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Histpop
Geography 302
January 19, 2015
Historical Development of the Northwest See atlas pages 10-24
Earliest settlement - after the Ice Age, maybe 10,000 years ago - migration from Asia along the AlaskanCoast - a fisheries oriented native culture - later inland.
Earliest white exploration: Spanish explorers in the 16th century
The Fur Trade Era: barter trade and exploration:
by Sea:
1778 Cook (English)
1788 Gray (America)
1792-94 Vancouver (English)
overland: Lewis & Clark, 1803/1804; Astor 1811-1813
1810+ French-Canadian moving from the east towards the west, and becoming organized by the Hudson's Bay Company as Britain claimed western territory in the wake of the War of 1812 from France.
Quoting Tattersal:
"Growth of the interior fur trade was especially rapid after the merger of the Northwest Company with the Hudson's Bay Company in 1821, the shift of the regional headquarters and commercial depot to Fort Vancouver in 1824,and the appointment of the able Gov. George Simpson as head of the Company in Canada and Dr. H. McLoughlin as Chief Factor of the Columbia River Department. The policies of the Hudson's Bay Co. were strongly influenced by the objective of retaining the territory north and west of the Columbia River under British sovereignty in a future boundary settlement. The area to the south and east of the Columbia was to be exploited and overtrapped to provide funds for the development of the north and west where most of the posts and settlements were located. Every effort was made to persuade American pioneers to settle south of the Columbia River rather than north. For both economic and political reasons the trading posts were to be largely self-sufficient in food products. Foreseeing the eventual depletion of the fur supply, Simpson and McLoughlin made strenuous efforts to develop the other resources of the region, and markets developed for agricultural products, lumber, and salmon in Hawaii, England, and Alaska...... Fort Vancouver became (in the mid 1830's) , for a frontier community, a remarkably complex "miniature economy" of four hundred people boasting diversified agricultural (activities), stockraising, and dairying activities; resource-oriented manufacturing (a twelve=saw sawmill and a gristmill); warehousing facilities for furs and imported goods; a variety of skilled trades; stores; a hospital; and the regional administrative and clerical headquarters. Other posts were self sufficient in varying degrees."
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The Hudson's Bay Company continued its control until the boundary settlement with the British in 1846. The company remained in the region until the early 1860's, when it moved its headquarters to Victoria. Ft.Nisqually was a key trading post in the south part of Puget Sound in the early days of local settlement.
Quoting from Gilbert:
"Gradually the free American trapper, tied of the solitude, squatted here (Champoeg) and contented himself with the tamer but less precarious life of the farmer. With the help of retired trappers and missionaries the transition from the fur trade to the agricultural régime had now fairly begun. Toward the southern end of the settlement the houses were grouped into the village of Champoeg with schools, chapel, meetinghouse and granaries. The population was extremely composite, consisting of missionaries and their converts, Canadian and American trappers, and half-breeds. This bare nucleus of an agricultural settlement contained in the fall of 1840, just before the tide of immigration really set in, some one hundred and thirty-seven Americans and sixty-three Canadians, who, if we except the active employees of the Hudson's Bay Company, constituted the entire white population of OregonTerritory. By gradual accessions the number increased to 500 in 1841 of which fully one-half were American settlers."
"When the broken or superannuated trapper became a squatter, it was under the auspices of the concern which gave him leave. McLoughlin had furnished seed for the sowing and breadstuffs for use until the first crop could be harvested; the cattle they tended were not their own, but were returned after a time together with a stipulated share of the increase. American settlers, too, often reached Oregon in a penniless, even destitute, condition and the "chief factor" generously relieved their distress by supplying food, clothing and seed wheat until the crop of the ensuing year was ready for market. Disregarding for a moment the ministrations of the kindhearted McLoughlin, it would still be unsafe to assume that the economic development of the Pacific Northwest would have been more rapid and certain without the presence of the Hudson's Bay Company. The early settlers who came thither found themselves separated from the markets of the world, on one side, by high mountains and desert wastes, and, on the other, by trackless sea. A certain amount of trade capital and transportation facilities--in a word, an established commercial relation with the outside world--was necessary at the very outset, and this was the contribution of the fur trade to the beginnings of agriculture. Without this requisite early settlers would have found themselves wanting not only the necessary articles of comfort but the ordinary implements of tillage with which to begin the cultivation of the soil. Early settlers were indebted to the Hudson' Bay Company for marketing the crop most readily produced and for supplying needed articles of consumption which the colony in its infancy was poorly equipped to produce." (pp.38/39, "Trade and Currency in Early Oregon; Early Agriculture".
