1. Cronon, Changes in the Land ; White, Land Use ; White, "The Altered Landscape"; Robbins, Hard Times in Paradise ; Faragher, Sugar Creek ; de Buys, Enchantment and Exploitation .

2. Associated Reformed Presbyterian Church Minutes, Josiah Osborn, Clerk of the Church, 18 June 1849, Calapooia, Linn County, Oregon, quoted in Stanard, "Old Stuff and New," 20 July 1924; Oregon Provisional and Territorial Land Claim Records, A-2, 3:41, 4:318 (emphasis is mine).

3. Oregon Territorial Government, Laws , 72 (sec. 1); Tatter, Preferential Treatment , 39-41. Most oral tradition does not recall the name of the original land claimant but only that he was indeed a member of the Courtney family. One strand of oral tradition states that his name was McAllister. Official documents for the time, however, show John R. Courtney as selecting this property, and in fact no McAllister or a person with a derivation of that name is to be found in the records. Also, family genealogist Rose Anderson of Albany does

not know of a McAllister in the Courtney family. Records show that about six years after the events discussed took place, a Lewis McAllister purchased land from Agnes Courtney, but he did not come to Oregon until September 1852. What is most important is not the exact names, but rather the events and their repercussions. Throughout this narrative, I will use "John R. Courtney," as found in official records, rather than McAllister, as found in oral interviews. Sources: Hugh Dunlap, Eliza Finley Brandon, and Andrew Kirk, interviews by Leslie Haskin, and Haskin's own research in the late 1930s for the Works Progress Administration, in Haskin, Oral History. Haskin interviewed Eliza Finley Brandon twice. George Finley interview by Everett Earl Standard in Haskin, Oral History; Rose B. Anderson, Albany, Oreg., to author, 29 June 1987; Genealogical Forum of Portland, Genealogical Materials 2:129.

4. Tatter, Preferential Treatment , 39-41.

5. Bennett-Browning, "Pioneer Keeney Family."

6. Bowen, Willamette Valley , 70-72; see also Tobie, "Joseph Meek," 250-51; Pratt, "Twenty-two Letters of David Logan," 259-60; Faragher, Sugar Creek , 55, discusses settlers' support of others who improved lands, though left them temporarily.

7. Turnbow and Turnbow, Charles Rice , 154-55; Ramstead, "Pioneer of Oregon"; Bennett-Browning, "Pioneer Keeney Family," 23; W.C. Cooley and Leander Kirk, in Haskin, Oral History; Manuscript Population Census Returns, Linn County, 1850.

8. Ramstead, "Pioneer of Oregon," 4; W.C. Cooley, in Haskin, Oral History; Oregon Donation Land Claim maps for townships 13 and 14 south, ranges 3 and 4 west, Land Office, Bureau of Land Management, Portland.

9. W.C. Cooley, Leander Kirk, and Andrew Kirk, in Haskin, Oral History; Ramstead, "Pioneer of Oregon," 3.

10. Leander Kirk and Andrew Kirk, in Haskin, Oral History; Turnbow and Turnbow, Charles Rice , 155; Hugh Dunlap and Andrew Kirk, in Haskin, Oral History; George Finley, in Stanard, Oral History.

11. I use ostensible here because, as discussed below, the Blakelys, Browns, and Kirks had much to gain from the establishment of a gristmill on the Calapooia, and it seems likely that they had planned some commercial endeavor before settling on the Calapooia.

12. Newspaper clipping, 1909, in James Blakely Collection; Eliza Finley Brandon, Hugh Dunlap, and John McKercher, in Haskin, Oral History. Finley's claim description is identical to Courtney's, Oregon Territorial and Provisional Government Land Claim Records, A-2, 4:261.

Early Calapooia literature is filled with references to the long journey to Oregon City just to have flour ground; see, for instance Goodall, "Upper Calapooia," 70-77; Sunday Portland Oregon Journal , 16 Feb. 1919, newspaper clipping in the James Blakely Collection. Local historians dubbed Richard Finley's flour mill the first gristmill south of Oregon City. This is inaccurate. The first gristmill in the valley, according to Corning in Willamette Landings , 82-83, was at Champoeg, several miles southwest of Oregon City. As early as

June 1841, Charles Wilkes noted a visit to the Methodist Mission gristmill southeast of what later became Salem; Wilkes, Narrative 4:353; see also Work, "John Work's Journey," 241. Moreover, it is not clear why settlers were forced to travel all the way to Oregon City to have their wheat ground, since these other mills existed. By 1850, there were fourteen gristmills in the Willamette Valley, but Finley's mill was the most southerly in Oregon; Bowen, Willamette Valley, 63; U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Seventh Census, Manuscript Census of Products of Industry, Oregon.

13. Hugh Dunlap, Andrew Kirk, Eliza Finley Brandon, and John McKercher, in Haskin, Oral History, and Haskin's own research attached to the Kirk interview; and George Finley, in Stanard, Oral History.

