What mean you by the name Baker? It means a Nation never to be scattered again, ten times more glorious, and a million times firmer than it was before.
What mean you by the name Baker? Look about you. Behold the vast domain known as Baker County. Gaze over our fair city. Let us lift our eyes up to the hills beholding the beautiful, rugged, enduring mountains, covered today with white and green, overhung with blue, from whence comes the cleansing, healing, life-giving water. Shall we say these mountains will be a memorial to Colonel Baker forever? No! but may they be a constant reminder of what he lived for, what he fought for, and what he died for.
History is teaching by example. Names and models constantly before the mind become character builders.
THE COLUMBIA GORGE
E. D. BAKER
[Of the Oregon senatorial race of 1860, Bancroft said: "E. D. Baker, a prominent politician, who came from California, where his star was not propitious, to Oregon, where he hoped to have a finger in the new politics. He made many speeches during the summer campaign . . . ". One of his many triumphs that year was his Fourth of July speech at Salem: "The orator's fame had spread far and near, and when the speaker began the crowd was so vast that fully one-fourth were fortunate in finding standing room; but the eloquence of the speaker was such that in less than 20 minutes all were standing." The following sample of his eloquence, a description of the Columbia gorge, is from his first speech in the United States Senate in January, 1861.]
Mr. President: The adventurous traveller, who wanders on the slope of the Pacific and on the verge of civilization, stands awestruck and astonished in the great chasm formed by the torrent of the Columbia, as, rushing between Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens, it breaks through the ridges of the Cascade Mountains to find the sea. Nor is this wonder lessened when he hears his slightest tones repeated and reechoed with a larger utterance in the reverberations which lose themselves at last amid the surrounding and distant hills....
