After crossing the North Umpqua by ferry, which joins the southern branch of the river below Roseburg, we passed the town of Winchester and finally arrived at about five clock in the evening at the town of Roseburg , the capital of the Umpqua , lying in an idyllic setting 75 miles from Eugene City, in which place I stayed until the next evening.
    Roseburg, a friendly little town of about 500 inhabitants on the South Umpqua, pleased me very well. The unpaved streets were, however, due to the recent rains, in a deplorable condition; but the environment of the place was lovely, the green fields and gently swelling hills, the myrtle, oak and acacia trees. The city is the seat of government of Douglas County, which has an area of 5000 square miles. The sparse population of the area comes here for goods and wares of all kinds, and Roseburg merchants have in their hands the whole business of exporting products of the surrounding country. 800,000 pounds of wool, 400,000 pounds of bacon and about 4000 head of beef cattle are exported annually from Roseburg. The grain harvested in the county is consumed domestically. Sheep farming is important in this region and a major source of wealth for the population. Douglas County produces more wool than any other three counties in Oregon put together
   You meet few Germans in the Umpqua country, apart from some Jewish merchants and brewers, and these few are sadly Americanized. I talked in German to a German innkeeper in Roseburg in the presence of several Americans. The good man went quite red with shame when I exposed him so thoughtlessly to the Americans as a Dutchman. He answered me in English that he had long since forgotten his German. Roseburg is certainly one of the healthiest places in the world. A doctor who wanted to live on the fees paid by his patients would have to die miserably of hunger. In this area nobody is ever sick, and people all look as if any of them should live for a century. On average, one expects one death per year for each 500 inhabitants. The last fatality in Roseburg, as I was told, was in the spring of 1870.
    Of course, Roseburg has their local newspaper, but intellectual food seems to be not particularly relished by the sturdy population. Only a weekly newspaper, The Plaindealer, ekes out a precarious existence on the Umpqua. The editor of a second local newspaper, The Ensign, almost died of hunger a year and a half before my visit because the Roseburg people did not subscribe. He therefore came to the reasonable decision to be a sheep breeder, and now manages the wool shears instead of scissors.
    As might be expected, I found the citizens of the remote community in great excitement over the approach of the railroad, which was all the talk of the Umpqua. Of Mr. Holladay, who wanted to have sixty acres of valuable land donated near Roseburg in order to create a station, there was outrage because of his presumption. The railroad must come to Roseburg, they said; Roseburg would not be frightened by any millionaire! They would not--God forbid!--But here, as in all small Oregon towns, reason will prevail and they will be glad, finally, when Mr. Holladay accepts the gift by grace, rather than build his railroad many miles away from the city and create a new opposition town.
    The most prosperous area of the cultivated portion of the Umpqua Valley lies between the Cascade Range and the coastal mountains and covers an area of about 40 miles from east to west and nearly 100 miles from north to south. This whole area is watered by the many branches of the Umpqua, whose main channel travels in a northwesterly direction through a natural pass between the Calapooia and Umpqua Mountains on its way to the ocean, as well as by a set of sporadically occurring hills and smaller mountain ranges, cutting through in a large number of long valleys. The larger of these beautiful and very fertile valleys carry names like "Lookingglass Valley"--"Happy Valley"--"Garden Spot Valley" etc. Sixty miles above Roseburg fairly rich gold placers were worked for a number of years in the Bohemia mining district on the Umpqua. The export of local products of the country, as already mentioned, has depended up to now upon the Umpqua River, which is very unreliable for navigation. But new and better roads will soon open for these areas, in addition to the rapidly advancing Oregon and California Railroad, which has already reached from the north to the edge of the Umpqua Valley. A new wagon road over the coastal mountains 60 miles to the west of Roseburg is in course of construction to Coos Bay, whose waters form an excellent harbor 20 miles inland from the sea . Within five weeks, it is said, traffic will pass on the wagon road from Roseburg to the harbor town of Empire City on Coos Bay. The banks of the majestic Coos Bay are covered with majestic pine groves, whose slender trunks provide a raw material of unsurpassed quality for the many lumber mills there. Also, excellent coal is found on the banks of that bay which can be loaded onto ships direct from the mines.
