For many years it has been a puzzle to me as to the reason for this antagonism toward Captain Wilkes, as it has ever seemed to me that he exercised good judgment and sound discretion at all times in his visits to the Oregon people. The tone of this document is unfriendly to the extreme of bitterness, which seems to have been caused by the report he made about the difficulties and dangers attendant upon the navigation of the Columbia river. There were "townsite boomers" in those days as well as at the present time, and Mr. Lownsdale was easily their leader at that time.
Daniel H. Lownsdale was a native of Kentucky and a descendant of an old southern family. For a time he lived in Indiana, then went to Georgia, and in 1845 came to Oregon. In his early manhood he acquired a liberal education and then widened his knowledge and broadened his views by devoting two years to travel and study in Great Britain and Continental Europe.
The first to lay claim to land on the site of Portland was William Overton, of whom little is known. A. L. Lovejoy is credited with being the first to entertain the idea of making a city there. He came to Oregon in 1842, and in 1843 or 1844 acquired; an interest in Overton's claim. Francis W. Pettygrove, who later founded Port Townsend, Washington, soon acquired the remainder of Overton's interest, and Lovejoy and Pettygrove began work on the embryo city. Its boundaries were surveyed, a log cabin was put up in 1844, and in 1845 the original plat of sixteen blocks was laid off. Overton's cabin, put up in 1843, was merely a shed, open in front.
Oregon City was the first place selected as a townsite in Oregon. In 1843 Linn City was founded by Robert Moore on the west bank of the Willamette, opposite Oregon City; and Hugh Burns soon after laid off a town below Linn City and called it Multnomah. In 1843 M. M. McCarver, who founded Burlington in Iowa, Sacramento in California, and Tacoma in Washington, together with Peter H. Burnett selected a site a few miles below Portland and called it Linnton, in remembrance of Senator Linn, of Missouri, one of Oregon's earliest and most influential friends during its formative period. In
