Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/636

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586
HISTORY OF OREGON LITERATURE

Marysville, Starr's Point and Calapooya, Umpqua City and the Dardanelles live only in the memory of the pioneers.

Old time mining camps where once the busy, bearded, red-shirted miners shoveled pay dirt into their rockers, long toms or sluice boxes, are now but windrows of water-washed stones along the creek bed, where cabins once stood. Kerbyville, now shortened to Kerby, no longer echoes to the midnight revelry of prospectors and miners. Like scores of other camps that in the lusty heydey of their youth grew like a green bay tree, Kerbyville saw its transient population drift to other camps.

Jacksonville, at one time the commercial metropolis of Southwestern Oregon, is today like some old pioneer who sits serene and untroubled by the door of his cabin watching the day's afterglow fade to twilight while he looks back in memory to the old days. . . .


20

LEWIS A. McARTHUR

Lewis Ankeny McArthur, geographic historian, was born at The Dalles on April 27, 1883, the descendant of two families prominently connected with the history and development of Oregon, and pioneers of its culture. His father, Judge L. L . McArthur was a member of the Oregon Supreme Court. His mother, Harriet Nesmith McArthur, is author of Recollections of the Rickreall. His grandfather on his mother's side was Colonel James W. Nesmith, who has been considered in the chapter on early orators.

He moved with his parents to Portland in 1890 at the age of seven. He was graduated from the old Portland Academy in 1902 and from the University of California in 1908, his attendance at Berkeley being interrupted by several months' experience as a reporter on the Portland Telegram and Oregonian. While a student he was editor of the Daily Californian. In 1921 the University of Oregon conferred upon him an honorary degree of master of arts.

For two years he worked for the Oregon Electric Railway. Since 1910 he has been with the Pacific Power & Light Company and is now vice-president and general manager. He was married in 1914 to Mary Lawrence Hewett of Portland. They have four children. He has served as director of the Oregon Historical Society and of the Portland Library Association, and since 1914 has been secretary