    On the evening of the 28th of September rainy weather delayed the departure of my stage until half past ten o'clock, six hours later than usual, to get through the Umpqua mud. Into a bright moonlit night we went out onto the high bank of the Umpqua. The broad river snaked silvery deep below us in the valley, whose otherworldly terrain rose to park-like wooded heights. But soon we were in a dark mountain. Over the next 13 miles led a terrible rough road through a canyon of the Rogue River. Dark forests covered the slopes of the mountain on both sides. In the forest a panther on the prowl screamed several times quite close to us, its peculiar sound like a crying child, so that the horses, smelling the beast of prey, could hardly be restrained, tossing the stage about as if to break it to pieces. At last we passed the small town of Canyonville [Kirchhoff is mistaken--Canyonville is at the north end of the Umpqua Canyon] and left the gloomy defile and drove in more open area about the Burnt Hills and Grave Creek Hills, which low mountain ranges form the watershed between the valleys of the Umpqua and the Rogue rivers. The Rogue River Mountains are a more difficult terrain for the railroad than the Calapooias, and although its elevation is not significant, it must make deep cuts, and trestles up to one hundred feet high will be built. The line of the railway leaves the Umpqua River 2½ miles from Canyonville and runs to the south through Cow Creek Pass.
    At dawn we were at the Levens stage station [Galesville], 40 miles from Roseburg, in the headwaters of Rogue River [the headwaters is actually on the slopes of Mount Mazama], which discharges into the ocean 15 miles [it's actually more than 30 miles] north of the border of California. The scenery had changed considerably. The forest was lusher than in the Umpqua Valley, but the thin, reddish clay soil appeared unsuitable for agriculture. I rarely saw farms, and those I saw were sorely neglected. Fences were dilapidated and had apparently been broken for years; it was clearly evident that the farmers considered it a waste of effort to use money and manpower to improve their properties. Fruit, which grows inexhaustibly in the northern districts of Oregon and is available at ridiculous prices, was a rarity here. Although we passengers looked for fruit trees around the humble homes sparsely located along the road, our scrutiny was almost entirely unrewarded.
    At a trot the stage went downhill now, over hill and dale and the infamous corduroy roads; it was enough to shake our bones loose from each other. The blind music professor and the life insurance agent, my friend the civil engineer, the lightning arithmetician [Col. Robert Cromer], the red-haired Irishman, and I implored the driver to slow down. But he laughed at us and whipped the horses, cursing the Umpqua mud that had wasted his time and put him off schedule. Beside us Cow Creek roared through the forest, as if to make fun of our suffering. We several times crossed the winding creek over the most uncivilized bridges under the sun--loose sticks laid on round cross bars side by side--driving rapidly over them they rattled and jumped high in the air, and the old gnarled oaks stretched their moss-draped branches sometimes teasingly into the car window, or rattling on the coach roof, as if delighting in our passage. We breathed easier when the log roads were behind us and we reached a smooth road in an open area. At the first stopping place I took my seat on the box beside the driver to enjoy a better look around than was possible from the interior of the coach. Narrow spruce-lined mountain ranges now followed each other in ever-changing contours and slid like a succession of dioramas past the eye. The weather, as the sun rose higher, became glorious, and a deep blue sky, clear and unclouded, arched over the romantic landscape.
    At the top of a rocky ridge, the driver brought my attention to an isolated, rounded boulder lying on the left near the road and told me the Umpqua Indians used to make pilgrimages to worship it. He stopped the coach for a while, and I got down for a closer inspection of the sacred stone, but noted neither incised characters nor any other thing extraordinary about it. Whether the Indians worship a deity in the rock, or whatever else was the case, I could not find out. The road now led through a forest, choked with half-burned fallen logs wildly covering the ground--the traces of a devastating forest fire. On the hills grew numerous manzanita bushes, whose gnarled and hard dark-brown wood is carved into pipe bowls and forms an export item. We met a wagon that was loaded down with this wood.
