CAPITOl NAMES

INDIVIDUALS WOVEN INTO OREGON’S HISTORY

Based on Philip Cogswell Jr.’s 1977 book 

In the Oregon Capitol, the names of 158 men and women who helped shape Oregon are inscribed in the friezes above the Senate and House chambers. Philip Cogswell Jr.’s book, Capitol Names: Individuals Woven Into Oregon’s History, published in 1977 by the Oregon Historical Society, details the accomplishments that earned each person the honor of being chronicled in Oregon’s Capitol. The excerpts for each name below were inspired by the contents of Cogswell’s book, and were reviewed and revised by Historical Research Associates, Inc.  

The Capitol names include explorers, farmers, settlers, traders, politicians, missionaries, businessmen and mariners, among other categories of people. The names were compiled in 1938, when the current Capitol was nearing completion, and reflect the history as told then.   

• Reed, Simeon G.
• Rogers, Robert.
• Ross, Alexander.
• Russell, Osborne.
• Sacagawea.
• Scott, Harvey W.
• Scott, Levi.
• Scott, Thomas F.
• Sheridan, Philip H.
• Simpson, George.
• Slacum, William A.
• Smith, Delazon.
• Smith, Jedediah Strong.
• Spalding, Henry H.
• Strong, William.
• Stuart, Robert.
• T’Vault, William G.
• Thompson, David.
• Thompson, David P.
• Thornton, Jesse Quinn.
• Thurston, Samuel R.
• Vancouver, George.
• Victor, Frances Fuller.
• Villard, Henry.
• Waldo, Daniel.
• Watt, Joseph.
• Webster, Daniel.
• Whitcomb, Lot.
• White, Elijah.
• Whiteaker, John.
• Whitman, Marcus.
• Whitman, Narcissa.
• Wilbur, James H.
• Wilkes, Charles.
• Williams, George H.
• Williamson, R.S.
• Willson, William H.
• Work, John.
• Wyeth, Nathaniel J.
• Young, Ewing.

Henry L. Abbot
(1831-1927)

An officer of the U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, Henry Larcom Abbot conducted surveys of potential railroad routes to California, one of the first steps in the long effort to develop rail connections between the Pacific Northwest and the eastern United States. In 1855, Abbot, along with R. S. Williamson, co-led a trek north from Sacramento, California to the Columbia River and scouted potential railroad routes east and west of the Cascade Range. Abbot Pass in Clackamas County, Abbot Creek in Jefferson County and Camp Abbot, a temporary World War II cantonment, are named after him.

George Abernethy
(1807-1877)

George Abernethy arrived in the Oregon Country in 1840, traveling with the Great Reinforcement to Jason Lee’s Willamette Mission. He later settled in Oregon City, purchasing a store, sawmill and grist mill. He became a successful merchant and one of the first people to break the Hudson’s Bay Company’s monopoly which had controlled commerce and resource extraction for many years. From 1845 to 1849, Abernethy served as Oregon’s first and only provisional governor. In that role, he oversaw the construction of roads, levied taxes and advocated for the admittance of Oregon as a U.S. territory.

John Quincy Adams
(1767-1848)

As Secretary of State under President James Monroe, from 1818 to 1825, John Quincy Adams furthered U.S. interests and holdings in the Pacific Northwest. He played leading roles in the Treaty of 1818 that established joint occupation of the Oregon Country between the United States and Great Britain and later treaties with Spain and Russia. Adams can be credited with settling the southern boundary of Oregon, eliminating Russian and Spanish claims to the Northwest and keeping open the so-called Oregon Question with the British. Adams went on to serve as the sixth president of the United States, from 1825 to 1829.

William L. Adams
(1821-1906)

William Lysander Adams was an early Oregon newspaperman. Traveling west on the Oregon Trail in 1844, he made two journeys to the gold fields of California before beginning a career in journalism. In 1855 he purchased the Oregon Spectator, the first newspaper published in the Oregon Territory, and renamed it the Oregon Argus. First as a Whig and then as a Republican publication, it served as an alternative voice in an Oregon society then dominated by Democrats such as Asahel Bush, Matthew P. Deady, Reuben P. Boise and other members of the Salem Clique. Adams helped found the Republican Party in Oregon.

John C. Ainsworth
(1822-1893)

John Commingers Ainsworth traveled west in 1849, in search of fortune in California’s gold fields. Milwaukie businessman Lot Whitcomb encouraged him to move to Oregon the following year, to work on his soon-to-be-constructed steam-powered sidewheeler. Ainsworth became captain of the Lot Whitcomb, working alongside chief engineer Jacob Kamm. The two men bought the steamship in 1853. Seven years later, they organized the Oregon Steam Navigation Company (OSNC), along with Simeon G. Reed and other investors. For some 20 years, the company maintained a near monopoly on transportation in the region, including a network of steam-powered vessels and portage railroads. Railroad financier Henry Villard bought out OSNC in 1879.

Jesse Applegate
(1811-1888)

Jesse Applegate, along with his brothers Charles and Lindsay and their families, traveled overland to Oregon in 1843, as part of a migration of nearly a thousand people. Applegate was chosen to captain the slower of the two wagon trains and he later wrote about his experiences in “A Day with the Cow Column,” published in the Oregon Historical Quarterly in 1900. Once in Oregon, he established a farm in present-day Polk County. In 1845 he played a role in the Provisional Government of Oregon. Believing that travelers on the Oregon Trail needed easier access to the Willamette Valley, he worked with his brother Lindsay, Levi Scott and others to blaze a new southern route that avoided the Blue Mountains and the Columbia River. The Applegate Trail became a southern alternative to the westernmost segment of the Oregon Trail. In 1849, Applegate and his family moved to southwestern Oregon, settling in a valley he named Yoncalla.

John Jacob Astor
(1763-1848)

Though he never set foot in Oregon, American business magnate John Jacob Astor’s investment in the region left a lasting legacy. In 1810, he organized the Pacific Fur Company and sent the Astor Expedition (1810–1813), a two-pronged mission, to establish a fur post at the mouth of the Columbia River. One group, which included Russel Farnham, Alexander Ross, Robert Stuart and others, sailed from New York on the Tonquin, traveling around the tip of South America and reaching the Columbia River in March 1811. There they built Fort Astoria, the first American settlement on the West Coast. Wilson Price Hunt led the second group, known as the Overland Astorians, and they arrived at Fort Astoria in early 1812. Today Astoria is the oldest, continuously occupied non-Native site in Oregon.

George H. Atkinson
(1819-1889)

Missionary and educator Reverend George Henry Atkinson arrived in Oregon in 1848 as a representative of the American Home Missionary Society and became an influential figure in the development of public education. He and his wife Nancy Bates Atkinson brought the first school textbooks sold in quantity in the territory. Alongside Harvey Clark and Tabitha Brown, he helped found Tualatin Academy, later known as Pacific University. In 1849, he wrote the education section of Governor Joseph Lane’s address to the first territorial legislature and two months later, the legislature established a system of common schools that followed Atkinson’s recommendations. He served as the first school superintendent for Clackamas County and later served in a similar capacity for Multnomah County.

Ira L. Babcock
(1808-1888)

Ira Leonard Babcock and his family arrived in the Oregon Country in 1840, as part of the Great Reinforcement to Jason Lee’s Willamette Mission. Several of the 51 people who arrived to help the Methodist mission made significant impacts on Oregon politics, including future provisional governor George Abernethy and Gustavus Hines, an organizer of the Champoeg meetings. In 1841, when wealthy rancher Ewing Young died without a will, local residents formed a government to settle his estate. Babcock was elected to serve as the first Supreme Judge of the Provisional Government and played an important part in the development of Oregon’s first official government.

William J. Bailey
(1807-1876)

William John Bailey arrived in Oregon in 1835 with a fur trapping expedition from San Francisco and settled in the Willamette Valley. He later worked for Ewing Young’s Willamette Cattle Company, herding livestock from California to Oregon. In 1844, Bailey was elected as one of three members of the Second Executive Committee of the Provisional Government and served in both the provisional and territorial legislatures.

Edward D. Baker
(1811-1861)

Edward Dickinson Baker first served in Congress in 1845, as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois. He later moved to California and then Oregon. In 1860, he was elected to the U.S. Senate, representing Oregon and defeating incumbent Delazon Smith. He served as a U.S. Army colonel in both the Mexican-American War and the Civil War. He died on October 21, 1861, in the Battle of Ball’s Bluff, the only sitting U.S. senator to be killed in action. Baker County and Baker City are named in his honor.

John Ball
(1794-1884)

In 1832, John Ball joined Nathaniel J. Wyeth in his first expedition to the Oregon Country. While wintering at Fort Vancouver, John McLoughlin, chief factor for the Hudson’s Bay Company, asked Ball to teach the Métis children, whose parents were of European and Native ancestry, living the fort. Ball is now widely recognized as the first school teacher in Oregon.

Forbes Barclay
(1812-1873)

Forbes Barclay, working as a physician and fur trader for the Hudson’s Bay Company, arrived in the Oregon Country in 1840. He became a prominent figure in Oregon City, serving as mayor, city councilman, school superintendent and county coroner—all while still practicing medicine. His house, built in Oregon City in 1849, is now part of the National Park Service’s McLoughlin House Unit of Fort Vancouver National Historic Site.

Samuel K. Barlow
(1795-1867)

When Samuel Kimbrough Barlow arrived in The Dalles via the Oregon Trail in 1845, he became frustrated with the delay in getting wagon parties ready to float down the Columbia River. He sought an alternative route to Oregon City and the Willamette Valley. His effort was soon joined by Joel Palmer and William Rector. They learned of a Native trail that went from the southern slope of Mount Hood to Willamette Falls. They cut and blazed the trail into a wagon road, providing travelers on the Oregon Trail an alternate route to the Willamette Valley. The Barlow Road operated as a toll road from 1846 to 1919.

Alanson Beers
(1800-1853)

Along with his wife and three children, Alanson Beers arrived in the Oregon Country on the ship Diana in 1837. They were among the first reinforcements for Jason Lee’s Willamette Mission. Beers served as the blacksmith and farm superintendent for the Methodist mission. In 1843, he helped draft the laws for the Provisional Government of Oregon. That same year, he was elected as one of the three members of the First Executive Committee, along with Joseph Gale and David Hill. He represented the interests of Methodist missionaries in the newly formed government.

Thomas H. Benton
(1782-1858)

Thomas Hart Benton championed the colonization of the Oregon Country during the first half of the 19th century. As a newspaper editor, he advocated for American occupation of Oregon, which was then jointly occupied by Great Britain and the United States. Once elected to the U.S. Senate in 1820, he became one of Oregon’s strongest supporters, along with U.S. Representative John Floyd. In 1846, Benton worked with President James K. Polk to negotiate the Oregon Treaty, which ended the joint occupation of the Oregon County and gave the United States possession of land south of the 49th parallel. Benton then led the effort to pass legislation establishing Oregon as an American territory. In 1847, the Provisional Legislature of Oregon named Benton County in his honor.

James Biddle
(1783-1848)

In August 1818, U.S. Navy Lieutenant James Biddle arrived at the mouth of the Columbia River on the USS Ontario, and with 50 sailors piled into three boats, sailed upriver to reclaim Oregon for his nation. This was in response to years of tension between the United States and Great Britain in the Oregon Country. During the War of 1812, the British took possession of Fort Astoria, an American fur trade post established by John Jacob Astor at the mouth of the Columbia, and renamed it Fort George. The Treaty of Ghent ended the war between the U.S. and Great Britain but did not resolve the situation in Oregon. In 1817, the United States informed Great Britain that it would restore Fort Astoria to American possession and sent the warship captained by Biddle to do just that. Eventually the Americans lost interest in the fort and it returned to the British North West Company, which was later absorbed by the Hudson’s Bay Company. The Treaty of 1818, signed in October, established a joint occupation of the Pacific Northwest by both nations.

Francois Norbert Blanchet
(1795-1883)

The first Catholic archbishop for Oregon, French Canadian Francois Norbert Blanchet was active in the Pacific Northwest for 47 years. Beginning in the 1830s, John McLoughlin sent requests from French Canadian Catholic employees of the Hudson’s Bay Company to the Archdiocese of Quebec for priests. Blanchet and fellow priest Modeste Demers arrived at Fort Vancouver in 1838 where they were greeted by members of the growing number of French-Indian families living in the Willamette Valley, including Joseph Gervais and Etienne Lucier. The arrival of Blanchet and Demers marked the beginning of Catholic missions in Oregon. During the early 1840s, Blanchet opposed the organization of a government in the Oregon Country, believing it would enhance U.S. claims to the region. He later wrote several publications about the Pacific Northwest, including Historical Sketches of the Catholic Church in Oregon and a Chinook language dictionary.

Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra
(1743-1794)

Spanish naval officer Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra explored the Northwest Coast in 1775. He sailed alongside Bruno de Hezeta y Dudagoitia, or Bruno de Heceta, who in August of that year became the first person of European descent to map and write a description of the entrance to the Columbia River.

