Pacific Northwest Cheese: A History

Chapter 2: Milk and Cheese in Oregon Country

35 Chapter 2 Milk and Cheese in Oregon Country From a contemporary perspective the scenario sounds a little strange: imagine thousands of people deciding rather abruptly to uproot themselves, their families and livelihoods and travel thousands of miles without the benefit of motorized transportation toward a remote region of the continent most had only heard of or perhaps read about. Odd, perhaps, but such was the trending public sentiment in the mid-nineteenth-century United States. Historians estimate that during the 1840s-60s over three hundred thousand people migrated west over what came to be called the Oregon Trail, cementing the profound changes to the culture and landscape of the Pacific Northwest already set into motion by European oceangoing explorers and the fur trappers that followed them. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and the captivating reports that Lewis and Clark brought back opened the eyes of many U.S. citizens to the existence of a vast landscape full of untapped resources on the western part of the continent. By 1825 legislation was introduced in Congress in support of the extension of United States territory into what had become known as Oregon Country. In 1829 enthusiasts organized a group calling itself the Oregon Colonization Society (later the American Society for Encouraging Settlement of Oregon Territory) in Boston and one of its most vocal supporters, Hall Kelley, penned several treatises strongly advocating national expansion. “No portion of the globe presents a more fruitful soil, or a milder climate, or equal facilities for carrying into effect the great purposes of a free and enlightened nation,” Kelley wrote in A Geographical Sketch of that Part of North America Called Oregon. While Kelley’s efforts inspired a few hardy souls to travel to Oregon Country, increasingly more tangible reasons beckoned opportunity seekers westward. Resolution of the territorial conflicts between the United States and Britain in the 1846 Treaty resolved any lingering doubts about sovereign control. The Gold Rush of 1849 drew attention farther south to what would soon become the state of California, but around the same time gold was also discovered in the sands near Gold Beach (hence the name) in far southwest Oregon as well 36 CHAPTER 2 as in other spots along the southern Oregon coast and elsewhere in Oregon Country. The Donation Land Claim Act of 1850, which offered 640 acres to white married couples who could establish a claim in Oregon Country, along with the Homestead Act of 1862, provided significant material incentive— land ownership. There was no shortage of reasons to go west. By the mid-nineteenth century a substantial population of cattle, sheep, and other livestock were already in the Pacific Northwest, as we saw in Chapter 1. But that was just the beginning: the mass human migration via the Oregon Trail might as well be called the “Great Nineteenth-Century Livestock Drive” since so many animals (mostly cattle but significant numbers of sheep, goats, pigs, and even chickens) made their way to Oregon and California along with the humans. “Cattle, cattle, it really seems as though the whole country is alive with men, women, horses, mules, cattle & sheep with a smart sprinkling of children,” remarked Mary Stuart Bailey during the early days of her cross-continental journey on the Oregon Trail in 1852. The numbers are astounding: in just one year, 1853, the register at Fort Kearney in Nebraska recorded 105,792 cattle, 5,477 horses, 2,190 mules and 48,495 sheep passing through on their way westward. Historians estimate the overall number of cattle and sheep that traveled on the Oregon Trail at over a million. Cattle were valuable, if not vital, on the Oregon Trail for a number of reasons. They served as transportation (oxen hauled many emigrants’ wagons westward, though debates raged over the relative merits of cattle vs. horses vs. mules for this purpose) as well as walking repositories of meat. But despite their obvious value, livestock introduced myriad complications to an already hazardous, arduous journey. Livestock that were not otherwise engaged in pulling wagons were typically herded loosely along the route in groups; travelers devoted much time and energy to ensuring that the animals didn’t stray but they inevitably did, causing the humans to devote additional time and energy to recovering them. The animals also drew the attention of ubiquitous wolves and coyotes and were lost to these predators in large numbers along the way. The physical rigors endured by animals on the more than two-thousandmile journey were significant. Trail...