly the Federal census in 1850 did not discover all who were in "them thar hills" and consequently the figures are below the actual numbers. The census

"Creer, Leland H. Utah and the Nation. University of Washington Press, 1929. p. 25.

See Bolton, Herbert E. and Marshall, Thomas Maitland. The Colonization of North America, ch. 21. Bolton, Herbert E. and Adams, Ephraim. California's Story, pp. 110-114.

figures show a population in 1850 of 92,597, while in 1860 the enumeration revealed 399,974, and that of 1870 showed 560,247.

Undoubtedly far greater numbers detoured southwestward at Green River or Bear River across Utah and the Sierras into California seeking the foothills east and north of Sacramento. Of course, Sacramento, San Francisco, and other cities of the bay region waxed rapidly in population.

The effects of the gold strike upon Oregon and Washington.-The immediate result of the new-found gold fields in California was to partially depopulate the entire Oregon Territory, which included Washington and Idaho. The immense cavalcades on the Oregon Trail, originally headed for the Willamette Valley, at once sheered to the southward for the gold fields of the New Eldorado. The "Oregon Trail" over South Pass and as far as Bear River became the "California Trail." Schafer says: "Instantly after the passage of the thronging multitudes of '49, it became known as the 'Cali fornia Trail', and to this day most men know it by no other name."

15

Not only did vast throngs invade California over the Sierras from the East, but immediately after August 1848, when the news reached Oregon, pack trains were threading their way over the forbidding Siskiyous. Within a year Oregon (including Washington) lost most of its male population. The first to become Governor of California, Peter H. Burnett, was in one of those pack trains from Oregon. Later many returned rich with gold needed for development of the Northwest. Immediately new cities in California arose as if by magic. Accessory industries were brought into being to mine the gold. Much timber was needed. The tidewater regions of Oregon and especially the Puget Sound region were drafted to supply the timber. San Francisco needed coal; it had lain for æons embedded near the surface on the shores of Puget Sound near Seattle. Miners dug it out and ships constructed on the shores of Puget Sound carried it to the land of perpetual sunshine. Agriculture, dairying, stockraising, and many other occupations became profitable in the Willamette Valley and were necessary accessories to the mushroom growth of California's golden cities. San Francisco's population of a few hundred in 1848 jumped to 56,000 by 1860 and to 150,000 by 1870.

When Congress had under consideration the bill for the admission of Oregon as a territory in 1848, it was suggested that California and New Mexico should also be made territories. Objectors declared against yoking Oregon with "territories scarcely a month old, and

14 Schafer, op. cit., p. 206.

peopled by Mexicans and half-Indian Californians." Within 2 years, 1850, California was admitted as a State. There were then 92,000 inhabitants, mainly American. Oregon had 14,000. In a decade California had jumped to 380,000 population. By 1870 it exceeded half a million. Synchronously the whole Pacific northwest, including Oregon, Washington, and Idaho numbered only 130,000 by 1870.

4. Pioneer Settlements in Washington

Roadways, home sites, and schools.-To answer the question regard. ing the location of the pioneer schools we need only to know the location of the pioneer settlements. After providing the modest habitations and temporary means of existence schools were the first concern of those sturdy pioneers. They had come to establish homes. Real homes were impossible without education. Early home sites naturally were selected in spots where a living could be made most advantageously. Settlement always depends upon roadways. The pioneer roadways into this wilderness were, of course, the waterways. The Columbia, the Snake, the Cowlitz and their navigable tributaries; the Puget Sound and Grays Harbor; the Chehalis, Skagit, and Snoho mish Rivers all offered ingress to the vast timberlands and fertile valleys. On their banks and along their sinuous courses we may expect to find traces of earliest settlements. Research into the early history of communities along these natural roadways confirms conjecture.

The second stage in early settlement followed the through trails and highways constructed to reach terminal points as the trail and roadway between the Columbia River and the nearest point on Puget Sound. Later came an east-west overland highway from the Walla Walla Mission across the Cascades to Steilacoom and Olympia.

The last stage was in the planting of settlements along the railways built from the East to connect with marine ports on Puget Sound and the lower Columbia River. Each of these will receive separate discussion.

The first settlement, as already noted, was at Vancouver. To reach the British port at Fort Nisqually the most natural route was followed. It led down the Columbia by water to the mouth of the Cowlitz near Longview, up the Cowlitz to the mouth of the Toutle or later on past to the present site of Toledo and thence overland through the rather open country to Fort Nisqually. Later the Deschutes River was descended for a portion of the way. It empties into Puget Sound at Tumwater which is one of the oldest towns in the State. On Cowlitz Prairie, near Toledo, agriculture was started at an early day. There

65757-35

Simon Plomondon developed a farm. Bancroft tells us that in 1846 "There were 1,500 acres fenced and under cultivation, 11 barns, and in the vicinity 1,000 cattle, 200 horses, 100 swine, and 2,000 sheep." 16 A Catholic mission was planted there in 1839, and one also at Fort Nisqually.

