Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 4.djvu/258

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248
John Minto.

but in addition to this these railroad promoters often exercised an assumed right to name points that will be of permanent interest which they did not discover. This seems hardly fair. From my point of view the Hon. John B. Waldo, who first observed the apparent lowness of the pass, and called my attention to it, is more entitled to have his name attached to it than Col. T. E. Hogg, whose name I understand was given to by J. I. Blair, the railroad magnate of New York, who was one of the chief supporters of Colonel Hogg's enterprise.

As a matter of some historical interest I will close this paper by inserting some of the original names given places and things by the first white explorers of the valley.

The stream named Breitenbush was named by Henry States, Frank Cooper, and John Minto on the first legal examination for the pass for John Breitenbush a hunter who had cut his way to it ahead of them. Detroit was named by the man from Michigan who first opened a house for entertainment there. Boulder Creek was named by T. W. Davenport on his survey notes in 1874. It makes in from the north at Idanha which was a Muskrat Camp of first surveying party, but renamed by the proprietor of the first summer resort house. Minto Mountain was named by some one unknown to the writer, after he had led to the opening of a trail to Black Butte, in Crook County, in 1879. It was the grass covered mountains seen by Minto from the top of a fir tree into which he pulled himself to get a view of their surroundings when first seeking the pass in November, 1873, and which grass land his associate, Frank Cooper, asserted was in eastern Oregon, to his, Cooper's, personal knowledge, though he would not risk climbing the tree to see it, being a very heavy man. This mountain will for all time be an attractive object to summer recreationists and the most easily reached from the center of the Willamette