The Garden Realized

A comparison of two panoramic views of the Willamette Valley one dating from 1847 (figure 1) and the other from 1888 (figure 7), reveals the great transformations that the landscape had undergone. The 1888 sketch shows the forests of 1847 cut down, with only patches confined to the geometrical divisions conforming to fence and DLCA survey lines. No longer are natural divisions between forest and prairie discernible. Furthermore, the three deer in the foreground of figure 1, representing the valley's primitive nature, have yielded in 1888 to three Euro-American inhabitants of the valley, representing civilization. The 1888 picture also shows a variety of fences and fields disunifying the scene, with a village barely visible in the hazy distance.

As early as 1855, Blain had seen the beginnings of this transformation, as he noted in a letter after returning from a spring trip to the lower part of the Willamette: "I was on the whole much pleased with the evidence of extensive improvement which every where met the eye. New houses, barns, and farms clothed many portions of the road, with which I had been familiar, with the novelty of a new country."^[3] Blain, as we have seen, appreciated the natural beauty of the valley as well as its primitive, even wilderness aspects. Indeed, he revealed equivocal feelings about the effects of continued Euro-American settlement on the primitive nature of the valley.

Late nineteenth-century Euro-Americans' relationship to, and perception of, the transformed, pastoral Willamette landscape were as complex and multifaceted as Blain's and others' initial responses to the primitive landscape. What is most intriguing about this later generation's reactions to the transformed landscape, however, was their concentration on the beauty it still possessed. To late nineteenth-century Willamette and Calapooia valley inhabitants, human artifice, such as villages, farmsteads, and mills, coupled with the valley's remaining primitive qualities, created a scene of domestic enchantment that they considered beautiful in its own right. Thus commented the Willamette

Figure 7.
The transformed landscape of the Willamette Valley, 1888. Compare this sketch of the
Chehalem area of the Willamette Valley (near Newberg) with Paul Kane's rendition of
the valley in 1847 (fig. 1). Unlike Kane's painting, which depicts an uncultivated
landscape inhabited only by wildlife, this 1888 illustration emphasizes the Euro-American
presence—humans, fences, rectangular fields, a village in the distance, and abrupt
divisions between prairies and forest patches. Courtesy of the Oregon Historical Society,
Portland (negative number ORHI 35543).

Farmer in 1873: "Neither can there be a more charming spot of earth than this blessed valley which offers us a home, with its delightful climate, rich and certain harvests and with its undeveloped resources." One year later the same newspaper commented, "Is this a dream? Beautiful fields of golden grain, green orchards, meadows, the Willamette River, like a silver belt, glistening in the sunlight."^[4] In both these instances, the observer paired the valley's natural beauty with utility and human artifice.

More vividly, in 1882 an observer of the Willamette Valley scene, E. Ingersoll, wrote at length about the confluence of nature and human artifice on the valley's landscape.^[5] Ingersoll began by describing average Willamette Valley farms that "follow one another from the river back into the wooded foot-hills." He then turned his attention to the houses,

"which are almost invariably of frame, and of good size, with far more attention paid to comfort and attractive surroundings than it is customary in the Eastern States." He also noted the "little villages scattered here and there," as well as schoolhouses and churches. The vision he describes conveys to his reader an idea of a domesticated landscape.

Significantly, nature had a role here, too, for it provided a charming setting within which Willamette Valley inhabitants built their community. Ingersoll mentioned, for instance, the "many scattered oaks," "yellow pines," and "stately firs," which "gave an opportunity not lost sight of to place one's house where the effect would be that of an ancient homestead, around whose sacred altars trees planted in grandfather's youth had had time to become of great size and dignity." This "pleasant description," Ingersoll explained, "is seen everywhere; and it is deceptive, . . . giving an impression of a country occupied for centuries and full of traditions."

For Ingersoll, human occupation of the land transformed nature, turning elements of the landscape into embellishments of a domestic garden. From this immediate scene, which he himself termed one of "domestic felicity," Ingersoll then described the greater surrounding landscape: "The whole wide basin lies open to the eye, robed in green, but green of what infinite variety of tint and shading, between the emerald squares of the new wheat and the opaque mass of the far-away hill forests sharply serrate against the sky, or melting into farther and farther indistinctness of hill and haze. The foreground, too, is always pleasantly sketchy."^[6] Reminiscent of Blain's descriptions of the Willamette and Calapooia valleys just thirty years earlier, Ingersoll's verbal rendition of a visual experience, however, is punctuated by the hand of man, though in a positive way, as seen in the "emerald squares of the new wheat." Ingersoll continued, "if you think my picture lacks color, look at that . . . brown patch of freshly ploughed ground; at this brilliant red barn and white farmhouse half hidden in its blossoming orchard!" For Ingersoll, only with the addition of human artifice—houses, barns, plowed fields, and orchards—could the true beauty of the landscape be appreciated.

The overwhelming beauty found in the now domesticated, pastoral Willamette Valley was commented on by observers of the Calapooia area and Linn County as a whole. A correspondent for the Willamette Farmer who traveled from Lebanon to Shedd in May 1877 declared of the view near the foot of Saddle Butte, "The scenery was magnificent.

