Vancouver, Whistler & Vancouver Island - Washington, Oregon and the Pacific Northwest - page 850

After Fort Vancouver fell to the Americans in 1846, explorers began to mosey up the
Cowlitz River into the Puget Sound area, initially planting roots at Tumwater near
Olympia. By 1851 a group of Oregon Trail pioneers, led by brothers Arthur and David
Denny, set their sights on Elliott Bay and founded the port city of Seattle.
Among the provisions recommended for those traveling the Oregon Trail were coffee
(15lb per person), bacon (25lb per person), 1lb of castile soap, citric acid to prevent
scurvy and a live cow for milk and emergency meat.
In 1846, seeking a route around the daunting Columbia River Gorge, a party of pion-
eers began to blaze a southern route into the Willamette Valley. This new Applegate Trail
cut through the deserts of Nevada and California before turning north through the valleys
of southern Oregon. Immigrants along this route established towns such as Eugene, and
scouted the land in the Rogue, Umpqua and Klamath River valleys.
By the late 1850s settlers had staked claims to the best land in the western valleys.
Some folks began looking east of the Cascades, particularly to the Grande Ronde River
valley of present-day Oregon and the Walla Walla River valley of what would be Wash-
ington. Eastern Oregon didn't become a hot spot until the discovery of gold there in the
1860s.
NORTHERN GOLD
Nothing draws fortune seekers more than the lure of riches. In 1851 gold was dis-
covered in southern Oregon near the Rogue River valley. Prospectors and scoun-
drels flooded in, boomtowns popped up overnight and native populations were
brushed aside. A year later gold was discovered near Scottsburg along the Um-
pqua River, while along the coast miners washed gold dust out of sands near Coos
Bay and Gold Beach.
In 1861 the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon became the next target for gold
seekers, but violent clashes ensued between Native Americans and the new-
comers. The result for most Native Americans was forced relocation to reserva-
tions, some as far away as Oklahoma. Meanwhile, the rush kept moving north into
British Columbia's Fraser River and, over the next few decades, beyond into the
Yukon Territory.