Tualatin Mountain Range – Lost in Oregon by Yvonne Addington - October 1, 2018

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Tualatin Mountain Range – Lost in Oregon by Yvonne Addington - October 1, 2018 Tualatin Mountain Range – Lost in Oregon By Yvonne Addington - October 1, 2018 View of the southern Tualatin Mountains from southwest. Photo: M.O. Stevens. When were you last in the Tualatin Mountain Range? The Tualatin Mountain Range is one of the busiest places in Oregon but not many of the thousands of residents, businesses and tourists are aware of where they are located. Only recently did I learn from Portland State University Geology Professor Emeritus Scott Burns that I was born in the Tualatin Mountains in St. Vincent’s Hospital in northwest Portland. What a surprise for someone who grew up, worked, and volunteered my whole life in the City of Tualatin and Tualatin Valley. Generally you can see them from the Tualatin Valley looking at the tree lined skyline to the north and east, or from east of the Willamette River, you can see them adjacent the River, from Scappoose, behind downtown Portland as far as Canby. Fur traders and even Lewis and Clark saw the Tualatin Mountains from the banks of the Columbia and/or Willamette River when they traded with the Atfalati/Tualatin Kalapuyan Indians. Through this mountain range the wagons of history rolled through to the Tualatin Valley via a gap now known as Highway 26, bringing wagons laden with grain for the sailing vessels that first made the Linnton area a key port. View of the Tualatin Mountains from Sauvie Island, Oregon. Photo: Steve Terrill Photography. Tualatin Mountain Range created 7 million years ago. According to Professor Burns, the Tualatin Mountain Range begins at the Coast Range near Scappoose, follows the Willamette River south as far as the Canby delta, including the gap at Willamette Falls. They were formed from volcanic lava flows about 7 million years ago. For thousands of years, the lava flows came down the Columbia River Gorge from the east near where the Oregon, Idaho and Washington borders meet. The lava flows, known as Columbia River Basalt, created peaks ranging at least as high as 1200 feet above sea level such as Council Crest, Cornell Mountain, Pete’s Mountain; hills such as the West Hills of Portland, Cedar Hills, and gaps such as at Lake Oswego and Willamette Falls. In the Tualatin Mountains also are volcanoes of the Boring Lava age that sit on top of the Columbia River Basalt: They are Mt. Sylvania, Cooks Butte in Lake Oswego, and the volcanoes above Cedar Hills. The lava flows would have been similar to current Mt. Kiluea flows on the Island of Hawaii. Ice Age Floods from Montana altered the local landscape 15,000-18,000 years ago. The Columbia River Basalt lies under several feet of rich sand, silt and soils (loess) blown in by the winds over thousands more years. In addition, near the end of the ice age, Burns described even more soils, rocks and iceberg laden boulders (called erratics) were brought to the Tualatin Mountain foothills by at least 40 cataclysmic floods. The floods resulted with the melting and breaking of an ice dam holding back Lake Missoula. Each time, the lake waters emptied across Idaho, Washington and down the Columbia River Gorge. They traveled at speeds up to 60 miles per hour down the Gorge on their way to the Pacific Ocean but a basalt barrier at Kalama, Washington restricted the flow and backed the flood waters along the Tualatin Mountains as high as 400’ in what is now downtown Portland. The raging flood waters entered the Lake Oswego gap of the mountain range and scoured out the lake before proceeding west into the Tualatin Valley going as far as Gaston and Forest Grove and the Yamhill Valley past McMinnville. They then raged further upriver and entered the Willamette Valley through a second gap in the Tualatin Mountains at Willamette Falls. The 350-400’ high ice age floods waters backed up the Willamette River as far as Eugene, carrying the rich soils, debris and erratics (rocks that don’t come from here). The rich soils attracted pioneers to Oregon and are still key to Oregon’s agriculture. One note is that most current vineyards are placed above the rich soils 400’ elevation line in the valleys to keep the grape vines producing the flavorful grapes rather than mostly leaves and bushes. At the end of the ice age, over 12,000 years ago, ancient animals such as mastodons, mammoths, giant sloths, and bisons are a few of the ancient animals which lived on the land, proved from bones that have been found in the Tualatin, Willamette and Yamhill Valleys and radio-carbon dated. Many bones are being discovered and University of Oregon Museum in Eugene is a depository for the bones. Tualatin Mountains in background, looking southwest from the north