At Fort Nisqually fur trading was soon overshadowed by stock raising, dairying, some grain raising and the curing of meat for the Russian-American trade. Wilkes wrote on his expedition in 1841, “In connection with the company's establishment at Nisqually they have a large dairy, several hundred head of cattle, and among them seventy milch cows, which yield a large supply of butter and cheese; they also have large crops of wheat, peas, and oats, and were preparing the ground for potatoes."

17

A glance at tables 2 and 3 showing the population of the counties in early Washington and table 4 showing the population of towns in ter ritorial days indicates that settlements west of the Cascades grew very slowly. In 1860, Clark, Lewis, Chehalis, Cowlitz, Thurston, Pierce, King, Snohomish, Skagit, and Whatcom Counties all together did not have more than 2,000 inhabitants. Seattle, Tacoma, Everett, and Bellingham were not mentioned in the census.

Marshall wrote recently of the sparseness of population in the early territorial days in Washington, saying that "in 1860 it was still mainly a virgin wilderness; in the entire Territory there were less than 12,000 people. Walla Walla, the largest town, had only 772 inhabitants, and the census takers did not even mention Seattle, Tacoma, or Spokane.' Ezra Meeker.-Ezra Meeker says:

"18

The first through road from the Columbia River to the Sound began at Monticello, near the mouth of the Cowlitz River (present site of Longview) and ended at Tumwater (two miles southwest of Olympia) at the extreme southern point of Puget Sound, a distance of seventy miles. This on paper was a military road but I am not aware of any expenditure of the Government ever being made to either survey or improve it. Monticello was more a name than a town, being the farmhouse and outbuildings of Uncle Darb Huntington, as we all called him, with a blacksmith shop, store, two or three families, and a stable. Here the passengers were dumped off the little steamers from Portland and other Columbia River points, and here, in the earliest days, the hapless traveler either struck the trail (afterwards supplanted by the road) or would tuck himself with others into a canoe, like sardines in a box, where an all day journey up the Cowlitz River was his fate, unmoved and immovable except as an inte gral part of the frail craft that carried him to Hard Bread's tavern for the night. * At first, travelers to the Sound ascended the Cowlitz to the landing further

14 Bancroft, Herbert Howe. History of the Northwest Coast, vol. II, p. 613.

17 Ibid., p. 614.

18 Marshall, Thomas M. American History. New York, The Macmillan Co., 1930. P. 347.

up the river than where the mud wagon road left the Cowlitz, and from the landing were sent on their way by saddle train or over the makeshift of a road cut by the Simmons-Bush party in 1845, over which they dragged their effects on sleds to the head of the Sound, or to be specific, to the mouth of the Deschutes River, afterwards and now known as Tumwater, two miles south of Olympia.

I have no history of the construction of the later road all the way up the right bank of the Cowlitz to the mouth of the Toutle River (Hard Bread's), and thence deflecting northerly to the Chehalis, where the old and new routes were joined, and soon emerged into the gravelly prairies where there were natural roadbeds every where. The facts are, this road, like "Topsy", just "growed", and so gradually became a highway one could scarcely say when the trail ceased to be simply a trail and the road actually could be called a road. First, only saddle trains could pass. On the back of a stiff-jointed, hard-trotting, slow-walking, contrary mule, I was initiated into the secret depths of the mudholes of this trail. And such mudholes. It became a standing joke after the road was opened that a team would stall with an empty wagon going down hill, and I came very near having just such an experience once, within what is now the municipal limits of the thriving city of Chehalis.

After the saddle train came the mud wagons, in which passengers were conveyed (often invited to walk over bad places, or possibly preferred to walk) over either the roughest corduroy or deepest mud, the one bruising the muscles, the other straining the nerves in the anticipation of being dumped into the bottomless pit of mud.19

Community centers west of the Cascades. Gradually during the ter ritorial period the vast resources west of the Cascades were tapped by roadways branching eastward from the present Pacific Highway to the foothills and westward to the Pacific. The mighty forests of fir, cedar, and hemlock were invaded to furnish lumber to the depleted areas of New England and the Mississippi Valley as well as to California and far foreign ports. Ships fashioned on the ways on Puget Sound coursed all the ocean deeps. Salmon fishing developed into a world industry. New world ocean ports grew up naturally at Seat tle, Tacoma, Olympia, Grays Harbor, Willapa Harbor, Everett, and Whatcom (Bellingham). In the wake of the lumberjack followed the rancher in the fertile alluvial valleys. In time some of the finest grain and dairy farms of the world have developed. Gradually it dawned upon the engineer that in the rushing mountain streams electric energy unparalleled awaited only harnessing to furnish light and power. Among the towns to develop early along the Pacific Highway and to establish schools were Castle Rock, Kalama, Kelso, Toledo, Chehalis, Centralia, Tumwater, Olympia, Steilacoom, and Puyallup.

Communities east of the Cascades.-East of the Cascades the very first struggling settlements were planted by British fur traders. In 1809 a Northwest Company fort was built at Lake Pend d'Oreille. In 1811 Fort Okanogan was established by David Stuart, partner of

19 Meeker, Ezra. Seventy Years of Progress in Washington, pp. 36–37.