"IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE" IN OREGON - Southern Oregon Digital ...

American settlers' accounts of grass growing "belly high to
a horse," the agricultural potential of the valley has
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evoked favorable comment.
Complementing the railroad's
publicity efforts during the 1880s and early 1890s, major
West Coast newspapers such as the San Francisco Examiner and
the Portland Oregonian promoted the valley in near-Utopian
terms to prospective settlers as an "Oregon Paradise" and
the "Italy of Oregon." 3
The boosters' call reached east to the Great Plains,
luring farmers and would-be farmers to southern Oregon.
Jackson County newspapers for the 1890-91 period commonly
mentioned the arrival of newcomers from Kansas, Nebraska,
Iowa, and Minnesota, and they included articles encouraging
more to immigrate.
Ashland boasted of its "Iowa Colony" of
solid merchants and farmers recently arrived from that
state, and the nearby agricultural community of Talent
called for "more good citizens" from Nebraska. 4
By the mid-
1890s, the county's rural folk were cultivating more than
66,000 acres of prime cropland. Cereal farming remained the
3 "An Oregon Paradise," (from Examiner), Ashland Tidings
(hereinafter cited as AT), 6 June 1890, 1; "The Italy of
Oregon (from Oregonian), DT, 28 Aug. 1891, 3. For the
positive impressions of Hudson's Bay Company explorer Peter
Skene Ogden, see: Jeff LaLande, First Over The Siskivous:
Peter Skene Ogden's 1826-1827 Journey Through the Oregon-
California Borderlands (Portland: Oregon Historical Society
Press, 1987), 57-64.
4 "0regon and Nebraska," DT, 5 Sept. 1890, 1; "A Letter
About Ashland," AT, 30 Oct. 1891, 1; "Talent Items," AT, 12
Feb. 1892, 2.