side of Smith Lake. Photo: Finetooth. Mountains Named after Atfalati/Tualatin Kalapuya Tribe. The Tualatin Mountain Range and Valley were probably named after the Atfalati/Tualatin Kalapuya Tribe. David G. Lewis, Anthropologist and tribal member of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde stated the tribe had their own autonomy. The name was pronounced “Uh tfalati” according to Henry Zenk, Linguist and consultant to the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde. According to recent discoveries, Native Americans lived in the Northwest at least 14,000 years ago (Paisley Caves site-oldest site in Oregon). The Tualatin Mountains appear on an 1855 “Sketch Map of Oregon Territory”, describing the location of lands owned by various Indian tribes and their territory. The map includes the Tualatin Mountain Range and the Tualatin Valley as being the lands of the Atfalati/Tualatin Kalapuyan Indians. The Mountain Range appears to have been included as part of the Dayton Treaty when several tribes gave up their lands to the United States of America and were moved to the Grande Ronde Reservation. The map was acknowledged by the U.S. Geological Survey Research. Loss of identity of this Mountain Range on maps not a new problem. The entire range doesn’t appear on any recent maps that I can find. They were partially shown on USGS maps over 50 years ago but not currently. The loss of identification of the entire Tualatin Mountain Range on state and federal maps is not a new problem. I made calls last year to U.S.G.S staff which confirmed their existence and said they can be put back on maps at their discretion but to date that hasn’t happened. Even though the area’s major television stations have 4 or 5 towers on the Tualatin Mountains that can be seen above the skyline, the TV stations’ weather forecasters do not show the Range. Oregonian Reporter wrote about the absence of Tualatin Mountain Range on maps. In a 1957 Oregonian article by Leverett G. Richards, obtained from the Oregon Historical Society, he wrote in part, “While the Tualatin range of mountains might be considered miniscule in a land of mighty mountains like the Northwest, it would be considered a whipperdilly anywhere east of Denver. It is a range of which to be proud.” Richards further wrote: “The City of Roses is also a City of Mountains, a whole range of mountains, thanks to H.B. Schminky, Portland city surveyor and the U.S. Geological Survey. Actually, Portland owned some of them all along, but the whole range-now officially known as the Tualatin Mountains-has been lost for 100 years. Generations of Portlanders have been born and raised on the peaks of this range but have belittled these mountains with such pusillanimous pseudonyms as “West Hills” and Portland Heights.” He then described the Tualatin Mountains “Spread”: “Starting almost in the heart of the metropolis is a range of mountains extending for 35 miles and covering about 200 square miles of country. Curling casually westward, the Tualatin Mountains spread out into rugged canyons and summits rising to 2033 feet in Pisgah Mountains and 2225 feet in an unnamed point southwest of the old mill town of “Bacona”. Further, he described in part, “how they rise sleepily from the bank of the Willamette at Oregon City, gradually stretching up to a respectable 450’ or so at Iron Mountain on the north shore of Oswego Lake, thence to 1020 feet in Mt. Sylvania, two miles further north, then inspired by the example of Mt. Hood in the distance, then hump up to 1073 feet at Council Crest, 1260 feet at Barnes Heights. Thence, these metropolitan mountains broaden out to eight and ten miles in width and wander amiably northward out of the city limits to a new crest of 1609 feet in Dixie Mountain, just north of the point where Skyline Boulevard becomes Rock Point Road, in the far northwest corner of Multnomah County.” Tualatin Mountains, location of light-rail tunnel (red line), and selected faults (dashed lines where approximately located, dotted where concealed). Numbers along tunnel represent fault zones observed in tunnel and on profile below: (1) West Sylvan, (2) Central Sylvan, (3) East Sylvan, (4) Brickworks, (5) unnamed fault. Figure modified from Blakely and others (2004), after Beeson and others (1989b, 1991) and Madin (1990). Map courtesy U.S. Geological Survey. Things to see and do in the Tualatin Mountain Range You are in the Tualatin Mountain Range when you are on highway 30 which hugs the mountains north of Portland, starting just south of Scappoose. That area is known as the North Tualatin Mountains and includes Forest Park. The St. Johns Bridge is at the foothills. Travel behind downtown Portland (commonly known as Portland’s West Hills), through Lake Oswego and West Linn to Willamette Falls and Canby, near the Canby Ferry.