    At Grants Pass, 65 miles from Roseburg, a wonderful view surprised us as we entered the valley of the Rogue River. Spread in front of us to the south were the powerful dark purple mountains of the Applegate and Siskiyou mountains, the latter just 20 miles north of the border between Oregon and California, while the hilly country in between was mottled with different shades of color of the scattered deciduous and coniferous forests. From time to time we passed abandoned gold placers, peculiar deserted messes of trenches, holes, wooden flumes, turned earth, piles of washed-out loose stones, crumbling huts, etc. Soon we reached the Rogue River and traveled several miles along its rocky shore. The foaming, swirling flood of the wild mountain stream roared along magnificently wooded mountains rose up from its opposite shore. In the river miners were working diligently in the gold placers. Half a dozen large and small waterwheels, their broad blades turned by the raging flood, pumped water up to the sluice boxes, to which the Chinese miners carted the gold-bearing earth and shoveled the same into them--a colorful and lively picture!
    For a time now we left the Rogue River and crossed one of its tributaries, the flat and wide Evans Creek. The forest and mountain scenery here was very impressive, reminiscent of the world-famous scenery of the Sierra Nevada. The lighting of the mountains by the rays of the setting sun, which lengthened the shadows of the tall pines on the green slopes, contributed not a little to make this a painterly landscape of captivating beauty. Only the frequent abandoned mining camps tarnished this beautiful country with their reminders of a harsh civilization. An old dilapidated stockade erected by the roadside, built of huge upright tree trunks standing close together, recalled the bloody wars of the 'Fifties which raged between the Indians of Southern Oregon and the whites. Only when the Indians had realized the impossibility of further resistance to the thousands of gold-fevered whites did they bury their tomahawks and become the most peaceful creatures on God's earth. But their old warrior pride is all gone, and one encountering in this country a company of redskins in their beggar's rags can hardly imagine that these pitiful figures are the descendants of the warlike Umpqua and Pitt River Indians who fought the whites with desperate valor for many years every inch of ground.
    Once more we reached the rocky banks of the Rogue, the clear rushing waters ranging in width from 50 to 200 yards, and I noticed several large wheels of gold placers, which slowly turned in the fast-flowing waters. Well-ordered farms and neat houses were on both banks of the river, and the corn stood in the fields with full golden-yellow ears---sure evidence that we were rapidly approaching a civilized area. In the friendly hamlet of Rock Point, 13 miles from Jacksonville, we crossed the Rogue River on a high and long wooden bridge. The name of the place referred to its location. The bed of the river was here strewn with black rocks, which piled up at a promontory at one point on the shore. The bridge was less than ideal. A wagon driver in Germany would hardly trust himself and his team such a miserable structure over such a raging torrent as the Rogue River, staring at the rocky riverbed below. But in Oregon security is not as great a concern. Our driver cracked his whip and cheerfully drove his chariot and heavy wagon over the high bridge, which creaked and cracked and swayed in a highly dubious manner.
    From the bridge we saw the Rogue River Valley in perspective as a long vista down the middle of the wild roaring river, with its black basalt banks and magnificent forested mountains on both sides, and the white buildings of Rock Point lovely on the nearby shore--a highly romantic view. On the railing of the bridge I read, perhaps for the thousandth time, large white painted letters touting a patent-fever medicine--"Unk Weed Remedy!"--I say for the thousandth time, because since I left Portland these words seemed to follow me at each fence, every large tree, on any prominent rock, on swine pens, houses, etc., everywhere were painted the same words to attract the attention of travelers. "Buy it!--Buy it!--Unk Weed Remedy!--Oregon Rheumatic Cure!''--These signs, which extend as far as San Diego, must have cost the medicine manufacturer a sizable amount, but in America nothing is more rewarding than humbug!
     A few miles further on we leave the canyon of the Rogue River, and the valley of Jacksonville opens before our view with its trees, fields and farms on the fertile plain. The eye wanders for miles about a magnificent countryside to the densely forested Siskiyou mountain range, at the foot of which lies the city of Jacksonville, the main town in southern Oregon. A little to the left and before us stands the massive 11,000-foot-high snow-covered peak of Mount McLoughlin, a neighbor of Klamath Lake 90 miles distant, reaching high into the blue-ringed ether and looks down with its silver head like a king with a cloud diadem on the green valley below. We quickly hurtle down the plain, and soon the Rogue River Mountains are far behind us. The scattered groves of wide-branched native oaks are reminiscent of nearby California, and the landscape has nothing in common with Oregon. In a delightful ride on smooth roads between well-cultivated fields and fruit-laden orchards and past inviting houses, as we approach Jacksonville we pass extensive gold placers, unworked in this season, and finally, at five o'clock in the evening, the streets of the city await, after an uninterrupted stage journey of 95 miles since I left the Umpqua last night at Roseburg.