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Note that the Russians were also present on the West Coast, both in SE Alaska and in California (Ft.Ross) from ca. 1806 to as late as 1846. And also note that the territory of the Northwest was contested between the U.S., British, and even Mexico in the early days of settlement.
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Thus, the early activity discovered climate & agricultural potential, in a time when agriculture was still the pursuit of most people.
Other key factors:
Timber: Initial demand from California to support the Gold Rush Boom. 1851 Denny party lands at Alki, moves to now downtown Seattle to supply logs; establishment of mill towns around the sound in 1852/53, linked by ship to California. Hawaii was also an early market.
Isolated from eastern markets until after arrival of the railroads: 1883 –Northern Pacfic, 1893 Great Northern Tendency for NP to emphasize real estate; GN -traffic. Impact on timber harvests....Great development from ca. 1895-1920.
Related to early timber harvests was clearing of land for agriculture - Whidbey IS., San Juans, river valleys, also WillametteValley, elsewhere on lowlands (Cowlitz),
Mining Spread from California, SW Oregon by early 1850's (Jacksonville; Ashland), across the region by mid 1860's, leading to discoveries of precious metal deposits, including silver deposits in Idaho. Key role in drawing people to the interior, further increasing knowledge of climate & agricultural potential.
Coal in the Seattle area, ca. 1870.
Agriculture Beyond early Hudson's Bay:
Wool: Grasslands from Pendleton/Walla Walla/Palouse in the 1860's/1870's, later wheat (not in the Palouse until the invention of combines that could harvest the hilly terrain.
Early irrigation: on the heels of railroads in the 1890's, Yakima valley; later followed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
Development of hops in Puyallup valley; specialty crops & dairying/wheat/fruits west of Cascades before Eastern areas in irrigation flourish.
Development of combines - displacement of sheep & growth of wheat culture
Continued development of irrigation: major schemes such as the Columbia Basin Project - 1930's-1960; future?
Fisheries Salmon salted in barrels from time of Hudson's Bay Co., but the real boom occurred after invention of steam canning in the 1860's. Catch levels zoom on the Columbia in the 1880's-1900; Puget Sound 1900-1915, but never employing the hordes associated with timber.
The Railroads UP/NP (Union Pacific/Northern Pacific) with land grants; GN without. Impact on migration....cheap/easy....later impact on traffic in commodities. GN (Great Northern) drove NP into receivership, and a drive to merge the two railroads was thwarted by the courts fearing a monopoly on northern rail routes. Therefore, NP had to sell some assets to gain solvency, and it sold nearly 1 million acres in Western Wn. To the Weyerhaeuser Company, who in turn sold lands in Minnesota and Wisconsin to finance purchase of lands in WashingtonState. There were complex interdependencies between the GN and NP boards of directors, even after the courts blocked merger of the railroads
The Alaska Gold Rush 1897-1905 Impact on commerce, perceptions....
About this time, the Northwest = California in population: 2.3 vs. 2.6 million (1910)
World War I -Impact on shipyards, development of Boeing
The Depression years--back to the land
WW-II: The Northwest - - major development of Boeing
also: aluminum reduction industry
: continuation of irrig. ag.
Post-WW-II. The Northwest in the 1950-2010 time period jumps up about 0.9% against the nation as a whole: combination of factors, mostly urban focused: port development; high technology; tourism; producer services; health services; consumer services; government (military, education; research). Over this time period the Northwest growth rate outpaces the nation.
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The contemporary period: mixed trends: rural vs. urban. Will be examined in maps for the 1960-2010 time period by county.
Non-economic explanations:
A variety of other factors have been at work:(Johansen - Empire of the Columbia)
(1) desires associated with nationalism -
(2) desire to escape the harsh weather of the Midwest
(3) desire to escape the slavery problem
(4) desire to reap the bounty of a new land.
(5) desire to take the offer of free land: 640 acres: the various land disposal schemes.
(6) and to be a frontiersman:
Quoting from Ray Billington: The Westward Movement in the U.S.:
"For the typical American... was indeed a "new man." He was materialistic in his interests, scornful of aesthetic pursuits, and suspicious of intellectuals, just has been his pioneering forbearers. He was more adaptable than the European, always ready to try new tools or techniques, and with little respect for tradition; frontiersmen developed these traits as they daily faced problems for which experience offered no solution. He was unusually mobile both physically and socially; a given place bound him no more firmly that it had his pioneering ancestors while like them he thought in terms of upward mobility where his job or social position was concerned. He was a congenital waster, building his whole economy on the concept of replacement rather than conservation, for he had failed as had the frontiersman to learn that nature's bounties were exhaustible. Materialism, inventiveness, mobility, and exploitiveness remain characteristics of the American people today, even though they live in a nonexpanding world."
(Written in 1959).
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Quotes from Gates on lumbering.
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