Map 8.
Land claims at the mouth of the Calapooia Valley, 1878.
SOURCE:  Illustrated Historical Atlas Map of Marion and Linn Counties, Oregon .

We could count twenty-one teams putting in grain, in going one mile. Linn County is literally one grand wheat field." Another correspondent wrote later the same season about the view as he and his companion headed southeast from Halsey to the foothills, "passing nearly all the way over prairies as rich as need be, showing everywhere comfortable homes."^[7]

Much of the area through which they traveled, the once formerly open, uninhabited plains of the Willamette Valley west of Brownsville at the mouth of the Calapooia Valley, is shown in map 8. Note that on this map, executed one year after the newspaper correspondent traversed the area, the landscape is divided into numerous farms. Figure 8 allows us to glimpse the plains of the Willamette adjacent to the Calapooia River as they appeared in 1878. This lithograph shows the formerly avoided prairies now transformed into a realm of domestic bliss. it reveals neatly kept farms, with fences dividing and therefore

Figure 8.
D.P. Porter's farm and residence, 1878. Located near the town of Shedd, Porter's
residence is an example of the pastoral achievement of southern Willamette Valley
inhabitants in the late nineteenth century.
Source:  Illustrated Historical Atlas Map of Marion and Linn Counties, Oregon .

putting into captivity prairies that have now been changed into productive fields and pastures. Barns, other outbuildings, and young orchards embellish the scene, while men busily attend grain fields, and farm animals laze about the barnyard. The lithograph even captures a croquet match in progress. All these adornments and activities however, serve only as embroidery for the most important feature of the scene, the domestic abode, standing in a central, stately location.

In this lithograph and the period descriptions, the natural beauty of the primitive valley has given way to the utilitarian beauty of the transformed landscape. The meaning of this landscape had also changed. We see this most graphically in the comments of an 1884 correspondent to an Albany newspaper. This writer first described the panorama of the valley as viewed from "a slight eminence on the [east] edge of the Willamette valley," where the town of "Brownsville stands in her glory." This correspondent appears to have stood in almost exactly the same place where Wilson Blain had stood thirty-three years earlier when he "gazed with rapture" across a valley that combined, in the most

"remarkable manner, variety, beauty, and sublimity, in the natural world."^[8]

But the vision of the 1884 observer, while superficially similar to Blain's, is in fact quite different. He begins by regarding the "background made up of the Cascade range and with a front view of the beautiful Willamette valley and its native scenery." He continues, "But a little beyond this scenery is the Coast range, which has been termed the dyke of the great Pacific." What made this scenery most "beautiful, indeed romantic" to this viewer, however, was not simply its natural and sublime beauty—as it had been for Blain—but the fact that he heard a special message "echoing" over the valley, reverberating from the heights of the Coast Range. That message was "business."

Notes on the beauty of the transformed Calapooia scenery were not limited to panoramic vistas alone, for observant eyes dissected this landscape, isolating its important utilitarian features, such as the Calapooia River itself. Regarded as the "leading element" in North Brownsville's prosperity as of 1878, observers saw the Calapooia as "splendid and never-failing [in] water power . . . which drives all . . . mills and factories." Eleven years later another viewer of the Brownsville scene remarked that the dam built across the Calapooia turned "almost the entire river into a race." One year later, another enumerated the manufactories the river powered in Brownsville: "a woolen mill, flour mill, saw mill, sash and door factory, furniture factory, etc." He ended his commentary by noting that there was yet "plenty of power to spare." Commentators on the Calapooia positively assessed this realization of the river's utility; indeed, in 1876 one resident of Crawfordsville suggested that the river was so important that it deserved "a better name than it bears."^[9]

Even individual towns and their situations were considered idyllic scenes. In 1878 a viewer described South Brownsville as "picturesquely-situated and flourishing . . . at the entrance to the valley of the Calapooia River, and more beautiful surroundings than it possesses would be hard to conceive." The twin towns of South and North Brownsville together had "picturesque dwellings, neatly-arranged grounds, in the cool shade of innumerable trees, present[ing] a picture of comfort which no other town can excel and few equal." Even Brownsville's small industrial area around the woolen mills had a domestic lure, according to one late nineteenth-century observer: "Surrounding, and in near proximity to the mill, are the dwellings of the operatives, and the

observer will be pleased with the general air of neatness and comfort pervading this section of the city, most of the houses being built and surrounded by orchards and gardens prolific in their yield."^[10]

The late nineteenth-century Calapooia, as well as the whole of the Willamette Valley, may not in reality have been the tranquil pastoral landscape that its inhabitants so gloriously proclaimed. In fact, these descriptions ignore some of the reality of environmental degradation under which these people suffered. But it is important to note that this is how they wished to view the world they and nature had created. Here, comfortable houses and productive farms dotted the prairies, industrious villages reposed among shade trees, and bustling rivers powered factories. All this they viewed as a jewel set in the beautiful green basin of the Willamette.

