Page:Atlantis Arisen.djvu/152

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From Glendale, at the south end of Cow Creek Cafion, we travel south, past the historic localities of Wolf, Leland, and Jump-off-Joe Creeks, scenes of struggle between the aboriginal and the imported inhabitants of the country in “ the fifties past the Lucky Queen mining-camp, between the last two streams, to Grant’s Pass, so named from an opening in the Coast Range said to have been occupied at some time by Captain— afterwards General—Grant.

This town is in Josephine County, situated on Rogue River, and is a creation of the Oregon and California Railroad. In 1883 it contained a single habitation—Dimmick’s—on the old road from Portland to Sacramento. In that year it was laid out in town lots by some far-seeing speculator, and proved so good a location that to-day it is the seat of government of Josephine County, with a population of three thousand, and growing industries, chiefly manufactures in wood, this being the centre of the sugar-pine district. There are twenty saw-mills within a radius of as many miles, and in the town are sash-, door-, and shingle-factories, breweries, a broom- and a paint-factory. The railroad also has its car-shops and round-house here; and among the improvements under way are an iron bridge over the river, an electric-light plant, a water-works system, and several substantial brick blocks. A railroad is already projected from here to Crescent City, California, eighty-seven miles, and thence down the coast to Eureka in that State. Such a road would make this a distributing point for Southern Oregon, and would greatly reduce the high freight rates which have heretofore prevailed in this section of Oregon. There were shipped from here over the Southern Pacific in 1889, 100 car-loads of choice watermelons, 73 of cantaloupes, 82 of sweet potatoes, 87 of peaches, 830 of apples, 11 of nectarines, 19 of grapes, 18,000 pounds of almonds, 32,000 pounds of prunes, 48 car-loads of hops, 36 of broom-corn, 113 of gold-quartz worth sixty-five dollars per ton, $285,000 worth of gold-dust, and 1878 car-loads of sugar-pine lumber and manufactured wood-work. The shipments extended north to Seattle, and south to Los Angeles. Land is not yet held high in this county, nor indeed in any part of Southern Oregon; and there is a good deal still open to entry, and a vast amount of railroad lands, ranging from two dollars