Reuben P. Boise
(1819-1907)

Reuben Patrick Boise was a member of the Salem Clique, a group of influential Democrats that included Asahel Bush, Matthew P. Deady, James W. Nesmith and Orville C. Pratt. In 1851, Oregon Supreme Court justice Orville C. Pratt appointed Boise as a district attorney. He was then elected to the territorial legislature, as a Democrat representing Polk and Tillamook counties. In 1857, President James Buchanan appointed Boise to the territorial Oregon Supreme Court, replacing Cyrus Olney. When Oregon became a state in 1859, Boise won election to the highest court and served two terms as chief justice. He resigned from the bench in 1870, after his re-election results were disputed. In 1876, Boise returned to the Supreme Court. During his time away, he served on the commission that oversaw the construction of the Oregon State Capitol.

John Boit
(1774-1829)

John Boit sailed as a fifth mate under Captain Robert Gray on the Columbia Redivivia. The vessel set sail in 1790 and in May 1792, it became the first documented ship to anchor in the estuary of what Gray named the Columbia River. Boit kept a journal of the voyage, describing the first time the river was located by people of European descent. The ship’s crew traded with Native peoples up and down the Northwest Coast.

Benjamin L.E. Bonneville
(1796-1878)

Benjamin Louis Eulalie de Bonneville traveled parts of the Oregon Country in the 1830s, studying Native cultures and exploring the topography. In 1832, on his journey west, his expedition became the first to successfully traverse South Pass in Wyoming by wagon. This proved that wagons could cross the continental divide and enabled the rise of westward migration along this route the following decade. Once in the Columbia Basin, he tried but failed to establish trade relationships with Native communities. Washington Irving memorialized Bonneville’s stories and maps of the region in The Adventures of Benjamin Bonneville (1837) which contributed to the public’s growing interest in Oregon.

William R. Broughton
(1762-1821)

Lieutenant William Robert Broughton was a member of Captain George Vancouver’s scientific maritime expedition (1791–1795) that explored the Northwest Coast of North America. In 1792, Vancouver met American sea merchant Robert Gray, during the latter’s own exploration of the coast. Gray provided Vancouver with a sketch map of the mouth of the Columbia River. Vancouver then sent Broughton and two boats into the river, to survey 100 miles of the lower Columbia. Broughton traveled as far as the Columbia River Gorge, sighting and naming many geographic features, including Mount Hood. This voyage produced the first detailed and accurate map of the lower Columbia, which was used by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark during their overland expedition (1804–1806).

Tabitha Brown
(1780-1858)

Tabitha Brown departed for the Oregon Country in 1846. A widow, she traveled along the Oregon Trail with two of her adult children, their families and her brother-in-law. They followed the advice of a guide and took a new cutoff, the Applegate Trail, that crossed the southern Cascade Range and avoided the route across the Blue Mountains. Traveling across rough terrain on the newly blazed trail and exhausting their supplies, the party finally reached the Willamette Valley in December. Brown settled in what became Forest Grove and became acquainted with local missionary families. In 1848, she helped found Tualatin Academy, later known as Pacific University, along with Harvey Clark and George H. Atkinson. In 1987, the Oregon legislature named her “The Mother of Oregon.”

Peter H. Burnett
(1807-1895)

Peter Hardeman Burnett helped organize the first large wagon train to travel west along the Oregon Trail, known as the Great Migration. The 1843 arrival of nearly a thousand people doubled the white population of the Oregon Country. Once in the Willamette Valley, Burnett planned the town of Linnton, named for U.S. Senator and Oregon booster Lewis F. Linn. In 1844, he was elected to the Provisional Government’s legislature where he wrote some of Oregon’s first laws, including the first exclusion law which banned Black individuals, free or enslaved, from residing in the region. In 1845, the legislature elected Burnett to serve as a supreme judge. He resigned that position in 1847 to start a private legal practice, eventually leaving for California as part of the gold rush. While there, President James K. Polk appointed him to the territorial Oregon Supreme Court, a position he ultimately turned down. He became California’s first governor in 1849 and attempted unsuccessfully to persuade the state legislature to enact an exclusion law similar to Oregon’s.

Asahel Bush
(1824-1913)

A key figure in the territorial political scene, Asahel Bush was recruited to Oregon by Samuel R. Thurston to partner in the establishment of a newspaper. Bush became the editor and publisher of the Oregon Statesman. The paper supported the establishment of political parties in the territory and Bush became a vocal advocate of the Democratic Party, organized in Oregon in 1852. He was rivals with Thomas J. Dryer, an outspoken member of the Whig Party and editor of The Oregonian. The two engaged in the so-called “Oregon Style” of journalism, lobbing personal insults at each other in their editorials. Dryer called Bush, Matthew P. Deady, James W. Nesmith, Reuben P. Boise, Orville C. Pratt and other influential Democrats the “Salem Clique.” As the territory moved toward statehood, Bush opposed slavery but favored the exclusion of Black individuals from living in Oregon. His opinions were shared by members of the Oregon Constitutional Convention of 1857 who incorporated the only Black exclusion clause included in any state constitution.

Edward R.S. Canby
(1817-1873)

A career U.S. Army officer and veteran of the Civil War, Major General Edward Richard Sprigg Canby commanded U.S. troops during the Modoc War (1872–1873). In 1864, leaders of Modoc, Klamath and northern Paiute signed a treaty with the United States, ceding their homelands in return for a reservation on what had been mainly Klamath territory. In 1872, a group of Modoc, led by Kintpuash (also known as Captain Jack), resisted efforts by the U.S. Army and local militia to be forcibly moved from their ancestral lands to the Klamath Reservation. After a series of skirmishes, a peace conference was arranged, but during the meeting Kintpuash and several others killed Canby and another negotiator. The Modoc War and Canby’s death became national news. After a military trial, Kintpuash and four other Modoc men were found guilty and executed.

Jonathan Carver
(1710-1780)

Commissioned by Robert Rogers in 1766, Jonathan Carver led an expedition to find the Northwest Passage, a water route to the Pacific Ocean European explorers had been seeking for centuries. Carver wrote about his attempts to find the passage in Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America in the Years 1766, 1767 and 1768. In his 1778 publication, he described learning about “the Oregon, or River of the West,” from Native peoples he met. This was the first printed mention of the name “Oregon.”

Harvey Clark
(1807-1858)

Harvey Clark was a leader in the development of educational facilities in Oregon. He and his wife, Emmeline Caldwell Clark, arrived in the Oregon Country in 1840 as independent missionaries. They settled in the Tualatin Plains and began teaching Métis children, whose parents were of European and Native ancestry. In 1848, working with Tabitha Brown and George H. Atkinson, they established Tualatin Academy, on land donated by Harvey Clark. Five years later, the school became Pacific University. Clark also participated in the formation of the Provisional Government of Oregon and helped found the town of Forest Grove.

William Clark
(1770-1838)

In June 1803, Meriwether Lewis asked William Clark to co-lead a military exploration of western North America. Lewis had been appointed by President Thomas Jefferson to prepare plans for a scientific expedition to the Pacific Ocean. Lewis and Clark selected a mix of military and civilian volunteers to become part of the Corps of Discovery. York, the enslaved servant of Clark, also joined the effort. From May 1804 to September 1806, the men traveled some 8,000 miles across the continent. Sacagawea, a Native woman, joined the group in November 1804 and later became one of the most well-known female figures in American history. President Jefferson had given Lewis and Clark several directives for the mission: accurately document the geography of the region, gather information about the Native nations they encountered and capture detailed notes on the plants, animals, minerals, climate and landscape they saw. The co-leaders, along with five other members of the Corps, wrote in journals and field notes during the expedition. Clark served as the expedition’s main cartographer, drawing maps of waterways, landmarks and other geographic features. The Corps spent nine months in Oregon and the subsequent narratives, reports and maps produced provided the greatest amount of detail about the region yet published. The expedition also established an American claim to the Oregon Country.

Concomly
(c. 1765-c. 1830)

Concomly was a Chinook leader on the lower Columbia River during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He met many fur traders and explorers during this period, such as Robert Gray, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, and they published about their encounters. By the time members of the Astor Expedition built Fort Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia in 1811, Concomly dominated the trade with Euro-Americans. He married his daughters to fur traders, as such unions required the exchange of valuable goods. One daughter, Koale’xoa, married Hudson’s Bay Company employee Archibald MacDonald and became mother of Ranald MacDonald. Concomly died during a malaria epidemic in 1830.

Thomas Condon
(1822-1907)

Irish minister, geologist and paleontologist Thomas Condon first arrived in Oregon in 1852. While working as a minister in The Dalles, he made his first contributions to the fields of geology and paleontology. He collected fossil seashells on the Crooked River, found fossils of camels and other animals along the John Day River and made other discoveries in what is now the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. Condon corresponded with scientists around the nation and supplied specimens to major museums. In 1872, the Oregon legislature appointed him as the first state geologist. He was named the first professor of geology at the University of Oregon when the school opened in 1876. Condon made significant contributions to academic and public understandings of Oregon’s geological history.

James Cook
(1728-1779)

British naval officer, explorer and cartographer James Cook led three voyages to the Pacific Ocean between 1768 and 1779. During his final voyage, as captain of the HMS Resolution, he spotted the coast of North America in March 1778. He recorded the first accurate notations of the Oregon Coast on a modern map in his Chart of the NW Coast of America and NE Coast of Asia explored in the Years 1778 & 1779. Cook named Cape Foulweather and Cape Perpetua in what is now Oregon and Cape Flattery in what is now Washington.

John H. Couch
(1811-1870)

John Heard Couch was an early American businessman in the Oregon Country. He first arrived in 1840 as captain of the brig Maryland. He intended to trade his cargo of goods for salmon, but his efforts were rebuffed by the British-owned Hudson’s Bay Company, which controlled much of the commerce in the region. While the first voyage was not a commercial success, he returned in 1842 and established a general store in Oregon City. In 1845, he obtained a land claim adjacent to those of Asa L. Lovejoy and Francis W. Pettygrove and convinced them to plat a townsite that became known as Portland. After serving as treasurer for the Provisional Government of Oregon, Couch sailed back to New England in 1847. He returned to Portland with his wife Caroline Flanders Couch in 1850, where they became one of the city’s most prominent families.

Ross Cox
(1793-1855)

In 1812, Ross Cox arrived in Fort Astoria, the first American settlement in the Pacific Northwest, as a clerk for John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Fur Company. He began working for the North West Company in 1813, after it acquired all of Pacific Fur’s properties. He participated in several expeditions to the upper Columbia region with the Astor party and later with the North West Company. His book Adventures on the Columbia (1831) documented the early fur trade in the Northwest and helped popularize Oregon among new audiences.

George Crook
(1829-1890)

A career U.S. Army officer, Crook spent time in Oregon. As a member of the 4th U.S. Infantry Regiment, where he served alongside Philip H. Sheridan, Crook escorted a survey team laying out a railroad route from Fort Reading, California to Portland. He then served in the Rogue River, Umpqua and Klamath areas during the Rogue River War (1855–1856) and in eastern Washington during the Yakima War (1855–1858). He returned east in 1861 with the onset of the Civil War, becoming a major general. He arrived back in the Pacific Northwest in 1866, as part of the Snake War (1864–1868), a series of conflicts with Shoshone, Bannock and Paiute peoples, which military and white settlers lumped together as “Snake Indians.” His army career continued to focus on campaigns against Native peoples until his sudden death in 1890. Crook County is named in his honor.

Ramsay Crooks
(1787-1859)

Ramsay Crooks was a member of the Astor Expedition (1810–1813). Entrepreneur John Jacob Astor organized the two-pronged mission to establish a fur post at the mouth of the Columbia River for his Pacific Fur Company. One group sailed from New York around the tip of South America. Crooks traveled with the second group. Led by Wilson Price Hunt, the party traversed overland. When he fell ill, Crooks was left behind with John Day, but the pair eventually made it to Fort Astoria in 1812, which had been established the previous year by the first expedition party. Later in life, Crooks met U.S. Representative John Floyd and is credited with helping influence politicians to support American occupation of the Oregon Country.

George L. Curry
(1820-1878)

George Law Curry was a prominent politician in the Oregon Territory. He arrived in Oregon City in 1846 and worked as the editor for George Abernethy’s Oregon Spectator. Abernethy’s belief that politics had no place in the newspaper led to Curry’s resignation. He established a rival paper, the Oregon Free Press, in 1848. Curry entered politics in the 1850s and became a member of the Salem Clique, a group of powerful Democrats that included Asahel Bush, Reuben P. Boise and Matthew P. Deady. Among their first accomplishments was the election of former territorial governor Joseph Lane to U.S. Congress in 1851. Lane’s influence with President Franklin Pierce, a Democrat, led to the appointment of several members of the Salem Clique to the territorial government, including Curry as Secretary of the Oregon Territory in 1853. The following year Pierce appointed Curry as governor of the territory, an office he held until Oregon became a state in 1859. His term as governor was marked by conflicts with Native peoples who resisted the encroachment of white settlers onto their homelands in southwestern and eastern Oregon. He frequently requested federal troops as well as funding for local militias, leading to criticism of his policies in newspapers back east. As Oregon’s last territorial governor, he supported efforts for statehood and approved the new state constitution in 1857. Curry County is named in his honor.

