“Many of the prairies . . .,” remarked J. Quinn Thornton, Oregon settler of 1846, “are several miles in extent. But the smaller ones . . . where the woodland and plain alternate frequently, are the most beautiful, although the prospect is more confined . . . The space between these small prairies is covered with an open forest of tall, straight evergreens . . . The clusters of trees are so beautifully arranged, the openings so gracefully curved, the grounds so open and clean, that it seems to be the work of art; and these beautiful avenues are calculated to cheat the imagination into the belief that they lead to some farmhouse or pleasant village.”
There were, however, noticeable differences in the extreme lower and upper valley. The lower Willamette, from its mouth to the falls, was darkly covered with evergreens and had few openings. Only the cottonwoods and alders held their yellow torches against the autumn sky. Mountains stood closer. Of the upper valley, “the narrowing toward its head,” observed Frances Fuller Victor, Oregon historian, in 1872, in All Over Oregon and Washington, “brings mountains, plains, and groves within the sweep of unassisted vision, and the whole resembles a grand picture. We have not here the heavy forests of the Columbia River region, nor even the frequently recurring fir-groves of the Middle Wallamet. The foothills of the mountains approach within a few miles of either side, but those nearest the valley are rounded, grassy knolls, over which are scattered groups of firs, pines, or oaks, while the river-bottom is bordered with tall cottonwoods, and studded rather closely with pines of a lofty height and noble form.”
Settlement in the beautiful valley began about 1829–30, when released Hudson's Bay Company trappers, principally French-Canadians, located farms on the rich prairies above the falls. Soon thereafter came the first American settlers, a mere handful. In 1834, a group of Methodist missionaries, headed by the Rev. Jason Lee, arrived, building a mission station on the southern fringe of French Prairie. Father F. N. Blanchet and other Catholic priests came in 1838 and established a mission on the prairie. George Ebbert, Joseph Meek, Robert Newell, Caleb Wilkins, and other American "mountain men" out of the Rockies, entered
