In Thomas Jefferson’s administration far-seeing people began to talk of a road across the continent, and a port on the Pacific.  The St. Louis fur-traders had been making a way to the Rockies for years, and in 1810 John Jacob Astor sent a ship around Cape Horn, to establish a post for the fur-trade on the Pacific Coast, and also sent an expedition of some sixty persons from St. Louis, overland, by the way of the Missouri and Yellowstone, to the Columbia River.  The pioneer ship was called the Tonquin.  She arrived at the mouth of the Columbia before the overland expedition.  These traders came together at last, and founded Astoria, on the Columbia.

Ships now began to sail for Astoria, and the trading-post flourished in the beautiful climate and amid the majestic scenery.  But the English claimed the country.  In June, 1812, war broke out with England, and Astoria became threatened with capture by the English.  It was decided by Astor’s agent to abandon the post; but Astoria had taught the United States the value of Oregon.

The Oregon trail from St. Louis, by the way of the great rivers, the Missouri, the Yellowstone, and the Columbia, followed the fall of Astoria, and began the highway of emigration to the Pacific coast and to Asia.  Over it the trapper and the missionary began to go.  The Methodist missionaries, under the leadership of Revs.  Jason and Daniel Lee, were among the first in the field, and laid the foundations of the early cities of Oregon.  One of their stations was at the Dalles of the Columbia.  In 1835 the great missionary, Marcus Whitman, of the Congregationalist Board, established the mission at Walla Walla.  Yet up to the year 1841, just fifty years ago, only about one hundred and fifty Americans, in all, had permanently settled in Oregon and Washington.

Senator Benton desired the survey of a route to Oregon, to aid emigration to the Columbia basin.  He engaged for this service a young, handsome, gallant, and chivalrous officer, Lieutenant John C. Fremont, who, with Nicollet, a French naturalist, had been surveying the upper Mississippi, and opening emigration to Minnesota.

Fremont espoused not only the cause of Oregon, but also Senator Benton’s young daughter Jessie, who later rendered great personal services to her husband’s expedition in the Northwest.

Kit Carson was the guide of this famous expedition.  The South Pass was explored, and the flag planted on what is now known as Fremont’s Peak, and the country was found to be not the Great American Desert of the maps, but a land of wonderful beauty and fertility.  In 1843 Fremont made a second expedition; this time from the South Pass to the Columbia country.  After he was well on his way, the War Department recalled him; but Mrs. Fremont suppressed the order, in the interest of the expedition, until it was too late to reach him.

Fremont went by the way of Salt Lake, struck the Oregon trail, and finally came to the mission that Dr. Whitman had founded among the Nez-Perces (pierced noses) at Walla Walla.  This mission then consisted of a single adobe house.