Martín d’Aguilar
(?-c. 1603)

Spanish explorers first sailed along the Pacific Coast of North America in the late 16th century. In 1603, Martín d’Aguilar, or Martín de Aguilar, and Sebastián Vizcaíno reached what is today the California-Oregon border. D’Aguilar logged one of the first written descriptions of the Oregon Coast. Scholars also believe he sighted and named Cape Blanco.

John Day
(c. 1770-1820)

John Day was a member of the Astor Expedition (1810–1813). Organized by entrepreneur John Jacob Astor, the expedition sought to establish a fur post at the mouth of the Columbia River for the Pacific Fur Company. Day traveled with the overland portion of the expedition, led by Wilson Price Hunt. When party member Ramsay Crooks fell ill in present-day Idaho, Day stayed behind with him. The pair arrived at Fort Astoria in early 1812. Day remained in the Pacific Northwest, working as a fur trapper until his death in 1820. He is memorialized in many Oregon placenames, including the John Day River, city of John Day, John Day Fossil Beds National Monument and John Day Dam.

Matthew P. Deady
(1824-1893)

Matthew Paul Deady served as a lawyer, judge and politician in the Oregon Territory. A member of the Salem Clique, Deady was one of the Democrats that dominated Oregon’s political scene in the 1850s, along with Asahel Bush, Reuben P. Boise, James W. Nesmith and others. In 1857, Deady served as president of the Oregon Constitutional Convention and advocated for slavery in the new state. When the members of the convention opted to put the issue of slavery before the people, Oregonians voted for a free state. The Oregon constitution, however, included a clause that excluded Black individuals from residing in the state. In 1860, Deady campaigned strongly for the Democrat ticket of John Breckinridge and Joseph Lane, believing Abraham Lincoln was too radical. During the Civil War, Deady became a Republican as he disagreed with the secession of southern states, but he continued to defend slavery. Deady served as a U.S. district judge for Oregon from 1859 until his death in 1893. He played a crucial role in the early years of the state, codifying existing laws as well as establishing new ones.

Pierre Jean DeSmet
(1801-1873)

Jesuit priest Pierre Jean DeSmet came to Oregon in 1842. Francois Norbert Blanchet had established the first Catholic mission in the Pacific Northwest four years earlier. French Canadian fur trappers working for the Hudson’s Bay Company had asked the Archdiocese of Quebec to send priests to their growing community of French-Indian families. Blanchet and others answered that call. In 1844, DeSmet accompanied six Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, who had arrived by ship to the mouth of the Columbia River, to the Willamette Valley. They were the first Catholic nuns in the Pacific Northwest. DeSmet’s 1847 publications Oregon Missions and Travels over the Rocky Mountains in 1845–46 provide a glimpse into the Oregon Country during that time period.

Marie Aioe Dorion
(1786-1850)

Marie Aioe Dorion, born Marie L’Ayvoise, was the only woman to accompany the Astor Expedition (1810–1813). Of Sioux and Iowa descent, she traveled overland with her partner, Pierre Dorion, and their two children to the Oregon Country. Wilson Price Hunt, leader of the expedition, had recruited Pierre Dorion in St. Louis, Missouri as a translator and he, in turn, demanded that his family be allowed on the journey west. The party arrived at Fort Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River in early 1812. Pierre Dorion died two years later. Marie later married Jean Toupin and settled in the Willamette Valley.

David Douglas
(1798-1834)

David Douglas was a botanist and natural historian who made two trips to the Pacific Northwest for the Royal Horticultural Society of Scotland, first from 1825 to 1827, and then from 1830 to 1832. He kept a journal during his travels and collected seeds and plant specimens. In 1826, he recorded one of the earliest written descriptions of Native fire ecology in the Willamette Valley. He introduced more than 200 varieties of Pacific Northwest plants to Great Britain. His name is now attached to more than 80 species of plants and animals, including the Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii, once Pinus douglasii) and the Douglas squirrel (Tamiasciurus douglasii).

Francis Drake
(1545-1596)

Between 1577 and 1580, English privateer and explorer Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe. In 1579, he may have spotted land somewhere along the coast of present-day Oregon, which would have been the first recorded sighting by a European. For decades it has been speculated, but never definitely proven, that Drake may have careened his ship, the Golden Hind, at Cape Arago just south of Coos Bay.

Thomas J. Dryer
(1808-1879)

Newspaper publisher Thomas Jefferson Dryer was a major player in the political scene of the Oregon Territory. Arriving in Portland in 1850, he served as the founding editor of The Oregonian. An outspoken member of the Whig Party, his editorials challenged a political scene then dominated by Democrats. He became rivals with Asahel Bush, publisher of the Oregon Statesman, and the two practiced the so-called “Oregon Style” of journalism, weaving personal insults against each other in their writing. Dryer coined the name the “Salem Clique” to describe Bush, Matthew P. Deady, James W. Nesmith and other powerful members of the Democratic Party. He served in the territorial legislature in 1856 and then in the Oregon Constitutional Convention the following year. With the collapse of the Whig Party, he became a Republican. In 1860, he carried Oregon’s electoral votes to Washington, DC and cast them for Abraham Lincoln.

Abigail Scott Duniway
(1834-1915)

Abigail Scott Duniway traveled west on the Oregon Trail with her family in 1852. She married Benjamin C. Duniway the following year and settled on his land claim in Clackamas County. After her husband was disabled in a farming accident, Duniway became the primary earner for the family. They moved to Portland and started the weekly women’s rights newspaper, The New Northwest, with Duniway serving as editor and publisher. She also wrote extensively, publishing poetry, novels and an autobiography. She supported the work of other women writers, featuring Frances Fuller Victor, Bethenia Owens-Adair and others in her newspaper. Mentored by Susan B. Anthony, Duniway became a national leader in the fight for women’s right to vote. Her advocacy met great resistance, including from her brother Harvey W. Scott who published numerous editorials in The Oregonian opposing women’s suffrage. The question of equal suffrage appeared before Oregon voters as ballot measures six times, in 1884, 1900, 1906, 1908, 1910 and 1912. Victory was finally achieved in 1912 and Oregon became the seventh state to recognize women’s equal right to vote. Duniway became the first woman to register to vote in Multnomah County.

George W. Ebbert
(1810-1890)

George Wood Ebbert arrived in the Oregon Country in 1833, working for the Hudson’s Bay Company as a contract fur trapper. By 1837, he was working as a blacksmith for Marcus and Narcissa Whitman at their mission at Waiilatpu and Henry and Eliza Spalding at their mission at Lapwai. He moved to the Willamette Valley in 1839, becoming one of the first non-Native residents of an area that became known as Champoeg. Ebbert participated in the Champoeg meetings of 1843, voting to create the Provisional Government of Oregon. He and Joseph L. Meek were later instrumental in influencing President James K. Polk and other U.S. officials to grant Oregon territorial status.

Russell Farnham
(1785-1832)

Russel Farnham was a member of the Astor Expedition (1810–1813). He arrived at the mouth of the Columbia River via the ship Tonquin in the spring of 1811. There he helped build Fort Astoria, the first American settlement on the West Coast. Farnham spent three years in the Oregon Country. He is credited with later helping influence politicians such as U.S. Representative John Floyd to support American occupation of Oregon.

Thomas J. Farnham
(1804-1848)

In 1838, while living in Peoria, Illinois, Thomas Jefferson Farnham heard a lecture from Methodist missionary Jason Lee. Like other missionaries of the era, Lee promoted American settlement of the Oregon Country, which was then jointly occupied by the United States and Great Britain. Inspired by Lee, Farnham led a group of men, known as the Peoria Party, that set out in the spring of 1839 with a goal of colonizing Oregon on behalf of the United States. The travelers encountered many difficulties on their journey, and some split from the original group to either return home or venture west on their own. Farnham and eight others arrived in the Willamette Valley that fall. Soon after, he sent a petition to Congress calling for American sovereignty in Oregon. U.S. Senator Lewis F. Linn used the petition to advocate for government-sanctioned occupation of the region, but his efforts died in committee hearings. Farnham’s publication Travels in the Great Western Prairies (1843) encouraged many people to head west on the Oregon Trail during the 1840s and 1850s.

Ezra Fisher
(1800-1874)

Working for the American Baptist Home Mission Society, Reverend Ezra Fisher and his family arrived in Oregon in 1845. He purchased Samuel K. Barlow’s land claim, situated near Oregon City, in 1850. Fisher helped organize Oregon City College, a Baptist educational institute that was a predecessor of Linfield University. He later moved to The Dalles, where he continued to work as a preacher and also served as the school superintendent for Wasco County.

John Floyd
(1783-1837)

John Floyd was the earliest congressional advocate for the establishment of an Oregon territory. In 1820, while staying at a hotel in Washington, DC he met fellow lodgers Russel Farnham and Ramsay Crooks, who had been members of the Astor Expedition (1810–1813). Along with newly elected Senator Thomas H. Benton, the men engaged in conversations about the Oregon Country. Between 1820 and 1829, when he gave up his congressional seat, Floyd introduced numerous bills in the U.S. House of Representatives calling for the occupation and colonization of the Oregon Country. Though all failed, one in 1822 contained the first reference to Oregon as a “territory of the United States.”

Gabriel Franchère
(1786-1863)

French Canadian Gabriel Franchère worked for the Pacific Fur Company and served as a member of the Astor Expedition (1810–1813). He helped set up a fur trading post, Fort Astoria, near the mouth of the Columbia River in 1811. He kept a diary of his experiences as a member of the expedition, which he published in 1820 as Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the Years 1811, 1812, 1813 and 1814.

John C. Frémont
(1813-1890)

American explorer, military officer and politician John Charles Frémont led several expeditions into western North America during the 1840s. Through his father-in-law, U.S. Senator Thomas H. Benton, he obtained congressional funding for his expeditions. Benton championed the American colonization of the Oregon Country, then jointly occupied by the United States and Great Britain. Between 1842 and 1843, Frémont surveyed and mapped what became known as the Oregon Trail. Traveling around the Oregon Country in 1843, he visited Marcus and Narcissa Whitman’s mission at Waiilatpu and the Hudson’s Bay Company fur trading post Fort Vancouver. The reports and journals Frémont subsequently produced helped generate greater interest in American expansion into the Pacific Northwest.

John P. Gaines
(1795-1857)

President Zachary Taylor appointed John Pollard Gaines governor of the Oregon Territory and he served in that office from 1850 to 1853. He was the second territorial governor, after Joseph Lane. As member of the Whig Party, Gaines faced opposition from the territorial legislature and local newspapers, both dominated by Democrats. In his capacity as governor, Gaines served on a three-person commission of Indian Affairs, supporting the work of Anson Dart, the first superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Oregon Territory. By 1851, Dart and the commissioners had negotiated 19 treaties with Native communities, acquiring six million acres of land for the federal government and further paving the way for white settlement of the region. Gaines left office in 1853 and started a farm just outside of Salem.

Joseph Gale
(1807-1881)

Fur trapper Joseph Gale first arrived in Oregon in 1834 with the Ewing Young-led party from California. After the collapse of the fur trade, he settled in the Willamette Valley to farm. In 1842, he helped build the Star of Oregon, the first American seafaring vessel constructed in the Oregon Country. Sailing the schooner to San Francisco, Gale traded it for 350 cows. A year later, along with 42 others, he drove 5,000 head of livestock into Oregon, breaking the Hudson’s Bay Company’s monopoly on commerce by providing affordable cattle to local residents. That same year he was elected as one of three members of the First Executive Committee, along with Alanson Beers and David Hill. Several Oregon places, including Gales Creek and Gales Peak, are named in his honor.

Albert Gallatin
(1761-1849)

Politician and diplomat Albert Gallatin played crucial roles in the early years of the United States, helping to shape foreign and economic policies in the new republic. As Secretary of the Treasury under President Thomas Jefferson, he championed and helped plan the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806). He later served as a representative of the United States in negotiations with Great Britain in the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812.

Joseph Gervais
(1777-1861)

French Canadian Joseph Gervais was a voyageur for the Pacific Fur Company and journeyed overland with Wilson Price Hunt, Douglas McKenzie and others as part of the Astor Expedition (1810–1813). The party arrived at Fort Astoria, at the mouth of the Columbia River, in 1812. He spent twenty years working as a fur trapper. During the 1830s, he and his wife Yiamust (Marguerite) Coboway settled in French Prairie, an area of the Willamette Valley occupied by several French-Indian families. As increasing numbers of Americans began settling in the valley, Gervais and Etienne Lucier voted in the 1843 Champoeg meetings in support of the organization of a provisional government, in the hopes that the French Canadians might have influence in future political affairs. The town of Gervais is named for him.

Addison C. Gibbs
(1825-1886)

Elected the second governor of the state of Oregon, Addison Crandall Gibbs served in that office from 1862 to 1866. He had previously served in the Oregon legislature as a Democrat. When the Republican Party organized in Oregon in 1862, he was among the first to join and gained the party’s gubernatorial nomination that year. As governor, Gibbs supported the Union during the Civil War. After his term ended, he had an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate. He later served as a U.S. district attorney for Oregon.