Recommended publications
  • Washington Division of Geology and Earth Resources Open File Report
    RECONNAISSANCE SURFICIAL GEOLOGIC MAPPING OF THE LATE CENOZOIC SEDIMENTS OF THE COLUMBIA BASIN, WASHINGTON by James G. Rigby and Kurt Othberg with contributions from Newell Campbell Larry Hanson Eugene Kiver Dale Stradling Gary Webster Open File Report 79-3 September 1979 State of Washington Department of Natural Resources Division of Geology and Earth Resources Olympia, Washington CONTENTS Introduction Objectives Study Area Regional Setting 1 Mapping Procedure 4 Sample Collection 8 Description of Map Units 8 Pre-Miocene Rocks 8 Columbia River Basalt, Yakima Basalt Subgroup 9 Ellensburg Formation 9 Gravels of the Ancestral Columbia River 13 Ringold Formation 15 Thorp Gravel 17 Gravel of Terrace Remnants 19 Tieton Andesite 23 Palouse Formation and Other Loess Deposits 23 Glacial Deposits 25 Catastrophic Flood Deposits 28 Background and previous work 30 Description and interpretation of flood deposits 35 Distinctive geomorphic features 38 Terraces and other features of undetermined origin 40 Post-Pleistocene Deposits 43 Landslide Deposits 44 Alluvium 45 Alluvial Fan Deposits 45 Older Alluvial Fan Deposits 45 Colluvium 46 Sand Dunes 46 Mirna Mounds and Other Periglacial(?) Patterned Ground 47 Structural Geology 48 Southwest Quadrant 48 Toppenish Ridge 49 Ah tanum Ridge 52 Horse Heaven Hills 52 East Selah Fault 53 Northern Saddle Mountains and Smyrna Bench 54 Selah Butte Area 57 Miscellaneous Areas 58 Northwest Quadrant 58 Kittitas Valley 58 Beebe Terrace Disturbance 59 Winesap Lineament 60 Northeast Quadrant 60 Southeast Quadrant 61 Recommendations 62 Stratigraphy 62 Structure 63 Summary 64 References Cited 66 Appendix A - Tephrochronology and identification of collected datable materials 82 Appendix B - Description of field mapping units 88 Northeast Quadrant 89 Northwest Quadrant 90 Southwest Quadrant 91 Southeast Quadrant 92 ii ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1.
    [Show full text]
  • Geologic Map of the Sauvie Island Quadrangle, Multnomah and Columbia Counties, Oregon, and Clark County, Washington
    Geologic Map of the Sauvie Island Quadrangle, Multnomah and Columbia Counties, Oregon, and Clark County, Washington By Russell C. Evarts, Jim E. O'Connor, and Charles M. Cannon Pamphlet to accompany Scientific Investigations Map 3349 2016 U.S. Department of the Interior U.S. Geological Survey U.S. Department of the Interior SALLY JEWELL, Secretary U.S. Geological Survey Suzette M. Kimball, Director U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia: 2016 For more information on the USGS—the Federal source for science about the Earth, its natural and living resources, natural hazards, and the environment—visit http://www.usgs.gov or call 1–888–ASK–USGS For an overview of USGS information products, including maps, imagery, and publications, visit http://www.usgs.gov/pubprod To order this and other USGS information products, visit http://store.usgs.gov Any use of trade, product, or firm names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government. Although this report is in the public domain, permission must be secured from the individual copyright owners to reproduce any copyrighted material contained within this report. Suggested citation: Evarts, R.C., O'Connor, J.E., and Cannon, C.M., 2016, Geologic map of the Sauvie Island quadrangle, Multnomah and Columbia Counties, Oregon, and Clark County, Washington: U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Map 3349, scale 1:24,000, pamphlet 34 p., http://dx.doi.org/10.3133/sim3349. ISSN 2329-132X (online) Contents Introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • What to See in Portland Update2009
    What to see in Portland, OR - by Marco Behrmann 07/02/2004 1/3 WHAT TO SEE IN PORTLAND , OR _________________________________________ Listed below you will find a couple of sights and my personal favourites to do in Portland. Since Portland was my town of exchange I do not know as many things about the other cities like Eugene, Corvallis, Ashland or La Grande. However, it would be just great if somebody could add tips about their places similar to the ones here, too! Please feel free to forward them to me (marcobehrmann[at]web.de ). I do not want you to believe that just because I stayed in Portland, and have many tips here for Portland, that a year at one of the other Oregon cities is not the same exciting. The tips listed here, however, are interesting for all Baden-Wuerttemberg students in Oregon, because many things you can already see and experience during your orientation weeks. (BTW: This is almost everything I did (among other things, of course) within my 2 ½ weeks of re-visiting in June 2004; but it took me a year of living in the city in 2001/02 to figure out which were the hot tips ☺) Here are my personal Must-Sees Oregon History Center in SW Park blocks right south of PSU (This museum features very interesting and well researched exhibitions about the development of Portland as a city as well as about the whole Pacific Northwest as it was discovered from the sea and the Columbia River; good place to check out during your orientation weeks; you get a student reduction with ISIC or other student ID card) Council Crest Park (considered the highest spot in Portland; nice views to Mt Hood, Mt Adams, Mt St Helens and even Mt Rainier on some days as well as to Beaverton; take Bus 51 [Vista]; the Bus driver often feels himself as an informal Portland guide; tell him that you are visiting and he even might stop for you at nice viewpoints to take pictures.