14. George Finley, in Stanard, Oral History.

15. Eliza Finley Brandon, first interview, in Haskin, Oral History.

16. Tattersall, "Economic Development," 39; Gibson, Farming the Frontier, 139-47; Blok, "Evolution," 48-49, 50; Halbakken, "History of Wheat-Growing," 35.

17. Kendall, "Letter," 193; Manuscript Agricultural Census Returns, Linn County, 1850.

18. Catharine Louise McHargue Hume, in Haskin, Oral History; "History of the Hugh L. Brown Family."

19. Sunday Portland Oregon Journal , 16 Feb. 1913, newspaper clipping in James Blakely Collection; Andrew Kirk, in Haskin, Oral History.

20. Eliza Finley Brandon, in Haskin, Oral History; Bowen, Willamette Valley, 66-67, 68-69, 77; Gibson, Farming the Frontier, 140; Blok, "Evolution," 48-49; Bennett-Browning, "Pioneer Keeney Family," 23.

21. WPA, History of Linn County, 6-7; Linn County, Record of the Proceedings 1:57; Alexander Kirk and Morgan Kees to the Clerk of Linn County, 28 May 1848.

Kirk's ferry was actually seasonal, for in the summer the flow of the Calapooia diminishes enough that it can be crossed unaided. Kirk and Morgan's letter already refers to the road they surveyed as the Territorial Road and notes that they had been appointed by the Legislature of the Oregon Territory. Although the boundary dispute between Great Britain and the U.S. had been solved in 1846, the Oregon Country did not officially become a territory until August 1848, and it would not be until the spring of 1849 that the Oregon Territorial Legislature would convene. Kirk and Morgan's appointment probably came from the provisional government in anticipation of territorial status debated in the U.S. Congress in the spring and summer of 1848.

22. Tattersall, "Economic Development," 40; Blain is quoted in WPA, History of Linn County, 49; Blok, "Evolution," 52.

23. No study has detailed early differences between the agricultural and economic development of the northern Willamette and the southern. Most works to date concentrate on the northern Willamette's development and thus suggest that the effects of the gold rush on agricultural development and the economy were the same throughout the valley. In fact, this was not the case. For

studies that pertain primarily to the northern Willamette, and thus rely on this thesis, see Gibson, Farming the Frontier ; Blok, "Evolution"; Tattersall "Economic Development"; Olsen, "Beginnings of Agriculture."

24. Oliphant, Cattle Ranges of Oregon, 42-43; U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Seventh Census, 1006-7; Freeland, Letter.

25. Manuscript Agricultural and Population Census Returns, Linn County, 1850.

26. Freeland, Letter; Fielding Lewis, Letter; Blain, Union Point, Linn County, Oregon Territory, to John Gray, July 1851.

27. Kerr, "Calapooya," 167-68; Hainline, "Past Times," 1 Dec. 1977.

28. Moir and Mika, "Prairie Vegetation," 17, 18, 19; Lewis, Patterns of Indian Burning, 19; Cooper, "Ecology of Fire," 151; Galbreath and Anderson, "Grazing History of the Northwest," 8; Victor, All Over Oregon and Washington, 184; Kendall, "Letter," 191, 193; Ratcliff, ''What Happened to the Kalapuya?" 31.

29. Linn County Petitioners, ca. 1856, and Lane County Petitioners, 1856, Oregon Provisional and Territorial Government Papers, items 9161, 9171 1/2. Emphasis is in the original petition.

30. Minto, "From Youth to Age," 153; Oregon Provisional and Territorial Government Papers, items 7680, 9600-9604.

31. John Cornett, in Haskin, Oral History. The "Battle of Bunker Hill" has been given various interpretations. It has been speculated that the fight was over whose horse was faster. But the best source, John Cornett, grandson of Americus Savage, said the quarrel was over hogs. This seems to be the most reasonable explanation not only because Cornett's mother was Savage's daughter but also because Elder and Savage signed opposing petitions dealing with swine. Cornett erred, however, in stating that Elder was the one who kept hogs. This is probably a mix-up since Haskin's interview with Cornett took place at the end of the 1930s, some eighty years after the event described took place.

32. Oregon Provisional and Territorial Government, Laws, 203.

33. U.S. Congress, Senate, Reports of Explorations 6:82; James Ayers, in Haskin, Oral History; W. T. Templeton, [Calapooia Valley, Oreg.], to Robert Templeton, 13 Mar. 1879, Templeton Family Papers.

34. For a discussion of the shift of the cattle industry from the western to the eastern portion of the Pacific Northwest, see Oliphant's works: "Cattle Herds and Ranches"; "Eastward Movement"; and Cattle Ranges of Oregon .

35. On oats and barley, see Oregon's First Century of Farming, 10, 11; Hill et al., "Barley Production in Oregon"; Hill, "Oats Production in Western Oregon."