Cornelius Gilliam
(1798-1848)

Cornelius Gilliam traveled across the Oregon Trail in 1844 and settled on a land claim near present-day Dallas. In 1847, he was appointed commander of the volunteer forces in what became known as the Cayuse War (1847–1850), the first major conflict between Native peoples and white settlers in Oregon. The campaign was waged by the Provisional Government and then the Territorial Government in retaliation against the young Cayuse men who had killed Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, along with twelve others, in 1847. While pursuing the Cayuse in eastern Oregon, Gilliam traveled to The Dalles to stock up on provisions. On his way there, he accidentally discharged a rifle and died instantly. Gilliam County was named in his honor.

Robert Gray
(1755-1806)

In 1790, merchant sea captain Robert Gray became the first American to circumnavigate the globe. Working under Captain John Kendrick, Gray had been sailing in a two-ship fur trading voyage since 1787, seeking to trade with Native peoples along the northern Pacific Coast. Gray essentially began American involvement in the fur trade when he traded for sea otter pelts just north of Yaquina Bay. In the fall of 1790, he ventured to the Northwest Coast once again, on the Columbia Rediviva. In May 1792, he sailed the vessel into what he named the Columbia River, becoming the first person of European ancestry to locate this waterway. He also drew a sketch map of the river mouth, which British naval officer Captain George Vancouver acquired that summer while on his own maritime expedition of the coast. With the sketch in hand, Vancouver ordered Lieutenant William R. Broughton to explore 100 miles up the Columbia. That expedition produced the first detailed map of the lower river. Gray’s entry into the river provided the United States with a claim to the Oregon Country as it competed with Great Britain over occupation of the region for the next fifty years.

William H. Gray
(1810-1889)

William Henry Gray arrived in the Oregon Country in 1836, accompanying missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and Henry and Eliza Spalding. Gray worked at both the Whitmans’ mission at the Cayuse settlement of Waiilatpu (near modern-day Walla Walla, Washington) and the Spaldings’ mission at the Nez Perce settlement of Lapwai (near modern-day Lewiston, Idaho). In 1842, Gray moved to the Willamette Valley. The following year he participated in the Champoeg meetings, voting to create the Provisional Government of Oregon. He then served in the provisional legislature and helped draft the first laws for the new government.

Lafayette Grover
(1823-1911)

The fourth governor of Oregon (1870–1877) and later a U.S. Senator (1877–1883), Lafayette Grover also had the distinction of being Oregon’s first member in the U.S. House of Representatives. His term in the House, however, only lasted from February 14 to March 3, 1859, when the 35th Congress concluded. He opted not to seek reelection. Grover’s term as governor was marked by construction of many state facilities, including the Capitol and penitentiary. He also supported the organization of a state university and an agricultural college. After leaving Congress in 1883, he worked in real estate.

William S. Harney
(1800-1889)

Major General William Selby Harney was the first commander of the U.S. Army’s Department of Oregon. He joined the military in 1819 and over the next several decades became known for his ruthlessness and brutality, particularly against Native communities in Florida, Texas and the Midwest. In the 1850s, Native peoples in the Pacific Northwest increasingly resisted the encroachment of white settlers onto their homelands. In response, in 1858, the U.S. Army established the Department of Oregon and placed Harney in command. One of his first acts was to formally declare the area east of the Cascade Range open for white settlement. He also improved transportation access across the region with the construction of military roads. In 1859, after an American citizen living on the San Juan Islands shot a pig owned by a Hudson’s Bay Company employee, Harney forcefully, and against orders, took possession of the islands. The brief confrontation between the United States and Great Britain became known as the Pig War and led to President James Buchanan relieving Harney of his departmental command. Harney County is named in his honor.

Robert H. Haswell
(1768-1801)

Robert H. Haswell sailed as third mate under Captain John Kendrick on the Columbia Rediviva, beginning in 1797. The two-ship trade voyage, with the Lady Washington commanded by Captain Robert Gray, marked the first time Americans explored the Northwest Coast and engaged in the maritime fur trade. Haswell then served as first mate under Gray during a second voyage of the Columbia Rediviva, which began in 1790. In May 1792, the crew anchored in the estuary of the Columbia River, becoming the first people of European ancestry to locate that waterway. During both voyages, Haswell worked to establish trade relationships with Native peoples along the Pacific Coast.

Bruno de Heceta
(1744-1807)

In March 1775, Spanish naval officer Bruno de Heceta, or Bruno de Hezeta y Dudagoitia, commanded an expedition to the Pacific Northwest. In August, he became the first person of European descent to map and write a description of the entrance to the Columbia River. With a crew sick from scurvy, he was unable to navigate the waterway. American mariner Robert Gray anchored his vessel in the river 17 years later and named it “Columbia.” Oregon placenames Heceta Head and Heceta Banks are named after Bruno de Heceta.

David Hill
(1809-1850)

David Hill arrived in the Oregon Country in 1842, as part of a wagon train led by Elijah White. The following year Hill was elected as one of the three members of the First Executive Committee of the Provisional Government of Oregon, along with Alanson Beers and Joseph Gale. He later served in both the provisional and territorial legislatures. Hill settled in the Tualatin River Basin and provided land to create a town plat. After his death in 1850, local residents named the community Hillsboro.

Gustavus Hines
(1809-1873)

Missionary and educator Gustavus Hines came to Oregon in 1840 as part of the Great Reinforcement to Jason Lee’s Willamette Mission. He dedicated much of his life to converting people to Christianity and establishing Methodist education in the Oregon Country. He helped found the Oregon Institute in 1842, which later became Willamette University. He was also active in early Oregon Country politics, as an organizer of the Champoeg meetings. He is considered one of the first historians in Oregon, publishing A Voyage Round the World: With a History of Oregon Mission in 1850 and Oregon and Its Institutions: Comprising a Full History of the Willamette University in 1868.

Ben Hollady
(1819-1887)

Ben Holladay was a major influence in western transportation development. He had already established, and then sold to Wells Fargo, an extensive stagecoach network throughout the West before coming to Oregon in 1868. He then became involved in the railroad business, as owner of the Oregon and California Railroad Company. He began to lay tracks along the east side of the Willamette River, competing with another company constructing a route along the west side of the river. Holladay eventually overtook the other company, expanding his Portland-based line to Albany in 1870 and then to Roseburg in 1872. Holladay lost much of his fortune in the Panic of 1873 and never succeeded in connecting his route to California. Investors in his railroad company eventually replaced him with Henry Villard.

Oliver Otis Howard
(1830-1909)

A career U.S. Army officer and veteran of the Civil War, Major General Oliver Otis Howard served as commander of the Department of the Columbia from 1874 to 1879. Previous department commanders included Lieutenant Colonel George Crook (1867–1870) and Brigadier General Edward R. S. Canby (1870–1873). During the Nez Perce War (1877), Howard negotiated the surrender of Heinmot Tooyalakekt (Young Chief Joseph) and his people. He also led U.S. troops during the Bannock War (1878), a conflict with Bannock and Paiute peoples in Idaho and northeastern Oregon.

Thomas J. Howell
(1842-1912)

A self-taught botanist, Thomas Jefferson Howell wrote the Flora of Northwest America (1903), the first comprehensive book on Oregon plants. He came west with his family in 1850, settling on Sauvie Island where he developed an interest in the wildflowers that grew in the area. Howell traveled throughout Oregon as a young man, collecting specimens that had previously been undocumented in scientific texts. After he published his book, he donated his personal collection of 10,000 plant species to the University of Oregon.

William Hume
(1830-1902)

In 1866, brothers William and George W. Hume, along with partner Andrew Hapgood, established the first salmon cannery on the Columbia River, near present-day Cathlamet, Washington. Native peoples had been fishing on the river since time immemorial. The number of salmon canneries along the Columbia peaked in the 1880s, with some 55 in operation that sold their products to markets around the globe. Unlike Native fishing practices, commercial factories decimated fish runs and salmon numbers dropped rapidly by the 1920s. The Columbia salmon canning industry declined during the 20th century. This was due to diminishing salmon runs, expansion of ocean fishery and decreasing consumer demand. Most of the canneries closed by the 1970s.

Wilson Price Hunt
(1783-1842)

Entrepreneur John Jacob Astor commissioned Wilson Price Hunt to lead the overland portion of his two-pronged Astor Expedition (1810–1813). Astor sought to establish a fur post at the mouth of the Columbia River for his Pacific Fur Company and sent another group via the ship Tonquin around the tip of South America. That party arrived at the Columbia River in spring of 1811, establishing Fort Astoria. Hunt was not experienced at overland travel and his party suffered many hardships during the journey. The surviving members, including Hunt, arrived at Fort Astoria in February 1812.

Joseph Ingraham
(1762-1800)

Joseph Ingraham served as second mate to Captain John Kendrick on the Columbia Rediviva. In a two-ship voyage, alongside the Lady Washington commanded by Robert Gray, the men became the first Americans to reach the Northwest Coast. Here they engaged in the maritime fur trade with Native peoples, trading goods they brought from the East Coast for sea otter pelts.

Washington Irving
(1783-1859)

Although celebrated American author Washington Irving never visited Oregon, he helped generate interest in and familiarity with the Pacific Northwest through his writing. His bestselling work Astoria, or Anecdotes of an Enterprise beyond the Rocky Mountains (1836) introduced more Americans to the Oregon Country than any other book published up to that time. The following year, he published The Adventures of Benjamin Bonneville, an edited version of Benjamin L. E. Bonneville’s travel journals during his 1830s expedition to the Oregon Country. Irving supported U.S. expansion into the Pacific Northwest and his books were later credited with helping to attract American settlers to the region.

Thomas Jefferson
(1743-1826)

Thomas Jefferson had long been interested in exploration of western North America. When he became president of the United States in 1801, he used the power of his office to move such an effort forward. He tasked his private secretary Meriwether Lewis with preparing plans for an expedition to the Pacific Ocean. In 1803, Lewis selected William Clark as his co-leader of the Corps of Discovery, a group of military and civilian support staff. The Lewis and Clark Expedition was carried out under the U.S. Department of War, with both presidential and congressional authorization. Jefferson commissioned the expedition for both scientific and economic purposes, as he sought documentation on the people, plants, animals and geography of the recently acquired Louisiana Purchase as well as information on how the region could be commercially exploited. From May 1804 to September 1806, the explorers traveled some 8,000 miles. The Corps spent nine months in the Oregon Country and the subsequent maps and reports produced by the members enabled the United States to make a claim for the Pacific Northwest. One of the lasting legacies of the expedition were the interactions between the Corps and Native peoples. Sacagawea, a Native member of the expedition, became one of the most recognized female figures in the history of the United States.

Young Chief Joseph
(c. 1840-1904)

Heinmot Tooyalakekt, also known as Chief Joseph or Young Joseph, was a prominent figure among the Nez Perce. Born in the Wallowa Valley of eastern Oregon, his father Tuekakas, also known as Old Joseph, was a leader of Nez Perce living in Oregon, southeast Washington and central Idaho. In 1871, after the death of this father, Young Chief Joseph became a leader of the Wallowa band at a time when many Nez Perce had become disillusioned with the encroachment of white settlers onto their homelands. Leaders of the Nez Perce had signed a treaty with the United States in 1855, granting them a reservation approximately 7.5 million acres in size. They were forced into a second treaty in 1863 that reduced their tribal lands by 90 percent. Joseph’s band never agreed to that treaty and resisted moving onto the reservation. Several bands of the Nez Perce fought against U.S. Army troops during the Nez Perce War (1877). Joseph and his band surrendered to Major General Oliver Otis Howard with an understanding that they would be allowed to move to the Nez Perce Reservation. Instead, they were exiled to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) until they were allowed to return to the Northwest in 1885, with some sent to the Nez Perce Reservation and others to the Coville Reservation. Joseph continued to advocate for the return of his people to eastern Oregon until his death.

Jacob Kamm
(1823-1912)

In search of gold in California, Jacob Kamm went west in 1849. The following year he moved to Oregon, hired by Milwaukie businessman Lot Whitcomb to work on his soon-to-be-constructed steam-powered sidewheeler, the Lot Whitcomb. Kamm became the chief engineer of the vessel, working alongside John C. Ainsworth as captain. In 1853, the two men bought the steamship. A few years later they established the Oregon Steam Navigation Company (OSNC), along with Simeon G. Reed and other local investors. For two decades, the company maintained a near monopoly on steam-powered transportation on the Columbia, Willamette and Snake rivers as well as portage railroads. In 1879, railroad financier Henry Villard bought out OSNC.

William Keil
(1812-1877)

William, or Wilhem, Keil was the founder of the Aurora Colony, one of the most successful 19th century Christian utopian communities in the western United States. Born in Prussia, Keil and his wife Louisa immigrated to the United States in the 1830s, during a time of religious revival in which many utopian communal societies were formed. He rejected organized religion and instead established his own belief system. He gained a group of followers and in 1844 established a communal colony in Bethel, Missouri. He moved the colony to the Pacific Northwest in 1855, first to Willapa Bay, Washington, and then to the Willamette Valley, Oregon. He named the new colony Aurora, after his daughter. With Keil as its leader until his death in 1877, the colony became known for its orchards, food, music, furniture and textiles. It formally dissolved in 1883.

