Next, John Waymire came to build the first double log cabin and did also a small hauling business with a pair of oxen. He also started a sawmill with an overhead whipsaw brought from Missouri. In operating it the man beneath received a face full of sawdust each time he pulled the blade down.
The products of a shingle mill, begun about that time by William Bennett, were sold to the incoming settlers; among them were Col. William King, the town’s first politician, and Dr. Ralph Wilcox, a physician, who, besides tending the local ill, became Portland’s first school teacher. Another merchant, J. L. Morrison, dealt in flour, feed and shingles.
Meanwhile, a rival town was growing nearby. A few miles
up the Willamette on the opposite shore, Lot Whitcomb
had platted Milwaukie in 1848. Whitcomb claimed loudly
that his wharves stood at the all-time head of navigation.
The towns above, he vigorously pointed out, were cut off
from that advantage by the gravel bar which the inflowing
Clackamas had dumped into the Willamette channel. Only
a few deep-sea vessels had then ever negotiated that obstruction. The fall’s towns hotly protested Whitcomb’s claim,
although finally acknowledged the “sand-bagging.” Consequently, as a port, Milwaukie prospered for several years.
But there were shoals lying a few miles downstream, and with Portland harbor so readily accessible, Milwaukie was, in the early 1850s, abandoned by sea-going commerce. Thereafter her livelihood was maintained by riverboats and by her sawmills. In later years she became a town of moderate size, largely detached from river life.
Discovery of gold in California in 1848 brought increased business to Portland. Although many men left to seek their fortunes, enough remained to handle the extensive trade with the distant gold-fields. More and more vessels put in for cargo, with lumber the chief commodity for shipment. Gold dust augmented grain and peltry as mediums of exchange.
The arrival of Captains John H. Couch and George H. Flanders in 1849 gave Portland great impetus as a seaport. Couch was interested in several vessels, and was soon doing a large buying and selling trade with the back-country
