LET 'ER BUCK 



In the pioneer days when the long, tempestuous 

 journey around the tip end of South America, where it 

 was said men hung their consciences on the Horn, was 

 the only way of bringing freight to Oregon: in those 

 days before "Bill" Cody rounded up buffalo meat for 

 the Kansas Pacific and the railroads were built, Uma- 

 tilla, sixty miles down the river from Pendleton, was 

 the head of navigation and the focal point of depart- 

 ure for pack-trains to the placer mines of Idaho, which 

 were the great things in those days, as agriculture had 

 not then developed. Anybody who lived anywhere at 

 that time lived in Umatilla which had almost as large 

 a floating population as its permanent one, for it was the 

 center both for supplies and a "fling" to the far-flung 

 population of the greater portion of three states. 



The rest of Eastern Oregon contained only scatter- 

 ing settlements; for instance, Pendleton itself at that 

 time consisted of the stage-stop hotel, the Pendleton, 

 a general store and the few typical false fronts of a 

 Western pioneer town. There were only two resi- 

 dences, the house of Judge Bailey and one other. 

 Thus Umatilla became the county seat of Umatilla 

 County, which at that time, 1863, included practically 

 all of Oregon east of the John Day River, as it was 

 the metropolis and great trade emporium of Eastern 

 Oregon, which included most of Washington, Oregon 

 and Idaho. 



As the ends of those great ever-projecting probosces 

 of civilization, the railroads, thrust their feelers further 

 west, the Horn route fell into disuse and the overland 

 routes from the East increased the development and 

 population of Eastern Oregon. When in 1868 the Cen- 

 tral Pacific pushed into Nevada, the bulk of the Idaho 

 trade followed it. This killed Umatilla — which was 



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