Hall J. Kelley
(1790-1874)

A zealous advocate of American colonization of the Oregon Country, Hall Jackson Kelley piqued the interest of thousands of people in the region through books, pamphlets, articles and speeches. In 1829, he formed the American Society for Encouragement and Settlement of the Oregon Territory to recruit potential colonists to his effort. Among those interested was Nathaniel J. Wyeth, who undertook an expedition to Oregon on his own in 1832. Kelley determined he would go to Oregon himself and set off in 1833, finally arriving in 1834. The extensive hardships throughout his journey and the unfriendly welcome he received from the Hudson’s Bay Company upon his arrival, which considered his advocacy for American colonialism a threat to British interests, combined to drive him back east the following year.

James K. Kelly
(1819-1903)

Like many of his era, James Kerr Kelly went west in 1849 in search of California gold. He moved to Oregon in 1851 and established a law practice. He became active in politics, serving in the territorial legislature from 1853 and 1857, including twice as its president. Following statehood, he was elected to the Oregon State Senate, serving from 1860 to 1864. He then became a member of the U.S. Senate, from 1871 to 1877. Returning from Washington, DC, he served as the chief justice of the Oregon Supreme Court from 1878 to 1880.

John Kendrick
(1745-1800)

Captain John Kendrick sailed with his subordinate Captain Robert Gray in a two-ship fur trading voyage that began in 1787. The sea merchants sought to trade with Native peoples along the Pacific Coast of the North America. Around Yaquina Bay, Gray traded for sea otter pelts. Kendrick, in turn, brought the pelts to China, essentially establishing American involvement in the maritime fur trade.

J. H. Lambert
(1825-1909)

Joseph Hamilton Lambert traveled on the Oregon Trail in 1850, opting to take the Barlow Road to the Willamette Valley, rather than floating his wagon and goods down the Columbia River. Once there, he began working for Henderson Luelling and William Meek’s orchard business in Milwaukie. When Luelling’s brother, Seth Lewelling, bought out his share of the business in 1859, Lambert purchased Meek’s other half. Becoming a successful orchardist, he developed the Lambert cherry in 1876, which along with Lewelling’s Bing cherry, helped establish Oregon as an important fruit tree producing state.

Joseph Lane
(1801-1881)

Appointed as the first territorial governor of Oregon by President James K. Polk, Joseph Lane arrived at Oregon City on March 2, 1849, and served in that office until June 18, 1850. In 1851, he won the first of four terms as Oregon’s territorial delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives. That same year the territorial legislature named Lane County in his honor. He was one of the first two people elected to the U.S. Senate when Oregon gained statehood in 1859, along with Delazon Smith. The following year, Lane ran for vice president on the Democrat ticket headed by John Breckinridge of Kentucky. His pro-slavery views and support of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War effectively ended his political career in Oregon.

George W. LeBreton
(c. 1810-1844)

Sea merchant George W. LeBreton arrived in the Oregon Country in 1840, aboard the brig Maryland, captained by John H. Couch. He became involved in the development of an American political system in a region then jointly occupied by the United States and Great Britain. In 1841, after wealthy rancher Ewing Young died without a will, local residents began meeting to discuss the formation of a government to settle his estate. LeBreton served as the recorder of the Champoeg meetings, which in 1843 resulted in the establishment of the Provisional Government of Oregon. In 1844, LeBreton was killed during the Cockstock Incident, an altercation between Native peoples and white residents of the Willamette Valley.

John Ledyard
(1751-1789)

British marine John Ledyard sailed on Captain James Cook’s third and final voyage from 1776 to 1780. The crew aboard the HMS Resolution spotted the Northwest Coast of North America in March 1778. Cook then recorded the first accurate notations of the Oregon Coast on a modern map. In 1783, Ledyard published A Journal of Captain Cook’s Last Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, and in Quest of a North-West Passage Between Asia and America; Performed in the Years 1776, 1777, 1778, and 1779.

Jason Lee
(1803-1845)

Jason Lee was the first Protestant Christian missionary to the Pacific Northwest, arriving at Fort Vancouver with an expedition led by Nathaniel J. Wyeth in 1834. At Fort Vancouver, John McLoughlin, chief factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, encouraged Lee to establish his mission in the Willamette Valley, near present-day Salem. From the Willamette Mission, Lee attempted, and largely failed, to convert Native peoples to Christianity. Like many missionaries of this era, he was insensitive to Native cultures and tried instead to assimilate them into Euro-American traditions. Lee requested numerous reinforcements for his mission and the Great Reinforcement of 1840 included people who would become influential leaders in the region, such as George Abernethy, Ira L. Babcock and Gustavus Hines. In 1842, Lee established the Oregon Institute, which would later become Willamette University. Lee and other missionaries in the Oregon Country helped lay the foundation of the region’s eventual colonization by the United States.

David Leslie
(1787-1869)

David Leslie arrived in Oregon in 1837, recruited by Jason Lee to join him at the Willamette Mission. He was left in charge of the mission when Lee traveled east seeking additional reinforcements for the Methodist cause. In 1839, Leslie and William H. Willson established a branch mission, at Nisqually on the Puget Sound. In response to the death of Ewing Young and the need to settle his estate, on February 18, 1841, Leslie hosted a meeting at his home to discuss the creation of a government. The was the first of the Champoeg meetings that ultimately led to the establishment of the Provisional Government of Oregon in 1843.

Seth Lewelling
(1820-1896)

Seth Lewelling, alternatively spelled Luelling, was an early resident of the town of Milwaukie, platted by Lot Whitcomb in 1848. His brother Henderson Luelling had arrived in Oregon the previous year, bringing with him some 700 fruit trees and establishing some of the first orchards in the Pacific Northwest. Lewelling set up a commercial tree nursery where he developed new varieties of fruits, most famously the Bing cherry. It was named for Ah Bing, the Chinese foreman of Lewelling’s orchards, who was likely involved in the development of the new cultivar.

Meriwether Lewis
(1774-1809)

President Thomas Jefferson appointed U.S. Army captain Meriwether Lewis his private secretary in 1801. Soon after, he tasked him with preparing plans for a scientific expedition to the Pacific Ocean. Lewis then gained information and training in navigation, medicine and weaponry. He also recruited fellow army officer William Clark to co-lead the expedition. The two men selected a mix of military and civilian staff to become part of the Corps of Discovery. From May 1804 to September 1806, the Corps traveled some 8,000 miles across North America. Sacagawea, a Native woman, joined the group in November 1804 and later became one of the most recognized and celebrated female figures in United States history. Lewis and Clark had several objectives for their mission: to accurately document the geography of the region, to learn about the Native nations they encountered and to write detailed notes on the climate, flora and fauna, minerals and landscape they saw. The captains, along with five other members of the Corps, kept journals during the expedition. The Corps spent nine months in Oregon and their journals as well as the subsequent narratives, reports and maps produced provided the greatest amount of detail about the region yet published. The expedition also further established an American claim to the Oregon Country, building on Captain Robert Gray’s 1792 sketch of the Columbia River.

Lewis F. Linn
(1795-1843)

From 1837 until his death in 1843, Senator Lewis Fields Linn of Missouri advocated for American occupation of the Oregon Country. He introduced numerous bills related to the Oregon Question, a decades-long diplomatic dispute between the United States and Great Britain regarding claims to the region. He advocated for the establishment of Oregon as an American territory as well as giving land grants to white men who settled the area. After Linn’s death in 1843, Senator Thomas H. Benton, also from Missouri, continued to advocate for American migration to Oregon. In 1847, the Provisional Legislature of Oregon named Linn County in his honor.

Asa L. Lovejoy
(1808-1882)

Asa Lawrence Lovejoy was one of the founders of Portland. On his second journey to Oregon in 1843, he decided to take land claims at what would become Portland and, partnering with Francis W. Pettygrove, laid out a 16-block area and began construction. Two years later the men engaged in a famous coin toss to determine the name of the townsite – Boston, after Lovejoy’s hometown, or Portland, after Pettygrove’s hometown in Maine. Lovejoy was active in politics, serving several sessions in the Provisional Legislature and as the first Speaker of the House for the Oregon Territorial Legislature in 1849.

Etienne Lucier
(1793-1853)

French Canadian Etienne Lucier worked as a voyageur for the Pacific Fur Company and arrived in Oregon in 1812 as part of the overland effort of the Astor Expedition (1810–1813). He continued to work as a fur trapper in the Northwest until he settled permanently in the Willamette Valley with his Native wife Josette Nouette in the early 1830s. They became one of several French-Indian families to live in the area known as French Prairie. Lucier and other French Canadians such as Joseph Gervais helped Catholic and Methodist missionaries establish missions in the region. In 1843, Lucier was one of the few French Canadians, along with Gervais, who voted in support of the American effort to organize a provisional government in the Oregon Country.

Ranald MacDonald
(1824-1894)

Ranald MacDonald was born in 1824 at Fort George (formerly Fort Astoria) to Archibald MacDonald, a Scottish Hudson’s Bay Company fur trader, and Koale’xoa, the youngest daughter of Concomly, a Chinook leader on the lower Columbia River. His family was one of many multicultural families in the Oregon Country during the fur trade era. As an adult, MacDonald worked as a sailor, navigator and whaler, but he became best known as an interpreter and writer. Having been fascinated with Japanese culture for many years, in 1848 he came ashore Rishiri Island. He ignored Japan’s strict isolationist policy, which could result in imprisonment or death for any foreigners who landed on Japanese soil. Initially placed under house arrest, MacDonald soon worked as a tutor to several Japanese interpreters, becoming the first native English speaker to teach that language in the country. He returned to the United States in 1849 and wrote about his experiences in Japan: Story of Adventure of Ranald MacDonald, first teacher of English in Japan, A.D. 1848–49.

Francois X. Matthieu
(1818-1914)

French Canadian Francois Xavier Matthieu arrived in Oregon in 1842 with a wagon train led by Elijah White. He settled at French Prairie, an area of the Willamette Valley occupied by several French-Indian families, including those of Joseph Gervais and Etienne Lucier. During the Champoeg meetings of 1843, he voted in favor of Americans setting up a provisional government. He obtained a land claim in Marion County, founding the town of Butteville in 1851. He served two terms in the Oregon House of Representatives, from 1874 to 1875 and from 1878 to 1879.

William P. McArthur
(1814-1850)

U.S. naval officer and hydrologist William Pope McArthur commanded the party that made the first hydrographic surveys of the Pacific Coast (1849–1850). He sailed to San Francisco and then in the summer of 1850, he entered the mouth of the Columbia River aboard the schooner Ewing. He returned to California that August to prepare charts and reports for submittal. He died of dysentery during the voyage back to the East Coast.

John R. McBride
(1832-1904)

John Rogers McBride moved with his family from Missouri to Oregon in 1851. He began a law practice in 1855, and two years later served as a delegate to the Oregon Constitutional Convention, representing Yamhill County. He was a member of the Oregon Senate from 1860 to 1862. Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1864, he served one term. He left Oregon in 1865 to serve as Chief Justice of the territorial Idaho Supreme Court, having been appointed by President Abraham Lincoln.

Thomas McKay
(1797-1849)

Thomas McKay worked as a clerk for the Pacific Fur Company when he accompanied his father, fur trader and explorer Alexander McKay, and others aboard the Tonquin. As part of the Astor Expedition (1810–1813), the ship and its crew arrived at the mouth of the Columbia River in the spring of 1811. Thomas McKay settled in the region, later working for the Hudson’s Bay Company. He was involved in many important developments during the fur trade period of the Oregon Country.

Donald McKenzie
(1783-1851)

Donald McKenzie, also spelled MacKenzie, was a member of the Astor Expedition (1810–1813). The two-pronged mission, organized by the Pacific Fur Company, sought to establish a fur post at the mouth of the Columbia River. As one group traveled by ship, around the tip of South America, a second group traversed by land. McKenzie was among the first of the Overland Astorians to reach Fort Astoria, the newly established American settlement, in January 1812. He continued to work for Pacific Fur and later the North West Company, exploring much of the Pacific Northwest. The McKenzie River, on the western slope of the Cascade Range, is named for him.

John McLoughlin
(1784-1857)

A powerful influence in the Oregon Country, John McLoughlin served as the chief factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s (HBC) Columbia Department from 1824 to 1845. Born in Quebec, he joined the fur trade in 1803, working as a surgeon and clerk for the North West Company. His connection to Oregon began in 1824, three years after the merger of the North West Co. and the HBC, when he became head of the Columbia Department. HBC Governor George Simpson instructed McLoughlin to increase the profitability as well as influence of the British-owned company in Oregon. From the company’s headquarters at Fort Vancouver, he diversified operations and started the first large-scale agricultural, timber and salmon export industries in the region. As chief factor, McLoughlin applied law to British subjects, maintained friendly relationships with Native peoples and exerted influence over former HBC employees that settled in the Willamette Valley. Beginning in the early 1840s, he provided aid to the growing number of Americans arriving via the Oregon Trail, in direct violation of official HBC orders. McLoughlin increasingly found himself in conflict with Simpson and he was forced into retirement in 1845. He moved to his land claim in Oregon City, eventually becoming an American citizen. Though a polarizing figure during his lifetime, sentiment shifted after McLoughlin’s death. He became known as the “Father of Oregon” for his support of the Americans in the Oregon Country, at a time when it was jointly occupied by Great Britain and the United States.

