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BUILDING AIR CASTLES SIMON BENSON’S LASTING OREGON LEGACY written by Sig Unander
FAR LEFT Simon Benson started as a Norwegian immigrant and became a lumber baron. ONE DAY IN THE SPRING of 1867, slender, blue-eyed, 17-year-old Simon Berger-Iverson walked onto a dock in New York after a five-week Atlantic crossing. Like countless emigrants from central Norway, he had come to escape grinding rural poverty and seek a better life. But a careful observer might have detected an unusual intensity in his gaze as he sized up the bustling city. This young man was driven by more than a desire for prosperity. He had something to prove. BORN IN THE village of Gausdal, Simon was one of seven children. He began working on the small family farm at age 9. Land in the pastoral valley where they eked out a living was so expensive that a farmer could hardly hope to own more than a few acres. Simon bragged that he would become “a great landowner someday.” Practical villagers shook their heads, saying he was just building “air castles” and would never amount to much. But even Simon—his surname later simplified to Benson—and the villagers who mocked him, couldn’t have foreseen the success he would achieve in “Amerika” or the contributions he would make. He would revolutionize the logging industry, lead the “good roads” movement and chair the Oregon State Highway Commission. His legacy would include Multnomah Falls, the Columbia Gorge Highway, Portland’s iconic “bubbler” water fountains, the Benson Hotel and Benson Polytechnic High School. All this lay ahead when Simon arrived, nearly broke, in Portland early in 1879. He had spent several years laboring in Wisconsin logging camps, repaid his ship ticket and learned English. He and his young wife, Esther, opened a successful general goods store in Lynxville, but it burned down, bankrupting the couple. Like others, they came west for a new start. The timing was good. Along the lower Columbia River lay some of the richest timber stands in the world. Giant Douglas firs—some that had withstood a millennium of fire and storm—reached high into the sky above the shoreline. Portland and its smaller northern cousin, Seattle, were on the verge of explosive growth, and lumber was needed. The greatest logging show on earth was underway. Simon bought a ticket on a steamer headed downriver to St. Helens. Onboard, he met a logger who hired him to work in his camp for $40 a month. Simon labored long, grueling hours and saved his pay. Soon he was able to buy a quarter-section containing 6 million board feet of timber on credit and start his own business, hiring workers and getting out saw logs. He had no sooner paid back the loan than Esther, now mother to three young children, fell ill with tuberculosis. Her worsening sickness ate up the family savings. Undaunted, Simon started over, securing equipment on credit and logging timber at Beaver Creek Falls on the Columbia. He cooked for his four-man crew, maintained the equipment and drove the oxen teams. But when it came time to float the logs downstream to market, they jammed tightly in place above the falls. He had to leave them there and sell out. MARCH | APRIL <strong>2018</strong> <strong>1859</strong> OREGON’S MAGAZINE 83
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1859 March | April 2018

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