An Oregon Story:
From Rivers to Reservoirs:
The Last of the Lumbermills:
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The Oregon Country:
White Settlement at Cottage Grove
When the pioneer came here he called it the garden of Eden it was so well taken care of. Our people took very, very good care of the land.
-- Carol Logan, member of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, 2000 interview
The first Europeans to travel into the Willamette Valley were trappers following beavers into the reaches of the Oregon Country. When the Applegate family forged the southern portion of the Oregon Trail through the valley (as a way to by-pass the treacherous Columbia River rapids), they encouraged settlement along the shores of the Willamette. By 1860, the Lane County census counted 4780 settlers in the area.
Early settlers were eager to legalize their claims. The Donation Land Claim Act, passed in 1850, provided for the transfer of land from the United States government to its citizens. Unfortunately, it did so before Indians ceeded the land. Historian William Robbins urges students of Oregon history to "move past the heroic, romantic blush of the conventional accounts about the Oregon Country" to recognize that "stories of human tragedy preceeded the triumphal accounts of those who traveled the Oregon Trail." Settlement, according to Robbins, was re-settlement, the removal of one group of people to be replaced by another.