John Meares
(c.1756-1809)

In 1786, British explorer, navigator and maritime fur trader John Meares sailed from India to the Northwest Coast to trade with Native peoples for sea otter pelts. He wintered his ship at Prince William Sound, Alaska before returning to the India the following year. In 1788, he returned to the Northwest, trading for furs from Native coastal communities located along what is now British Columbia and Washington. Like many explorers of his era, he sailed past the entrance to the Columbia River. Cape Meares and Cape Meares Lighthouse in Tillamook County are named in his honor.

Joseph L. Meek
(1810-1875)

Joseph Lafayette Meek helped Oregon become an American territory during the 1840s. He entered the fur trade in 1828 as an employee of Jedediah Strong Smith. During his travels through the Rocky Mountains and Pacific Northwest he befriended other fur trappers, including George W. Ebbert, Robert Newell and Ewing Young. He also assisted missionaries in the Oregon Country, most notably Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and Henry and Eliza Spalding. Deciding that the fur trade era had ended, in 1840 Meek and his brother-in-law Newell decided to remain in the Oregon Country and farm in the Willamette Valley. Meek later helped form the Provisional Government of Oregon. In the aftermath of the murder of the Whitmans by young Cayuse men in 1847, Meek traveled to Washington, DC in an effort to convince President James K. Polk and other federal officials to make Oregon a U.S. territory. His argument proved persuasive and helped secure legislation that created the Oregon Territory in August 1848.

Joaquin Miller
(1837-1913)

Born Cincinnatus Hiner Miller, but better known as Joaquin Miller, he became one of Oregon’s first internationally recognized writers. He headed west with his family on the Oregon Trail, settling in Eugene in 1852. He traveled extensively as a young man and held a variety of occupations, including mining camp cook, rider for the Pony Express, newspaper editor, lawyer and judge. He began a writing career in the late 1860s. He became part of the local color movement that dominated American literature after the Civil War, alongside Harriet Beecher Stowe, Bret Harte, Mark Twain and others. In this style, authors and poets emphasized specific regional settings through dialect, customs and landscape. In both his writing and his lifestyle, Miller portrayed the stereotypical image of a western frontiersman. Known as the “Poet of the Sierras,” his work became popular among both American and British audiences.

John Minto
(1822-1915)

John Minto arrived in Oregon in 1844 and eventually obtained a land claim south of Salem. There he set up orchards and began raising sheep. During the 1850s, he worked to organize other farmers to both share agricultural information and better develop roads to markets. He helped establish the Oregon State Agricultural Society and the Oregon State Fair. Minto became a nationally recognized sheep expert and fought for grazing rights on federal lands. He wrote extensively on sheep raising and agricultural subjects. He also served in the Oregon House of Representatives, elected in 1862, 1868, 1880 and 1890.

Robert Moore
(1781-1857)

Inspired by Methodist missionary Jason Lee’s calls for American colonization of the Oregon Country, Robert Moore joined the Peoria Party, a group of nineteen men led by Thomas J. Farnham, in the spring of 1839. They sought to settle Oregon on behalf of the United States and end years of joint occupation with Great Britain. The travelers encountered many difficulties on the journey and Moore split from the group. He traveled with another party, arriving in Oregon in 1840. He began building a community across the Willamette River from Oregon City. It was named Linn City (now West Linn), after U.S. Senator Lewis F. Linn who advocated for the American occupation of Oregon. Moore participated in the 1843 Champoeg meetings, voting in favor of forming the Provisional Government of Oregon. He then served in the provisional legislature. He later worked as a newspaper publisher and ferry operator.

Thomas Nelson
(1819-1907)

In 1850, President Millard Fillmore appointed Thomas Nelson to the territorial Oregon Supreme Court. He served as the chief justice, alongside associate justices Orville C. Pratt and William Strong. During his time on the court, a controversy arose regarding the location of the capital of the territorial government. Nelson and Strong believed the seat was Oregon City, but the majority of the territorial legislature favored Salem and the latter became the capital in 1851. Nelson only lived in Oregon during the term of his appointment, which ended in 1853. He then returned to his home state of New York to practice law.

James W. Nesmith
(1820-1885)

James Willis Nesmith joined the Applegate party as part of the Great Migration that traveled west on the Oregon Trail in 1843. The following year, he was appointed to serve as Supreme Judge of the Provisional Government. He was involved in conflicts against Native peoples, serving as a captain of militia forces in the Cayuse War (1847–1850), Rogue River War (1855–1856) and Yakima War (1855–1858). From 1857 to 1859, he served as Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the Oregon and Washington Territories and advocated for the extermination of Native peoples along the Oregon Coast. Nesmith was a member of the Salem Clique, a group of men who dominated Oregon politics in the 1850s and helped establish the Democratic Party in the territory. He was elected to one term in the U.S. Senate in 1860, filling a seat previously occupied by Joseph Lane. He later served one term in the U.S. House of Representatives (1873–1875) before returning to his farm in Polk County.

John S. Newberry
(1822-1892)

In 1855, geologist and paleontologist John Strong Newberry joined an expedition led by R. S. Williamson and Henry L. Abbot to survey potential transcontinental railroad routes from the East Coast to the Pacific Ocean. Newberry explored central Oregon, where he documented a large, shield-shaped volcano east of the Cascade Range. In 1903 it was named Newberry Crater in his honor and became Newberry National Volcanic Monument in 1990.

Robert Newell
(1807-1869)

Robert Newell began working in the fur trade in 1829, trapping alongside Jedediah Strong Smith and Joseph L. Meek. During his time as a trapper, he became so skilled at basic surgery that he earned the nickname “Doc.” In 1834, he married a Nez Perce woman named Kitty and they had five children. Meek became his brother-in-law when he married Kitty’s sister. In 1840, Newell, Meek and their families decided to remain in the Oregon Country. The following year, Newell helped guide the first overland wagon train to the Willamette Valley. From 1843 to 1847, he was a legislator in the Provisional Government of Oregon, serving as Speaker of the House in 1847. In the aftermath of the murder of Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and twelve others by young Cayuse men, Newell served as a peace commissioner. His familiarity with Native communities in the Columbia River Plateau helped dissuade Cayuse and Nez Perce leaders from engaging in further conflicts with white settlers.

Peter Skene Ogden
(1790-1854)

British-Canadian Peter Skene Ogden worked as a fur trader and explorer for the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company in the first half of the 19th century. As chief trader at Fort Vancouver, he was in charge of a series of Snake Country Brigades between 1824 and 1830. As part of the brigades, Ogden sought to create a “fur desert,” by trapping out the region and thus discouraging American fur traders from working in the Northwest. He also gained significant geographic knowledge of the area, exploring parts of Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Montana and Wyoming. Later promoted to chief factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, he advised the British government on the Oregon Question, the decades-long dispute between Great Britain and the United States on claims to the Oregon Country.

Cyrus Olney
(1815-1870)

Cyrus Olney worked as a lawyer in Ohio and a judge in Iowa before moving to Oregon in 1851. In 1853, President Franklin Pierce appointed him to the territorial Oregon Supreme Court and he served as an associate justice until 1858. A delegate to the Oregon Constitutional Convention of 1857, he later served in the Oregon House of Representatives as a member representing Clatsop, Columbia and Tillamook counties.

William H. Packwood
(1832-1917)

William Henderson Packwood arrived in the Oregon Territory in 1849 as a member of the U.S. Mounted Rifles. Discharged from the army in 1852, he found work as a packer, miner and cattle rancher on the Oregon Coast. He also served in the Coos County Volunteers, a militia group that perpetuated a mass murder of members of the Nasomah band of the Coquille Indian Tribe in 1854. As the territory prepared for statehood, Packwood was selected as Curry County’s delegate in the Oregon Constitutional Convention of 1857. The discovery of gold in eastern Oregon in 1862 lured him to present-day Baker County, where he helped plat the mining boomtown of Auburn. He remained in eastern Oregon the rest of his life, serving as an assistant postmaster, clerk, auditor and police judge for Baker City.

Joel Palmer
(1810-1881)

Joel Palmer became the U.S. Superintendent for Indian Affairs for the Oregon Territory in 1853, following an appointment by President Franklin Pierce. Palmer had arrived in the Pacific Northwest a decade earlier. Working with Samuel K. Barlow, he helped blaze a Native trail into the Barlow Road, the last overland segment of the Oregon Trail. In his duties as superintendent, Palmer negotiated nine treaties between 1853 and 1855, including with the Rogue River tribes (Takelma, Chasta Costa and Shasta), Umpqua, Cayuse, Umatilla, Walla Walla, Middle Oregon tribes (Wasco and Warm Springs), Siletz and numerous Willamette Valley tribes, including the Kalapuya, Santiam, Tualatin, Yamhill and Molala. With increasing numbers of white settlers arriving in the Oregon Territory, Palmer adhered to a policy of Indian removal. Many Native leaders signed these treaties after having their populations devastated by disease and experiencing ongoing conflicts with both settlers and the U.S. military. Native people ceded millions of acres of land to the federal government and were then relocated onto reservations. Many treaties reserved the rights of Native people to hunt, fish and gather foods in their usual and accustomed places.

Samuel Parker
(1779-1866)

Samuel Parker traveled west with Marcus Whitman in 1835. They were sent on a reconnaissance by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to determine how Native peoples in the Oregon Country would receive missionaries. They met some Nez Perce who expressed interest in their work. While Whitman returned east to gather more missionaries, including his wife Narcissa as well as Henry and Eliza Spalding, Parker spent the winter at Fort Vancouver. In 1836, he sought locations for what would become the Whitmans’ mission at the Cayuse settlement of Waiilatpu (near modern-day Walla Walla, Washington) and the Spaldings’ mission at the Nez Perce settlement of Lapwai (near modern-day Lewiston, Idaho).

Juan Pérez
(c. 1725-1775)

Working on behalf of the Spanish government, explorer Juan Pérez, or Juan José Pérez Hernández, set sail in January 1774 from Mexico to British Columbia. Although he sailed along the Oregon Coast, he never made landing. In July, he became the first non-Native person to sight, name and record the islands near British Columbia.

Francis W. Pettygrove
(1812-1887)

A successful merchant, Francis W. Pettygrove was one of the founders of Portland, giving the town its name after winning a celebrated coin toss with Asa Lovejoy. Pettygrove had arrived in Oregon in 1843 via ship with a stock of general merchandise and established a business in Oregon City that traded in fur and wheat. Two years later, he had a granary at Champoeg and a second store in Portland. Pettygrove helped establish the Oregon-California trade that flourished during the gold rush, developing Portland as the area’s economic center.

James K. Polk
(1795-1849)

James Knox Polk’s 1844 presidential campaign platform called for the Oregon Country to be solely occupied by the United States. When he took office in 1845, he kept that promise. The continued surge of Americans migrating west on the Oregon Trail helped Polk’s administration negotiate a treaty with Great Britain in 1846 that ended the joint occupation of the region. In August 1848, President Polk signed a bill establishing the Oregon Territory. Polk County is named in his honor.

Orville C. Pratt
(1819-1891)

Orville Charles Pratt arrived in Oregon in 1849, following his appointment by President James K. Polk to the territorial Oregon Supreme Court. As a justice of the three-person court, he served alongside Thomas Nelson and William Strong. Pratt became known as a member of the Salem Clique, a group of powerful Democrats in Oregon that included Reuben P. Boise, Asahel Bush, Matthew P. Deady and James W. Nesmith. Pratt presided over a controversial case in the aftermath of the murders of Marcus Whitman, Narcissa Whitman and twelve others by young Cayuse men. After more than two years of conflict with white settlers, known as the Cayuse War (1847–1850), the Cayuse surrendered five volunteers. These men— Clokomas, Isiaasheluckas, Kiamasumkin, Telakite and Tomahas—went on trial in Oregon City in 1850. The jury found the defendants guilty and Pratt sentenced them to hang.

Simeon G. Reed
(1830-1895)

Simeon Gannett Reed played leading roles in the transportation and livestock industries of Oregon, and Reed College in Portland was founded from his fortune. Reed arrived in Portland by ship in 1852, becoming an employee and soon a partner of William S. Ladd, a well-known businessman. In 1860, Reed became an investor in the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, along with John C. Ainsworth, Jacob Kamm and others. The company’s monopoly of steam-powered transportation on the Columbia River helped make Reed a wealthy man. He also invested in mining, real estate and livestock. Reed imported one of the first herds of purebred cattle into the state along with purebred horses, sheep, hogs and chickens. The introduction of purebred animals  sparked a virtual revolution in Oregon agriculture.

