STOP #3 COFFIN BUTTE [Pioneers]

The view of Coffin Butte from this stop is very similar to the one used for the illustration on the left. Notice the location of the road intersection to the rear of the horseman, and of the vegetation pattern on the north side of the butte. How does this compare to what we see today? During World War II Coffin Butte was quarried for road building rock. Today, solid waste from local communities is restoring its former contours. By the time Oregon became a U.S. Territory in 1849, most of the surrounding farmland had been claimed by emigrant families that had arrived overland along the Oregon Trail. Many of the pioneers associated with the establishment and construction of the Barlow and Applegate Trails settled near here. David "Uncle Davey" Carson, the Irish Mountain Man, guided families through a snowy pass south of Mount Hood during the fall of 1845. That winter William Berry guarded a cache of goods along the same trail - which became known as the "Barlow Toll Road" when it was completed the following spring. Morgan Savage and Tolbert Carter, whose original cabin sites you passed along the eastern base of Coffin Butte and the northern base of Smith Peak, helped construct the Applegate Trail from Fort Hall in Idaho to the Willamette Valley in 1846. The following year, David D. Davis brought his family to the Soap Creek Valley along the same route. Within a two-year period, the prime bottom lands of the Soap Creek Valley and the adjacent prairies had all been claimed by American pioneers. Two years later, in 1849, Oregon became a Territory of the United States.