Late nineteenth-century Willamette and Calapooia residents believed they lived in an actual garden. Immigration agent C. G. Burkhart, who lived in Linn County his entire life, argued in 1887, "It is stated that if the Willamette Valley is the garden spot of the state, Linn County is the garden spot of the valley. The comparison is now extended and the statement confidently made that, if Linn County is the garden spot of the valley," the prairie extending west of the Calapooia "is the garden spot of the county." In other words, these open prairies that the Calapooia community once hoped would become a garden had, by the end of the nineteenth century, far exceeded all expectations and had become literally the garden spot of the garden spot of the garden spot of the entire state.^[11]

Burkhart and his successor, B. F. Alley, marketed the garden image of the Willamette plains adjacent to the Calapooia during the end of the 1880s. Burkhart noted, "In all this plain the land is all taken and converted into fine farms." In another reference he remarked that the "belt from the Willamette River to the foothills . . . is an open, level prairie country, the most productive in the valley. . . . Wheat, oats, barley and all kinds of vegetable and fruits are grown here with the greatest success." Elsewhere he pointed out,

In all parts of the country, along the river and creek bottoms and all through the foot hills, fruits of most kinds are grown in the greatest abundance and the quality is unsurpassed by that of any other state. Apples of all varieties, pears in size and quality call out the unstinted praise of all who see them, plums as large as hen eggs, rich and juicy, cherries that in both quality and

quantity challenge comparison with similar fruits grown anywhere else, prunes that delight the eye and taste of all.^[12]

Alley described the fertile plains of the Willamette, "stretching away to the west and south" from the Calapooia, as "carpeted with numberless fields of grain, dotted with farm houses and settlements, showing a prosperous and successful people." He also wrote of "the beauty and fertility" of the prairies surrounding the town of Halsey and of "the unmistakable healthfulness of its climate." According to Alley, "All the essentials that go to make up a desirable country abound here."^[13]

These descriptions of the Calapooia's prairies in particular, and the Willamette Valley in general, rely on the image of the garden. Settlers dreamed of such a garden at an early date and then realized it through a variety of interdependent natural and human factors: fertility of soil, drainage of the valley's plains, a variety of natural resources, a salubrious climate, the growth of markets and their accessibility through improved transportation, a growing population, development of early manufacturing and the utilization of rapid streams, and the expansion of agriculture. Here, indeed, a garden thrived.

The beauty and utility of the landscape, however, were as two-dimensional as the descriptions and sketches of the Calapooia's gardenlike appearance. Scratch the surface of these lithographs and we find that the grazing cattle and rooting swine, coupled with the cessation of burning by the Kalapuya, helped destroy the grasslands of the plains on which settlers once gazed with pleasure. Fencing diminished the Calapooia as a wildlife habitat. The draining of prairies destroyed the valley's natural sloughs, home to waterfowl and animals. Furthermore, the early lumber industry not only felled the native trees but converted the Calapooia into a highway for logs, with harmful effects on the stream and its ability to replenish the floodplain. And nature reacted. The environment continued to act independently of its human inhabitants, as it had during early pioneer years. But its reaction in these later years was magnified because the changes humans attempted to make were more environmentally significant. Although settlers could alter prairies and woodlands, they could not stop natural succession. Soon, invasions of brush and weeds, native and exotic, and the depletion of soil fertility made life difficult for the civilization that unwittingly initiated the change.

From at least the 1890s and well into the twentieth century, longtime settlers recognized changes in the land, many of which they lamented. John Minto noted just after the turn of the century, "These damp-land and water fowls and animals, which once found here their breeding places, have gone forever, unless farmers in the near future construct artificial fish ponds, and reservoirs for irrigation when needed." A Calapooia Valley old-timer remarked to a historian at about the same time, "You can not imagine the beauty of this country when we first came here." Another Calapooian remarked in the late 1930s of the vanished white-tailed deer, "Now I presume they are all gone, though it may be possible that there are still a very few of them in the woods and among the small wooded islands."^[14] Lamentation over the lost wildlife and primitive landscape of the Calapooia and Willamette valleys certainly composed part of residents' responses to the transformed environment.

One can also find at the end of the nineteenth century a human-landscape relationship truncated by a myriad of intermediaries now separating the two. Living in this garden, valley inhabitants lacked a certain depth in their relationship to the landscape, for the process undertaken to achieve this garden actually amputated the third dimension of intimacy, a closeness to the primitive landscape that the early settlers enjoyed. Lacking this third dimension, residents' relationship to the land collapsed into two-dimensionality. They still went about their activities, but they felt a significant loss that they were unable exactly to describe. This change, and the necessity of leaving the foothills for the prairie where future development would take place, resulted in the loss of a certain quality of life. By the end of the nineteenth century, valley inhabitants were looking back to the foothills, and their still relatively primitive nature, for this vanished quality of life, and aspects of the foothills were celebrated in literature and deemed desirable. If the garden qualities of the Willamette could be so widely glorified, the foothills, too, had their own benefits, which were missing from the plains.