Theodor Kirchhoff, "Streifzüge in Oregon und Californien (1871)," Globus, Vol. XXII, No. 9, September 1872, pages 136-138. Translated from the German.    For more on Unk Weed signs, see the Democratic Times, August 5, 1871, page 3


    The city of Jacksonville, which lies on Jackson Creek, a tributary of the Rogue River, 293 miles from Portland and about 130 miles away from the sea coast, counts around 1500 inhabitants and is the main town in southern Oregon. The population of this place is very mixed. Chinese are an unusually strong presence, and almost a third of the population consists of Germans. Irishmen, Portuguese and Kanakas (Sandwich Islanders), the latter valued as hard workers in the gold mines, form major segments of the population.
    Jacksonville owes its origin to the discovery of rich gold deposits in southern Oregon in the year 1850. At the time of its flowering this area rivaled with the Yreka mining district in California, beyond the Siskiyou Mountains, and even still the product of its mines is significant. The place looks nothing like a mining town, where the population tends to be in a fever of excitement, but rather has the air of an ordinary, quiet American town. The lively entrepreneurial spirit of the California mining town seems to have been lost in this sleepy Oregon mine district. They complained a lot about the drought of recent years, whereby the yield of the still very rich placers has decreased from $300,000 in gold to about 35,000 dollars. However, the lack of water could be easily overcome by the creation of a large mining ditch about 92 miles long. One such plan that requires the comparatively low capital investment of only 75,000 dollars would be easy to implement and bring enormous benefits. In a California mining town such a ditch would have long since been created, but in Jacksonville the motto is--and the big ditch has here been on paper for ten years--"always go slow."
    The area of ​​Jacksonville is not only rich in placer deposits of granular free gold, but also in gold- and silver-bearing quartz, and by the latest operating methods of mining, carried out in an energetic way, processing of these ores yields amazing results. In the quartz mines at Gold Hill, 7 miles north of Jacksonville, was found the richest gold ore on this coast. From a pocket of only 12 cubic feet $130,000 worth of gold was gathered. A small pile of collected pieces of metal-bearing quartz held 7000 dollars in silver. Silver ore, scattered in pieces from the size of a walnut up to 25 pounds of weight and of great wealth, are all over the area. But the yield of the gold-and silver-bearing quartz veins (ledges) is realized here in a very primitive way. The two most important of the Gold Hill mine shafts have a depth of only 150 and 80 feet, and no other in the whole neighborhood is deeper than 14 feet. The quartz amalgamation stamp mills are poorly constructed, furnaces are not available and the mines are handled very carelessly. An energetic Californian population would increase tenfold the yield of the mines in southern Oregon.
    Jacksonville is not merely an important mining town of importance, one of the most fertile valleys of Oregon is located in its immediate vicinity, making it the natural trading place for the Rogue River Valley with a width of 15 miles from north to south and a length of 50 miles of east to west. Wheat, oats and barley, as well as apples, pears, plums, apricots and all kinds of berries (gooseberries, raspberries, etc.) and garden produce thrive admirably. Handsome, well-cultivated farms are numerous in this valley. A brisk trade takes place with Fort Klamath, 90 miles away, where some companies of United States military are in garrison, securing all their food needs here. Outside commodities for the most part must come 120 miles to remote Jacksonville from the seaport of Crescent City, but there will soon be a radical turnaround in all trading conditions with the continued construction of the railway, which will bring the cost point of commodity transport significantly lower. [The railroad didn't reach the Rogue Valley until 1884.] Currently freighters calculate the steamboats from San Francisco to Crescent City at 5-6 dollars per ton, another 2½ dollars per ton port charges, and transport from the landings to Jacksonville an additional three cents per pound. I may mention that the session of the Oregon State Legislature in the city of Salem officially changed the name of Rogue River to the more civilized-sounding Gold River. But the residents of Southern Oregon consider the old name more appropriate, and it has become to them a reminder of the pioneer days. The new name is not recognized here, and as a "rogue" river it flows through the wild mountains to the ocean as before.
