booth gardner - Washington Secretary of State

A mural by Barry Faulkner at the state capitol in Salem, Oregon, depicts the landmark Champoeg meeting in 1843.
wanted, but Moore purchased his property from an Indian chief. He platted a town site
he dubbed Robin’s Nest. Two years later it was renamed Linn City in honor of the late U.S.
Senator Lewis Fields Linn, a neighbor and family friend of the Moores in Missouri. (Linn City
was washed away years later in a flood, but West Linn is now a suburb of Portland.) Senator
Linn was a proponent of “Manifest Destiny,” the belief that the U.S. was destined, verily
divinely ordained, to control the continent from sea to shining sea. Linn saw the American
emigration to the Oregon Country as crucial to countering Great Britain’s claims.
Robert Moore published one of Oregon’s first newspapers. In 1849, he argued
indignantly against “thinly-veiled” attempts to confiscate the Oregon City holdings of
his friend, Dr. John McLoughlin, the legendary former chief factor (regional manager)
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