![]() ![]() Like Native peoples, the earliest Euro-American settlers caught salmon for their own subsistence, along with sturgeon, eulachon, and shellfish such as crabs, clams, oysters, and shrimp.Ī commercial oyster fishery developed in Newport in 1863 supplied the San Francisco market. Their awed response is preserved in the eponymous tale of returning salmon choking the rivers so thickly that one could walk across the water dry-shod on their backs. The abundance of salmon in Oregon’s coastal rivers amazed the first white settlers. ![]() ![]() Cranberries, an important commercial crop by the twentieth century, were introduced to Coos County in 1885. Coos County farmers also grew grains (oats, wheat, barley, and corn), vegetables, and hay on the marshy bottomlands along the Coos and Coquille Rivers. Dairy farmers established a cooperative creamery in 1892, supplying local demand for milk, cream, butter, and cheese. The lush grasses along the banks of coastal rivers made a good environment for raising cattle, and the first cows were brought into Coos County in about 1853. Wilson, after whom the Wilson River was named. The first cows arrived in Tillamook soon after Euro-American settlement there, driven in from Clatsop County by Henry W. The drained wetlands was good hay-growing land one settler reported a yield of six tons per acre from his diked tide flats, better than the expected three to five tons. ![]() Dairy farmers diked and drained the marshy tide flats around Young’s Bay to grow hay and make pasture for their cows. Dairying, the earliest and most important farming enterprise in Clatsop County, was well established by 1845. Under territorial and federal land-claim acts, white farmers took possession of large tracts of land around the lower banks of the coastal rivers and their estuaries. ![]()
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