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Into the Hinterland It was only lately that we confidently said that the Willamette Valley was Oregon.... The most sanguine mind had no conception ... or dreamed it possible that a railroad system would develop the whole Upper Country; that instead of that wide region being only fit for stock raising, it was about to become the favorite home of agriculture, and would be, as it now is, looked to as the most desirable region for settlement in all the far West. - Willamette Farmer, June 23, 1882 s the 1860s drew to a close, great changes were in the offing for the country east of the Cascade Mountains. A series ofgold strikes provided the immediate catalyst, causing an inrush of people to the interior region in search of the seemingly ubiquitous "dust." Beginning in the early 1860s, prospectors found gold on several tributaries of the Snake River, along the streams in Oregon's Blue Mountains, and farther east in emerging mining districts like Montana's Last Chance Gulch. The sudden increase in human traffic up the Columbia River spurred the organization of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company (which soon gained a monopoly on river transportation). The interior gold-rush phenomenon further boomed the city of Portland as a major point of transshipment; expanded the economic prospects for The Dalles and Walla Walla, Washington, as satellite towns to Portland; and led to the establishment of several small trading centers- Lewiston and Boise City, Idaho, and Baker City-as "jumping-off" places for the mines.! That great spurt of human activity was the opening wedge in what 142 Into the Hinterland 143 can best be described as the systemic, culturally induced transformation of intermontane ecosystems. Mining practices in the nineteenth century were especially disruptive; they sluiced away entire hillsides, silted over salmon breeding grounds, and destroyed riparian habitats. The local demand for construction timbers-trusses for mine tunnels and wooden viaducts to carry water-brought the first large-scale cutting of inland forests. Within a year after the discovery of gold in the John Day Valley (June 1862), an enterprising person opened a sawmill to cut lumber for miners who were building flumes and sluices.2 Theodor Kirchoff, who passed through the eastern Oregon mining region in 1868, offered a glimpse of the new ecological reckoning that was taking place: "elevated troughs, long sluices, uprooted ground, raw piles of sand and tailings, heaps of cleanly washed stone, and water for mining rushes in ditches and wooden conduits among bolders and trees." In Rye Valley, Kirchoff reported the existence of shafts and tunnels with piles of tailings on the slopes and "miles of ditches, carrying water to wash gold." What is notable about eastern Oregon's incipient mining industry is the rapidity with which the larger, more heavily capitalized operators replaced the shallow placer miners. The pan and sluice quickly gave way to more intrusive forms oftechnology- hydraulic pipe, reservoirs, and long canals. It is also important to point out that those changes were well underway before the coming ofrailroads and steam-powered dredges to the region. The most notable early ditching effort was the construction of a nearly 100mile waterway from Burnt River to placer deposits near the Malheur River in 1870. During the most productive years of mining activity in the 1860s, the region sprouted a series ofshort-lived boom towns with colorful names like Sparta, Auburn, Cornucopia, and Susanville.3 The gold camps themselves, usually located along tributary streams in narrow canyons, were instant communities of crude, makeshift shelters. The discovery of gold on Canyon Creek, a tributary of the John Day River, attracted more than 300 miners during the initial rush of activity in the summer of 1862. Miners staked claims along the entire lower section of the creek and worked the placer deposits with the rudimentary equipment they had packed in. Canyon City, located two miles up Canyon Creek, was a thriving community within a few months. Canyon City actually ex- 144 THE ADVENT OF INDUSTRIALISM tended downstream to the location ofthe present town ofJohn Day (originally called Lower Town). Miners sluiced away the river banks in the search for precious metal, destroying the riparian vegetation along the occupied stretch ofthe stream. Later placer and hydraulic mining activity on Canyon Creek, Long Creek, and other tributaries of the upper John Day River proved even more disruptive to riverine ecology, eroding stream banks, silting in breeding habitat for fish, and in other instances speeding run-off that subsequently contributed to...

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