14 The Oregon Surveyor | Vol. 46, No. 6 Featured Article OLD TRAILS AND TALES By Chuck “Rusty” Whitten, PLS (retired) There are many names of mountains, lakes, creeks, etc. on maps that are familiar, but some may be the “second names” of various features. For example, Outerson Mountain (about 2 1/2 miles northeast of Highway 22 at Whitewater Creek) was first known as Bald Mountain for many years. In 1892, U.S. Deputy Surveyor William Bushey refers to it as he was surveying the North Boundary of Township 10 South, Range 7 East which ran East and West roughly on the high divide between the North Santiam River to the south and the Breitenbush River to the north. Since there were several other “Bald Mountains" around, to avoid confusion, the Forest Service later changed the name to Outerson mountain, honoring an early pioneer in the North Santiam area. At 21 years of age, John Minto (born in England in 1822) left his father's home in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, in February of 1844 and headed for the Oregon Country. The wagon trains had just started to head west about that time from St. Louis. He arrived in the Salem area late that year and eventually settled there and became a respected citizen and farmer. At that time, there were only two Indian trails that crossed the Cascade Mountains. The southern one was along the South Santiam River and the northern trail was via Table Rock and down the Abiqua drainage. The Indians of the Chemeketa, Chemawa, and Willamette tribes spoke with dread of going up the North Santiam River since it had a great gorge, and in John Minto’s words “the gorge by which the river cuts its way through the roughest portion [between Little Sweden and Blowout Creek] is such as to give great numbers of opportunity for ambuscades [ambushes], a common Resort of Indian warfare.” Minto goes on to say “trappers...who had settled... continued to use the trail up the North Santiam Valley until 1844–45, when the country reached by it [became] trapped out.” In 1846, a committee of six citizens from Salem was appointed to make an examination of the trail. The head of the group consisted of Col.l Cornelius Gilliam, Joseph Gervais, and T.C. Shaw, later becoming a county judge of Marion County in 1887, and three others. Shaw reported that the trail did not then pass through the narrow gorge. Instead it “took over the tops of the most broken and rugged portion of the range.” They proceeded easterly until they came to what they termed “scaly rock mountain” [possibly either Rocky Top or Sardine Mt.?] which Colonel Gilliam pronounced “impossible for wagons.” The party returned to Salem and from 1846 to 1873, that pathway was unused and to a great extent, forgotten. In October of 1873, two hunters in search of good game range penetrated up the north bank of the river through the gorge before mentioned. They found that about 12 miles from the “then settlement” on King's Prairie, about a mile south of Gates, the valley widened out amd the mountains seemed lower. One of the hunters, Henry States, being unable to proceed on account of a sprained ankle, sent for John Minto to tell him of their findings and “rediscovery” of the route. Minto then went to the Marion County board of commissioners and repeated the statements of the hunters. One of the commissioners was a neighbor to a former Hudson's Bay leader named Tom McKay and had often heard him speak of the North Santiam as being the shortest and best way across the Cascades. A short consultation among the commissioners “resulted” in an order to Mr. Minto to take two comrades and proceed up the valley of the North Santiam until he was satisfied whether it made such a natural cut into the range or not. After an absence of 12 days, the party returned and Minto reported a deep valley almost dividing the range. In early 1874, a viewing and survey of the proposed route was ordered. Viewers were John Minto, Porter Jack [Jack Porter?] and George S. Downing with T.W. Davenport as surveyor. Timothy W. Davenport, then 25 years old, came across the Oregon Trail in 1851 with his family who then settled in the Waldo Hills South of Silverton. (He had first started surveying as a compassman for a U.S. Deputy Surveyor in Washington Territory John Minto, coal miner, farmer, fine wool sheep importer, mountain explorer and road builder, legislator, historian, and poet. Public domain photo from Gaston’s “Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.” Chuck Whitten scanned this image from his original copy of “Looters of the Public Domain” (1908) by Stephen A.D. Puter from page 147.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTY1NDIzOQ==