    [Show full text]
  • Historical Overview
    HISTORIC CONTEXT STATEMENT The following is a brief history of Oregon City. The intent is to provide a general overview, rather than a comprehensive history. Setting Oregon City, the county seat of Clackamas County, is located southeast of Portland on the east side of the Willamette River, just below the falls. Its unique topography includes three terraces, which rise above the river, creating an elevation range from about 50 feet above sea level at the riverbank to more than 250 feet above sea level on the upper terrace. The lowest terrace, on which the earliest development occurred, is only two blocks or three streets wide, but stretches northward from the falls for several blocks. Originally, industry was located primarily at the south end of Main Street nearest the falls, which provided power. Commercial, governmental and social/fraternal entities developed along Main Street north of the industrial area. Religious and educational structures also appeared along Main Street, but tended to be grouped north of the commercial core. Residential structures filled in along Main Street, as well as along the side and cross streets. As the city grew, the commercial, governmental and social/fraternal structures expanded northward first, and with time eastward and westward to the side and cross streets. Before the turn of the century, residential neighborhoods and schools were developing on the bluff. Some commercial development also occurred on this middle terrace, but the business center of the city continued to be situated on the lower terrace. Between the 1930s and 1950s, many of the downtown churches relocated to the bluff as well.
    [Show full text]
  • Timing of In-Water Work to Protect Fish and Wildlife Resources
    OREGON GUIDELINES FOR TIMING OF IN-WATER WORK TO PROTECT FISH AND WILDLIFE RESOURCES June, 2008 Purpose of Guidelines - The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, (ODFW), “The guidelines are to assist under its authority to manage Oregon’s fish and wildlife resources has updated the following guidelines for timing of in-water work. The guidelines are to assist the the public in minimizing public in minimizing potential impacts to important fish, wildlife and habitat potential impacts...”. resources. Developing the Guidelines - The guidelines are based on ODFW district fish “The guidelines are based biologists’ recommendations. Primary considerations were given to important fish species including anadromous and other game fish and threatened, endangered, or on ODFW district fish sensitive species (coded list of species included in the guidelines). Time periods were biologists’ established to avoid the vulnerable life stages of these fish including migration, recommendations”. spawning and rearing. The preferred work period applies to the listed streams, unlisted upstream tributaries, and associated reservoirs and lakes. Using the Guidelines - These guidelines provide the public a way of planning in-water “These guidelines provide work during periods of time that would have the least impact on important fish, wildlife, and habitat resources. ODFW will use the guidelines as a basis for the public a way of planning commenting on planning and regulatory processes. There are some circumstances where in-water work during it may be appropriate to perform in-water work outside of the preferred work period periods of time that would indicated in the guidelines. ODFW, on a project by project basis, may consider variations in climate, location, and category of work that would allow more specific have the least impact on in-water work timing recommendations.
    [Show full text]
  • Apology to the Willamette River
    AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF Abby P. Metzger for the degree of Master of Science in Environmental Science presented on May 4, 2011. Title: Meander Scars: Reflections on Healing a River Abstract approved: _____________________________________________________________________ Kathleen Dean Moore As Europeans settled the Willamette Valley in the 1800s, they began to simplify Oregon’s largest river contained wholly within state borders—the Willamette. The river lost miles of channels from dikes, dams, and development. Some channels vanished under concrete. Others became meander scars, or shallow, dry depression in the land where the river used to wander. Besides being a geological feature, meander scars are reminders of the wounds of progress and our attempts to control the river. Through a series of personal essays, this book reflects on whether something scarred can once again be whole. It explores a simple question with no single answer: How can we heal a river while healing our relationship to it? The book begins with the history of the Willamette, when it was wild and free, and then moves into all the ways we simplified and left it scarred. The story then reflects on what we might value in healing a river—values such as the complexity of the water’s many truths; values of memories and stories that hold the history of a landscape before it was degraded; and values even of grief and danger, which bring us closer to places in unexpected ways. The final reach of the book explores the role of restoration in healing the Willamette—whether working to repair the earth compensates for our misdeeds, and whether restoration is a reflexive act in which participant and landscape are both made anew.