    On evenings during my stay in Jacksonville my traveling companion, the lightning calculator, gave the whole population of "the intelligent people of Jacksonville" a lecture on the street by torchlight on a simplified method of arithmetic. With chalk he reckoned on a blackboard the most complicated tasks fabulously quickly; adding a mile-long column of large numbers in a jiffy, multiplying trillions and quadtrillions so that it looked like a work of art, struck his head and pulled out answers as if with a corkscrew, made lightning calculations such as I had never seen and accompanied it with incredible patter, told anecdotes, etc., so that the "intelligent people of Jacksonville" stared open-mouthed and cheered delightedly at his jokes. Finally, he sold his arithmetic books that contained all his secrets--a brochure of 144 pages, three dollars the copy--as fast as hotcakes. In every little place in Oregon I had watched the same amusing spectacle during the last week, but in Jacksonville the "Yankee lightning calculator" exceeded himself. His lectures are a highlight of my memories of this trip!
    On the morning of October 1 [1871], in glorious weather I began the next stage of my journey, the goal being the mining town of Yreka, California, 62 miles distant from Jacksonville. Through a well-cultivated area, in which the fields were covered with picturesquely scattered oaks, we had a pleasant drive on a good road to the wooded part of the Siskiyou Mountains. The name Siskiyou is an Indian word meaning "horse with a short tail." The outer shape of the mountain is thought to be similar to such a horse, hence the name. To me it was not possible to see the vague resemblance which the vivid imagination of the redskin had concocted. [The reference is to a favorite saddle horse that died in 1829 on one of Alexander McLeod's trapping expeditions, not to the appearance of the mountains.]
    Fifteen miles from Jacksonville we passed to our right hot sulfur spring and bath house and soon reached Ashland, the southernmost town of Oregon, lying in a pleasant environment in the foothills of the Siskiyou Mountains. In Ashland I noticed the handsome mill of a woolen factory and a stonecutter's, and the place had a nice appearance. Here left us, to my delight, the argumentative blind music professor; a member of the Oregon Legislature, who traveled with us to Yreka, took his place. Unfortunately, the exchange was not as pleasant as I expected, because this Oregon statesman [Henry W. Corbett] by his crude manners soon made his presence completely intolerable. He revealed in the course of conversation, among others, the quaint view that children under the age of 14 should not be sent to school; it was far better, he said, that they run wild until then to develop their bodies, as opposed to sitting at a desk, where, as is known, only stupidity and profligacy are learned! Most of his colleagues in Salem, he added, had the same view as he did, and he hoped that the state of Oregon would soon adopt these healthy principles into an appropriate education law. He started school only after his fifteenth year, and yet learned enough to bring him into the House of Representatives of his enlightened state. Against such arguments, of course, we could not argue, and we fellow travelers shrank ashamed from that Oregon Solon.
    After we had taken our lunch at the "mountain view" stage station [presumably Barron's Mountain House], where in front of the inn across the way was attached a large sign with the misspelled words "tole road" instead of "toll road" (evoking uncharitable thoughts about the enlightened state of Oregon), we changed to a team of six horses for the mountains. The narrow road wound gradually up between slopes lined with magnificent conifers. Having reached the summit, we had a magnificent distant view of densely wooded blue mountain ranges over which to our left the snow-covered mass of 14,440-foot-high Mount Shasta (also called "Shasta Butte") rose before us--a gorgeous image! Now the stage went rapidly downhill on winding roads. Each new view of the mountain, one more beautiful than the other, delighted the eye. Here, where bright green meadows nestled between the dark fir woods, there roared a foaming brook, whose banks were charmingly framed with maple and cottonwood, white-trunked birches and a golden bower of swamp ash, while the dark purple mountain ranges lay picturesquely in the distance, and old Shasta Butte raised his silver dome high in the blue ether.
