Early Settlement

Jason Lee was sent in 1834 by the Methodist Church in the United States to work among the Indians in Oregon. He established missions where Salem, Oregon City, and The Dalles now are, and petitioned the United States government to establish jurisdiction over Oregon. A second missionary effort was started by Marcus Whitman in 1836 north of the Columbia near present Walla Walla. Both missionaries gave glowing reports of the Oregon country, attracting settlers to the region.

Mountain men (trappers and traders from the Rocky Mountain area), including Jedediah Smith, attempted to encroach on the Hudson's Bay Company's fur trade, and traced a route, the Oregon Trail, through the mountains. In 1841 a small group of pioneers, led by Dr. Robert Newell, arrived in the Willamette Valley. They were the first settlers to reach Oregon by wagon over the Oregon Trail. A much larger group, some 100, came the next year, and in 1843 nearly 900 arrived in what was called the Great Migration, Most of these early immigrants were farm families from the valleys of the Missouri, Mississippi, and Ohio rivers.

Agitation for United States control of the Oregon country grew. Despite the popular slogan “54–40 or fight," in 1846 the boundary separating Canada and the United States on the Pacific coast was set at the 49th parallel.