    [Show full text]
  • Marriage of Basalt and His Wife River by Rick Rubin ©2001
    The Marriage of Basalt and his Wife River By Rick Rubin ©2001 Sixteen million years ago, a vast outpouring of lava from eastern Oregon began. The greatest lava flow in North America, that lava covered 80,000 square miles with molten rock. At that time, the Columbia River had her bed where Salem is now. A (miocene) basalt path, covered by (Quaternary) alluvial sediment just south of Salem shows the place. Her bed reached the sea north of the present Lincoln City. That lava outpouring got into her bed. Filled it up. Got hard. Became grass covered Cascade Head, north of Lincoln City. Husband-like, Basalt shouldered his river/wife north and west. She had to make a new bed for herself. Time and again those cracks to the east poured out lava, which flowed down the river’s new bed, which was always to the north of the earlier one, and came to the sea, or perhaps simply stopped, for the sea was as much as 300 miles farther west than it is now some of the time. (That was Ice Age’s doing. The Earth’s water was all tied up in glacier ice). The next time fiery Basalt poured out from east of where the Cascade mountains are now, and coming into Columbia River’s bed flowed down to the sea, it cooled into slim, steep sided, jutting Cape Lookout A million or so years later, Basalt flowed into the river’s attractive bed again, and this time, when he reached the sea, became blocky Cape Meares, just south of Tillamook Bay Later Basalt may have made a cape at the north entrance to Great Basin petroglyphs from Petroglyphs of Oregon, Luther Cressmann, Tillamook Bay of which some basalt rocks near the shore are the only relics.
    [Show full text]
  • OR Wild -Backmatter V2
    208 OREGON WILD Afterword JIM CALLAHAN One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am — a reluctant enthusiast.... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of your- selves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it is still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for awhile and contemplate the precious still- ness, the lovely mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive and I promise you this much: I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men with their hearts in a safe-deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards. —Edward Abbey1 Edward Abbey. Ed, take it from another Ed, not only can wilderness lovers outlive wilderness opponents, we can also defeat them. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men (sic) UNIVERSITY, SHREVEPORT UNIVERSITY, to do nothing. MES SMITH NOEL COLLECTION, NOEL SMITH MES NOEL COLLECTION, MEMORIAL LIBRARY, LOUISIANA STATE LOUISIANA LIBRARY, MEMORIAL —Edmund Burke2 JA Edmund Burke. 1 Van matre, Steve and Bill Weiler.
    [Show full text]
  • Josephine County, Oregon, Historical Society Document Oregonłs
    Finding fossils in Oregon is not so much a question of Places to see fossils: where to look for them as where not to look. Fossils are rare John Day Fossil Beds National Monument in the High Lava Plains and High Cascades, but even there, , _ Contains a 40-million year record of plant and animal life . ·� � .11�'!]�:-.: some of the lakes are famous for their fossils. Many of the ill the John Day Basill ill central Oregon near the towns of .• .� . ' · sedimentary rocks in eastern Oregon contain fossil leaves or · ,,����<:l. · . ' · •· Dayville' Fossil, and Mitchell. The Cant Ranch Visitor ; ' " ' ' j ' .- � bones. Leaffossils are especially abundant in the - Center at Sheep Rock on Highway 19 includes museum : ,· .,, 1 • , .. rocks at the far side of the athletic · exhibits of fossils. Open every day 8:30-5. For general l· · . ., ;: . · : field at Wheeler High School ,...,..;� information, contact John Day Fossil Beds National . -- - ' '· in the town of Fossil. Monument, 420 West Main St., John Day, OR 97845, ' l-, Although it is rare to phone (503) 575-0721. find a complete Oregon Museum of Science and Industry animal fossil, a 1945 SE Water Ave., Portland, OR 97214. Open Thurs. & search of river Fri. 9:30-9; Sat. through Wed. 9:30-7(sumrner hours); beds may turn . l 9:30-5(rest of year), phone (503) 797-4000 up c h1ps or Condon Museum, University of Oregon even teeth. In Pacific Hall, Eugene, OR 97403. Open only by western appointment, phone (503) 346-4577. Oregon, the ' . ; Douglas County Museum of History and sedimentary ' r Natural History rocks that are 1 primarily off1-5 at exit 123 at Roseburg (PO Box 1550, Roseburg, marine in OR 97470).