Robert Rogers
(1731-1795)

The first known written use of the word “Oregon” (or a form of it) is attributed to Robert Rogers. A British Army officer, in 1765, Rogers submitted a proposal to King George III to fund an overland expedition to find the Northwest Passage by way of “the River called by the Indians Ouragon.” In 1766, he contracted Jonathan Carver to lead the expedition. Carver wrote about his attempts to find the passage in his 1778 publication Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America in the Years 1766, 1767 and 1768, which contained the first printed mention of the name “Oregon.”

Alexander Ross
(1782-1856)

Alexander Ross began working for John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Fur Company in 1810. He arrived in Oregon Country aboard the ship Tonquin and helped build Fort Astoria, the first American settlement on the West Coast, in the spring of 1811. He later worked for the British-owned North West Company, which placed him in command of Fort Nez Perce. He married a Native woman and they had several children. His memoirs Adventures of the First Settlers on the Oregon or Columbia River (1849) and The Fur Hunters of the Far West (1855) are considered important sources on the history of the Oregon Country, with his observations of Native cultures and fur trade society.

Osborne Russell
(1814-1892)

Osborne Russell first came to the Oregon Country as part of Nathaniel J. Wyeth’s 1834 expedition. He returned in 1842 as a member of the wagon train led by Elijah White. Russell participated in the 1843 Champoeg meetings, voting in favor of the establishment of the Provisional Government of Oregon. In October of that year, the First Executive Committee selected him to serve as the Supreme Judge for the new government. In 1844, he was elected to the Second Executive Committee. He had an unsuccessful bid for provisional governor in 1845 and later moved to California.

Sacagawea
(1786-1812)

Sacagawea, a Native woman, accompanied Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on the U.S. Corps of Discovery expedition across western North America and back in 1805 and 1806. Much of the information collected during her lifetime came from the journals kept by Lewis, Clark and other members of the Corps. Journal entries introduced her in November 1804 as the nameless wife of Toussaint Charbonneau, a French Canadian explorer and fur trapper. Lewis and Clark hired him and Sacagawea to serve as interpreters during the journey but as expedition progressed, her value expanded to include acting as a cultural intermediary and source of knowledge. Caring for her infant son while on the journey, she also served as a symbol of peace to Native nations the Corps encountered. Sacagawea’s legacy in American history and the factual details associated with her life have become contested over time. People have differing and deeply held beliefs about her Tribal affiliation and place of birth; the pronunciation, spelling and meaning of her name; her role in the expedition and her life after.

Harvey W. Scott
(1838-1910)

Harvey Whitefield Scott was a long-time editor of The Oregonian and one of the most influential voices in the state from 1865 to 1910. He arrived in the Pacific Northwest in 1852, traveling on the Oregon Trail with his family. He was one of the first graduates from Pacific University and became the first librarian of the Portland Public Library. Along with Frederic G. Young, he co-founded the Oregon Historical Society and became one of the leading authorities on the history of the region. An active member of the Republican Party, he considered himself a philosophically consistent conservative who opposed socialism, populism, labor organization and women’s right to vote. The latter led to public debates with his sister and prominent equal suffrage supporter, Abigail Scott Duniway. In 2022, The Oregonian published evidence that during Scott’s tenure as the editor, “overtly racists words” were commonly published in the newspaper.

Levi Scott
(1797-1890)

Levi Scott arrived in Oregon in 1844, settling near Dallas. Alongside Jesse Applegate, he led a party that in 1846 blazed a new route from the Willamette Valley into southern Oregon. The Applegate Trail became a southern alternative to the westernmost segment of the Oregon Trail. Following his involvement as an army captain in the Cayuse War (1847–1850), Scott moved to Douglas County. In 1850, he founded the town of Scottsburg on the Umpqua River. He represented Umpqua, Douglas and Jackson counties in the territorial legislature from 1852 to 1855. He also served as a delegate to the Oregon Constitutional Convention of 1857.

Thomas F. Scott
(1807-1867)

Thomas Fielding Scott was the first Episcopal bishop of the Oregon and Washington territories. In 1854, he dedicated a small wooden building in Portland, the first Episcopal church established in the Oregon Territory. Two years later, he founded an Episcopal school for boys in Portland, which was renamed Bishop Scott Grammar and Divinity School after his death.

Philip H. Sheridan
(1831-1888)

While Philip Henry Sheridan may be best known as a Union Army general during the Civil War, he played an earlier military role in the Oregon Territory. He arrived in 1855 as a second lieutenant of the 4th U.S. Infantry Regiment. Commanding a cavalry detachment, Sheridan was assigned to accompany a survey team laying out a railroad route from Fort Reading, California to Portland. In 1856, he took command of Fort Hoskins on the Coast Reservation and Fort Yamhill on the Grand Ronde Reservation. He left Oregon in 1861 to serve in the Civil War.

George Simpson
(c. 1786-1860)

As governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) from 1820 until his death in 1860, George Simpson influenced the political and economic scenes of Oregon. With the merger of the HBC and the North West Company in 1821, he controlled much of the fur trade in North America. Simpson first arrived in the Oregon Country in 1824, visiting Fort George (formerly Fort Astoria) with Chief Factor John McLoughlin. He established a new company headquarters at the confluence of the Columbia and Willamette Rivers, naming it Fort Vancouver after George Vancouver. He instructed McLoughlin to expand the profitability of the HBC in Oregon by focusing on agricultural, timber and salmon exports, in addition to the fur trade. Simpson supported early missionary efforts in the Pacific Northwest and met with Native leaders to determine their receptiveness to Christianity. The increase of American settlers in the Pacific Northwest, as thousands migrated west along the Oregon Trail starting in the 1840s, led to the decline of the power and influence of the HBC, and in turn Simpson, in the region.

William A. Slacum
(c. 1802-1839)

Selected by President Andrew Jackson to gather information about the Oregon Country, U.S. Navy Lieutenant William A. Slacum arrived at the mouth of the Columbia River aboard the sailing ship Loriot in December 1836. He surveyed and reported on the conditions of Oregon, jointly occupied by the United States and Great Britain since the Treaty of 1818. In a census, Slacum noted the number of American, British and French Canadian men living in the region. He also noted that many had Native wives and children. During his time in Oregon, he met with John McLoughlin at Fort Vancouver and Jason Lee at his Methodist mission in the Willamette Valley. Slacum also met Ewing Young and convinced the American settler to bring cattle into Oregon, thus disrupting the British-owned Hudson’s Bay Company’s monopoly on livestock. Slacum invested in Young’s Willamette Cattle Company, which brought 630 head of cattle from California and into Oregon in 1837. Later that year, Slacum submitted a comprehensive report to Congress about his travels, which became a valuable tool for supporters of American possession of the Oregon Country.

Delazon Smith
(1816-1860)

Delazon Smith moved to the Oregon Territory in 1852. Obtaining a land claim in Linn County, he worked as a farmer and a lawyer. He was elected to the territorial legislature three times, in 1854, 1855 and 1856, and served as Speaker of the House during his second term. In 1857, he was a delegate to the Oregon Constitutional Convention. Smith was one of the first two people elected to the U.S. Senate when Oregon gained statehood in 1859, along with Joseph Lane. Smith served only from February 14 to March 3, returning to Oregon to campaign for reelection. He lost to Edward D. Baker. Smith then founded and edited the newspaper The Oregon Democrat, the first newspaper to be published in Linn County.

Jedediah Strong Smith
(1799-1831)

Jedediah Strong Smith was among the first American fur trappers and explorers to enter the Oregon Country. He crossed into Oregon from the south in 1828, along what is now called the Smith River. While in the Northwest, Smith competed with Peter Skene Ogden’s Snake Country Brigades in the Oregon beaver fur trade. The reports, maps, journals and letters Smith later produced helped boost American interest in the Oregon Country, particularly among politicians and investors.

Henry H. Spalding
(1803-1874)

In 1836, Henry Harmon and Eliza Spalding traveled with fellow missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman to the Oregon Country as representatives of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. The Spaldings set up a mission at the Nez Perce settlement of Lapwai (near modern-day Lewiston, Idaho) while the Whitmans established a mission at the Cayuse settlement of Waiilatpu (near modern-day Walla Walla, Washington). Two years earlier, Jason Lee had become the first Protestant Christian missionary in the Pacific Northwest, when he organized a Methodist mission in the Willamette Valley. These missionaries aimed to convert Native peoples to Christianity but also advocated for American settlement of Oregon, then jointly occupied by the United States and Great Britain.

William Strong
(1817-1887)

Appointed to the territorial Oregon Supreme Court by President Zachary Taylor, William Strong arrived in the territory by sea in 1850. He settled on a donation land claim near present-day Cathlamet, Washington. Strong succeeded Peter H. Burnett, who had been appointed to the provisional court by President James K. Polk. As a member of the three-person court, he served alongside Orville C. Pratt and Thomas Nelson. He left the bench when his term ended in November 1853. The following year, Isaac Stevens, governor of Washington Territory, appointed Strong to help write the laws for the newly established territory. He later served in the territorial legislature and the Washington Supreme Court.

Robert Stuart
(1785-1848)

Robert Stuart was a member the Astor Expedition (1810–1813), arriving at the mouth of the Columbia River on the ship Tonquin in the spring of 1811. He helped select the site for Fort Astoria, the first U.S. settlement on the West Coast. He traded with Native peoples in coastal and river villages. In 1812, as a leader of an overland trek from Fort Astoria to St. Louis, Missouri, he found a crossing of the Continental Divide at South Pass, in present-day Wyoming, that would later become a landmark for westbound travelers on the Oregon Trail.

William G. T’Vault
(1806-1869)

William Green T’Vault arrived in Oregon in 1845, heading a 300-person wagon party that traversed the Meek Cutoff. Settling in Oregon City, he was appointed postmaster general by the Provisional Government. He became the first newspaper editor in the territory, with the publication of the Oregon Spectator in 1846. That same year he won election to the provisional legislature as a pro-slavery Democrat. T’Vault moved to southern Oregon in 1855, where he later represented Jackson County in the territorial legislature and continued to advocate for slavery, despite it being outlawed in the territory. He served as the first speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives (1859) but his extremist views soon ended his political career. He then championed the idea of an independent, slave-holding nation known as the Pacific Republic.

David Thompson
(1770-1857)

British fur trader, explorer, surveyor and cartographer David Thompson mapped nearly two million square miles of the North American continent. He began working for the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1784, before defecting to the rival North West Company in 1797. With concerns about the U.S. government’s support of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806), the company charged Thompson with finding a route to the Pacific Ocean, via the Columbia River. Over the next several years, he built relationships with Native peoples and established new trade routes. Through these contacts and relying on Native guides, he was able to become the first European to travel the entire length of the Columbia River.

David P. Thompson
(1834-1901)

A surveyor, David P. Thompson conducted many of the early surveys in Oregon, Washington and Idaho. He also was governor of the Idaho Territory (1875-76), mayor of Portland (1879-82) and U.S. minister to Turkey (1893-95). He established a surveying business in Oregon City, and in 1856 he moved to Portland and entered the banking business, serving as the president to two banks and of the construction company that built much of the railroad trackage in the state. In 1900, he donated the Elk Fountain to the City of Port­land.

Jesse Quinn Thornton
(1810-1888)

Jesse Quinn Thornton traveled on the Oregon Trail in 1846, opting to take the newly blazed Applegate Trail cutoff through southern Oregon. The following year, Governor George Abernethy appointed him Supreme Judge of the Provisional Government. He resigned that position when Abernethy requested that he serve as his representative in Washington, DC, presenting a request to Congress for official territorial status. He is credited with adding the Latin phrase “alis volat propiis” to the design of Oregon’s territorial seal. In 1987, the Oregon legislature adopted the phrase as the state motto, translating it as “she flies with her own wings.”

Samuel R. Thurston
(1816-1851)

Samuel Royal Thurston arrived in Oregon in 1847 and was elected to the Provisional Legislature the following year. Oregon’s first delegate to Congress after the formation of the Oregon Territory, Thurston helped secure passage of the Donation Land Claim Act of 1850. It granted 320 acres of land to every unmarried white male and 640 acres to every married couple who arrived in the territory before December 1, 1850. It also granted land rights to American “half-breed Indians.” The act legitimized white settlement in Oregon, while denying people of color the right to own land. While in Congress, Thurston also advocated for the exclusion of Black individuals from the Oregon Territory.

George Vancouver
(1757-1798)

Between 1791 and 1795, British Royal Navy officer George Vancouver led a scientific expedition that explored the Northwest Coast of North America, producing detailed maps of the coastlines of present-day Oregon and Washington. He and his officers named many of the capes, bays, sounds and mountains in the region, including Mount Hood, Mount St. Helens and Puget Sound. In 1792, Vancouver met American merchant sea captain Robert Gray, during the latter’s own exploration of the Northwest Coast. Gray shared a sketch he had drawn of the mouth of the Columbia River, which Vancouver previously did not believe existed. In response, Vancouver sent two boats under Lieutenant William R. Broughton 100 miles up the river. That effort produced the first accurate map of the lower Columbia, which was used by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark during their overland expedition (1804–1806). Vancouver Island and the city of Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada and Fort Vancouver and the city of Vancouver in Washington are named for him.