    At Cole's Station, 35 miles from Jacksonville, the main chain of the Siskiyou Mountains was behind us. The friendly station building with the long white picket fence spoke of summer, the air was warm and the southern landscape with the brown hills had a true Californian appearance. About 400 yards beyond Cole's Station we found the southern boundary of the state of Oregon, which has been placed at 42 degrees north latitude. On a dusty road we passed abandoned placers and crossed wide, parched riverbeds, filled in winter by roaring waters, until after a journey of 8 miles we reached the mining town of Cottonwood. After the winter rains fall the town leads a busy life, but this time of year it is vacant. The all-invigorating water is indispensable to work the mines, and the placers are very desolate there. Two and a half miles beyond Cottonwood we found the Klamath River, a rushing stream with rocky, barren shores, which we crossed by means of a ferry. The river is the natural outflow of the small and the large Klamath lakes--35 and 60 miles to the north-northeast from here--and pours westward into the ocean. On the northwest shore of the great Klamath Lake rises the 11,000-foot-high Mount McLoughlin (also called "Mount Pitt"), which I had first seen from the valley of the Rogue River but, covered by intervening heights, cannot be seen from here. Klamath River has very treacherous waters, full of eddies and rapids, which has dealt a violent death to many a daring swimmer. The ferry on the river, which is on the main road between Oregon and California, is a lucrative monopoly; ferrying a cart and two horses costs 2½ dollars. When the gold mines were first discovered in southern Oregon and miners, merchants and adventurers from California by the thousands flocked there, this ferry was a real gold mine and its owner must have averaged 300 dollars per day.
Theodor Kirchhoff, "Streifzüge in Oregon und Californien (1871)," Globus, Vol. XXII, No. 12, December 1872, page 184. Translated from the German with the assistance of Google Translate and occasional reference to Frederic Trautmann's Oregon East, Oregon West, Oregon Historical Society Press, 1987, an English translation of a later edition of Kirchhoff's Oregon essays which amends and abridges the original.


The text below recapitulates the material above. It was published by Frederic Trautmann in his Oregon East, Oregon West: Travels and Memoirs of Theodor Kirchhoff 1863-1872, an English edition of Kirchhoff's 1875 Reisebilder und Skizzen aus Amerika (Stories and Sketches of Travel in America). Kirchhoff's book, updates the magazine articles above to 1875, abridges the 1872 articles and adds material from his notes or memory.

    Senator H. W. Corbett was in town during Sunday last [October 1]. He informs us that he will use every effort to enable us to obtain proper mail facilities during the next Congress.
"Mails," Democratic Times, Jacksonville, October 7, 1871, page 4


    LIGHTNING CALCULATOR.--Saturday night a Mr. Cromer assembled the citizens by torchlight on the corner of California and Third streets, and proceeded to address them on his new system of notation. He made a very interesting address, illustrated by numerous practical examples.
Democratic Times, Jacksonville, October 7, 1871, page 3


    Senator Corbett gave us a call as he passed through en route for Washington.
"Personal," Oregon Sentinel, Jacksonville, October 7, 1871, page 3


    THE LIGHTNING CALCULATOR.--We were edified as well as happily amused on last Saturday evening by Mr. Cromer, one of the authors of Haworth & Cromer's Lightning Calculator, who stopped overnight at this place and delivered a short but novel and interesting little speech. His apparent object is to introduce a better and more rapid system of mathematics, or a faster way of calculating numbers than we have ever been taught heretofore. We think the system that he is trying to inaugurate, a good one, or perhaps had better say, we are so impressed, for really he went through the examples that were given him with such swiftness that our thinking propensities were lost in utter amazement. For us to retain enough of what he said, to think about it is about like taking the accurate length of a flash of lightning. We hope, however, that our thoughts on the question will come to us after [a] while, and when they do, we will try and investigate the matter. He has our best wishes, and we hope that he may give us another call--another shock of his lightning may electricity us [sic] so that we can have clearer ideas of what he is trying to teach. But we must confess that our brains are somewhat addled on the subject at present.
Oregon Sentinel, Jacksonville, October 7, 1871, page 3

Last revised December 31, 2013