    [Show full text]
  • General Land Office Book
    FORWARD n 1812, the General Land Office or GLO was established as a federal agency within the Department of the Treasury. The GLO’s primary responsibility was to oversee the survey and sale of lands deemed by the newly formed United States as “public domain” lands. The GLO was eventually transferred to the Department of Interior in 1849 where it would remain for the next ninety-seven years. The GLO is an integral piece in the mosaic of Oregon’s history. In 1843, as the GLO entered its third decade of existence, new sett lers and immigrants had begun arriving in increasing numbers in the Oregon territory. By 1850, Oregon’s European- American population numbered over 13,000 individuals. While the majority resided in the Willamette Valley, miners from California had begun swarming northward to stake and mine gold and silver claims on streams and mountain sides in southwest Oregon. Statehood would not come for another nine years. Clearing, tilling and farming lands in the valleys and foothills and having established a territorial government, the settlers’ presumed that the United States’ federal government would act in their behalf and recognize their preemptive claims. Of paramount importance, the sett lers’ claims rested on the federal government’s abilities to negotiate future treaties with Indian tribes and to obtain cessions of land—the very lands their new homes, barns and fields were now located on. In 1850, Congress passed an “Act to Create the office of the Surveyor-General of the public lands in Oregon, and to provide for the survey and to make donations to settlers of the said public lands.” On May 5, 1851, John B.
    [Show full text]
  • Thesis Pretext Pages
    AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF Tina K. Schweickert for the degree of Master of Science in History of Science presented on December 3, 2009. Title: Nature in Chains: The Effects of Thomas Jefferson’s Rectangular Survey on a Pacific Northwest Landscape Abstract approved: Mary Jo Nye Understanding the impact of humans on the environment has long been a topic of scholarly interest and debate. As environmental problems mount, accounts of historic ecological conditions and the factors of change become increasingly useful. This study considers competing schools of interpretation about human impacts on ecological landscapes and develops a case study of one thirty-six square mile township in Oregon’s Waldo Hills. Built on evidence from 1851 surveyor notes, maps, journals, aerial photos, interviews, and contemporary environmental and ecological data, this study demonstrates a transformation from ecologically diverse ecosystems under the management of native peoples to ecologically depressed monoculture landscapes under industrialized agriculture. This thesis argues that the fundamental beliefs of human societies (i.e., worldviews) become expressed in the landscape. The nature-as-community view of the Kalapuya Indians resulted in a complex, curvilinear mosaic of prairie, savanna, and woodland. The individualized and rationalized view of the Euroamericans resulted in a simplified landscape of squared-off fields, channelized streams, and roads aligned to the survey grid. Thomas Jefferson’s rectangular survey, built on the ‘virtuous square’, is examined as a symbolic and tangible instrument of rapid expansion and exploitation across the American West. Understanding that worldviews become expressed in physical conditions may benefit those working to create sustainable futures; i.e., long-term and widespread ecological improvements will likely succeed only if society at large shares a fundamental belief in the value of healthy ecosystems.
    [Show full text]
  • General Land Office Book Update May 29 2014.Indd
    FORWARD n 1812, the General Land Offi ce or GLO was established as a federal agency within the Department of the Treasury. The GLO’s primary responsibility was to oversee the survey and sale of lands deemed by the newly formed United States as “public domain” lands. The GLO was eventually transferred to the Department of Interior in 1849 where it would remain for the next ninety-seven years. The GLO is an integral piece in the mosaic of Oregon’s history. In 1843, as the GLO entered its third decade of existence, new sett lers and immigrants had begun arriving in increasing numbers in the Oregon territory. By 1850, Oregon’s European- American population numbered over 13,000 individuals. While the majority resided in the Willamett e Valley, miners from California had begun swarming northward to stake and mine gold and silver claims on streams and mountain sides in southwest Oregon. Statehood would not come for another nine years. Clearing, tilling and farming lands in the valleys and foothills and having established a territorial government, the sett lers’ presumed that the United States’ federal government would act in their behalf and recognize their preemptive claims. Of paramount importance, the sett lers’ claims rested on the federal government’s abilities to negotiate future treaties with Indian tribes and to obtain cessions of land—the very lands their new homes, barns and fi elds were now located on. In 1850, Congress passed an “Act to Create the offi ce of the Surveyor-General of the public lands in Oregon, and to provide for the survey and to make donations to sett lers of the said public lands.” On May 5, 1851, John B.
    [Show full text]