Frances Fuller Victor
(1826-1902)

Writer and editor Frances Fuller Victor moved to Portland with her second husband, Henry Clay Victor, in 1864. Once in Oregon, her writing moved from poetry and fiction to historical narratives about the region in which she now lived. She published The River of the West in 1870 and All Over Oregon and Washington in 1871. She later accepted an offer from historian Hubert Howe Bancroft to work as a ghostwriter for several volumes, including History of Oregon; History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana and History of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming. In 1886, the Oregon legislature commissioned her to write The Early Indian Wars of Oregon. During her career as a historian, Victor sought to challenge myths associated with early Oregon history, particularly those surrounding Marcus Whitman. Her work was considered controversial and unsentimental during an era when many authors wrote romanticized narratives of missionaries and westbound travelers.

Henry Villard
(1835-1900)

Journalist, abolitionist and railroad financier Henry Villard is best remembered in Oregon for bringing the transcontinental railroad to the Pacific Northwest. German-born Villard immigrated to the United States in 1853 and gradually moved westward, working in Illinois, Kansas and Colorado. Villard knew little about railroad financing until he came to Oregon in 1874 on behalf of German investors involved in Ben Hollady’s railroad building effort. Once here, Villard envisioned a vast railroad empire based in the Pacific Northwest. In 1879 he bought out the Oregon Steam Navigation Company from John C. Ainsworth, Jacob Kamm, Simeon G. Reed and others, reorganizing it as the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company. The new company maintained a virtual monopoly on regional water and rail transportation until its bankruptcy in 1894. In the early 1880s, Villard realized the value of connecting his growing network of Oregon railways to the projected transcontinental route being constructed by the Northern Pacific Railway. He engineered a buyout of Northern Pacific, becoming the company’s president and in 1883 he oversaw completion of a railroad line to the Pacific Ocean.

Daniel Waldo
(1800-1880)

Traveling with the Applegates to Oregon in 1843, Daniel Waldo settled in the hills east of Salem. He arrived with sixty head of cattle and became one of the principal livestock owners in the region. In 1844, Waldo was elected to the legislature of the Provisional Government of Oregon. He served in the Oregon Rangers, a militia organized in the Willamette Valley in response to the Cockstock Incident of 1844. He also served in the Cayuse War (1847–1850), a campaign waged by the Provisional Government and then the Territorial Government in retaliation against the young Cayuse men who had killed Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, along with twelve others, in 1847. Following his military service, Waldo became involved in Oregon’s emerging wool industry when he invested in Joseph Watt’s Willamette Woolen Manufacturing Company, the first woolen mill established on the West Coast.

Joseph Watt
(1817-1890)

In 1847, during his second trek west along the Oregon Trail, Joseph Watt brought the first sizable flock of sheep to the Willamette Valley. He also hauled the first carding machine to Oregon. He used these resources to establish the Willamette Woolen Manufacturing Company, the first woolen factory on the West Coast, in 1857. Based in Salem, by the 1860s Watt began shipping his product outside of Oregon. In 1862, he sent 100,000 pounds of wool to New England markets. Six years later, he sent the first cargo of Oregon-produced wool to a foreign port. Watt’s efforts helped to open new markets to Oregon woolgrowers.

Daniel Webster
(1782-1852)

U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster negotiated the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842 with Great Britain. Great Britain and the United States had been competing over control of the Pacific Northwest since the late 18th century. In the aftermath of the War of 1812, the two nations agreed to a joint occupation of the Oregon Country. Tensions grew, however, in the early 1840s, as increasing numbers of Americans headed west on the Oregon Trail. The Webster-Ashburton Treaty helped pave the way for the Oregon Treaty of 1846, which established the 49th parallel as the boundary between the United States and Canada and ended British occupation of the Oregon Country.

Lot Whitcomb
(1807-1857)

Lot Whitcomb traveled west on the Oregon Trail in 1847. The following year, he obtained a land claim and platted the town of Milwaukie, naming it after his hometown in Wisconsin. It rivaled Oregon City and Portland for a time but was eventually surpassed by the latter, with its deeper water port. In December 1850, he, along with Milwaukie residents Joseph Kellogg and William Torrance, launched the Lot Whitcomb, the first steam-powered vessel to operate on the Willamette River. The steamship traveled regularly between Milwaukie and Astoria, and Whitcomb established a successful shipping business. In 1853, he sold the business, including the steamship, to John C. Ainsworth and Jacob Kamm, whose company Oregon Steam Navigation Company would later dominate shipping and transportation in Oregon for decades.

Elijah White
(1806-1879)

Dr. Elijah White answered a call by missionaries for physicians to aid in their conversion of Native peoples to Christianity. In 1837, he and his family joined Jason Lee at the Willamette Mission. Following disagreements with Lee over mission policies, he resigned and returned east. He headed west again in 1842, leading a wagon train on the Oregon Trail. White was then commissioned as Sub-Agent of Indian Affairs, where he attempted to introduce and enforce a “code of laws” to govern Native communities. As a representative of the United States, he participated in meetings that led to the establishment of the Provisional Government of Oregon in 1843.

John Whiteaker
(1820-1902)

John Whiteaker traveled west on the Oregon Trail in 1852 and began farming on a land claim near Eugene. Active in the Democratic Party, he ran successfully for judge of the county probate court and then served in the territorial legislature. In 1858, Whiteaker was elected the first governor of Oregon after statehood. His pro-slavery and anti-war views during the Civil War led to his party choosing not to nominate him for a second term. He returned to politics in 1866, eventually serving in the Oregon House of Representatives, Oregon Senate and U.S. House of Representatives.

Marcus Whitman
(1802-1847)

In 1835, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions sent missionary and physician Marcus Whitman and missionary Samuel Parker on a reconnaissance to the Oregon Country to gauge the interest of Native peoples in their work. Determining that the Nez Perce wanted missions, Whitman returned east to gather reinforcements, including his wife Narcissa as well as Henry and Eliza Spalding. In 1836, the Whitmans established a mission at the Cayuse settlement of Waiilatpu (near modern-day Walla Walla, Washington). They had mixed success at their mission, where they tried to convert Native peoples to Christianity and teach western methods of farming. Marcus Whitman advocated for American settlement of the Oregon Country, then jointly occupied by the United States and Great Britain. In 1843, he accompanied a thousand people on a journey west. Known as the Great Migration, it became the first large wagon party to travel on the Oregon Trail. In 1847, a group of young Cayuse men killed the Whitmans and twelve others at the mission. One reason for this action was that the diseases introduced by American settlers had killed half the Cayuse population. In Cayuse tradition, the failure of a medicine man, such as a physician like Whitman, meant his life could be taken. Politicians labeled the Whitman murders a “massacre” to justify what came to be known as the Cayuse War (1847–1850) and further American occupation of the region.

Narcissa Whitman
(1808-1847)

In 1836, Narcissa Whitman accompanied her husband Marcus Whitman as well as Henry and Eliza Spalding to the Oregon Country to start a Christian mission on behalf of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Narcissa Whitman kept a journal of the trip, making her and Eliza Spalding the first documented white women to travel to the Pacific Northwest. The Whitmans established a mission at the Cayuse settlement of Waiilatpu (near modern-day Walla Walla, Washington) while the Spaldings set up their mission at the Nez Perce settlement of Lapwai (near modern-day Lewiston, Idaho). They had mixed success at their mission and Narcissa often remained there alone as Marcus traveled around the region administering medical care as a physician. During the 1840s, the mission became a landmark for American travelers on the Oregon Trail. In 1847, a group of young Cayuse men killed the Whitmans and twelve others at the mission. Labeling the Whitman murders a “massacre,” politicians and Oregon boosters used it to justify what came to be known as the Cayuse War (1847–1850) and further American occupation of the region.

James H. Wilbur
(1811-1887)

In 1847, James Harvey Wilbur arrived in Oregon and joined the Willamette Mission, established by Jason Lee in 1834. He became involved with the Oregon Institute, a school established by Methodist missionaries that eventually became Willamette University. Wilbur also worked as an itinerant preacher, traveling to communities for religious revivals. He oversaw construction of churches and schools in Portland and the Umpqua Valley. In 1860, he moved to the Yakama Reservation, where he worked as a missionary and an Indian agent. For 20 years, he worked to “civilize” and Christianize people on the reservation, while attempting to eradicate Native cultures and traditions.

Charles Wilkes
(1798-1877)

American naval officer Charles Wilkes commanded the United States Exploring Expedition (1838–1842). Funded by the U.S. government, the effort sought to explore and survey the Pacific Ocean and surrounding lands. In April 1841, Wilkes arrived at the mouth of the Columbia River. He sent three overland parties of naval personnel and scientists to reconnaissance the Oregon Country. Expedition members met with members of Native communities, collecting ethnographic data and a description of Chinook Jargon, a hybrid language of original Native languages. Wilkes, leading one party, met with George Simpson and John McLoughlin of the British-owned Hudson’s Bay Company at Fort Vancouver. He also met with Jason Lee and other American settlers near Lee’s Methodist mission in the Willamette Valley. Wilkes arrived at a time when Americans were discussing the possibility of forming some kind of government in the Oregon Country, which was then jointly occupied by the United States and Great Britain. The expedition contributed to the growth of the American scientific establishment. It also increased U.S. desires to solely occupy Oregon.

George H. Williams
(1823-1910)

George Henry Williams engaged in one of the most varied political careers of any Oregonian. Over a fifty year period, he served as the chief justice of the territorial Oregon Supreme Court; a U.S. senator; the first Oregonian to serve in a presidential cabinet, as President Ulysses S. Grant’s attorney general; and the mayor of Portland. As a delegate to the Oregon Constitutional Convention of 1857, Williams argued against both slavery and the residency of Black individuals in the new state. Originally a Democrat, he became the elder statesman of the Republican Party in Oregon after breaking with the pro-slavery Democratic Party during the Civil War. Elected mayor of Portland in 1902 at the age of 79, he was reportedly the oldest mayor in the country.

R. S. Williamson
(1824-1882)

As an officer of the U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, Robert Stockton Williamson conducted surveys of potential transcontinental railroad routes from the eastern United States to Oregon and California. In 1855, Williamson, along with Henry L. Abbot, co-led a trek north from Sacramento, California to the Columbia River and scouted potential railroad routes east and west of the Cascade Range. Williamson had several other exploration assignments in the West, including the establishment of military roads in southern Oregon. In 1867, he made the first official computation of the height of Mount Hood.

William H. Willson
(1805-1856)

Recruited to work at the Willamette Mission by Jason Lee, William Holden Willson arrived in the Oregon Country in 1837. Two years later, he and David Leslie established the Nisqually Mission, near the Puget Sound, the only Methodist mission north of the Columbia River. He eventually returned to the Willamette Valley and became involved in local politics. In 1843, he voted in favor of creating a government and served as the first treasurer of the Provisional Government of Oregon. Three years later, Willson platted and named the townsite of Salem, the “City of Peace.”

John Work
(c. 1792-1861)

John Work joined the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) in 1814 and served as the chief factor from 1845 until his death in 1861. Assigned to the HBC’s Columbia Department in 1823, he traveled to the Pacific Northwest in a party led by Peter Skene Ogden and began keeping a journal. He later helped move the department headquarters from Fort George to Fort Vancouver, a decision made by HBC governor George Simpson to make the region more profitable. In 1830, John McLoughlin, then HBC chief factor, put Work in charge of the Snake Country Brigade. In this capacity, Work traveled thousands of miles throughout the Northwest, covering much of the same ground Ogden had done the previous decade. He eventually produced 16 journals from his trading expeditions, from the years 1823 to 1851. These serve as important records of the fur trade era, documenting Work’s impressions of the peoples and landscape of the Oregon Country.

Nathaniel J. Wyeth
(1802-1856)

A Boston businessman, Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth sought to establish an American entrepreneurial presence in the Pacific Northwest through fur trading, salmon fisheries, lumber and agricultural development. He first became interested in Oregon through Hall J. Kelley, a promoter of American colonization of the region. Wyeth led two expeditions to Oregon, one in 1832 and one in 1834. Jason Lee, the first Protestant Christian missionary to the Pacific Northwest, joined the second expedition. Unable to compete with the Hudson’s Bay Company’s monopoly on commerce, Wyeth’s business endeavors in the Oregon Country were ultimately unsuccessful and he returned to the East Coast in 1836.

Ewing Young
(c. 1796-1841)

Making his way to Oregon in 1834 from California, Ewing Young became one of the first Americans to live permanently in the region. In the Chehalem Valley, he established farming and horse-ranching operations, constructed a sawmill and gristmill, and formed the Willamette Cattle Company, with encouragement from William A. Slacum. A joint venture with missionaries, fur trappers and French Canadians, the company brought 630 head of cattle into Oregon in 1837, adding to the economic stability of the region. Young died suddenly in 1841, without a will or any known heirs. The need to settle his estate resulted in the formation of a government, led by Ira L. Babcock as Supreme Judge. This became the origins of the Provisional Government of Oregon, an effort to establish American control of the Oregon Country at a time when it was jointly occupied by the United States and Great Britain.