State of Oregon - Curry County

Curry County. Bounded north by Coos, east by Coos and Josephine, south by California, and west by the Pacific Ocean. Area estimated at 2,420 square miles. Assessed valuation of property for 1874, $220,000. County seat, Ellensburg. Principal towns: Chetcoe, and Port Orford. The county is in the extreme southwestern angle of the State, and includes Cape Blanco, the most western point of land in Oregon. This section is broken and hilly, and is generally covered with forests of fir, white and red cedar, spruce, elder, oak and maple. These trees, particularly the white cedar, grow to mammoth proportions, often showing a trunk a hundred feet in height without a knot or limb. Much excellent grazing land is found along the coast and on the verdant prairies of the interior, and large herds of cattle and sheep are kept and fatted on the native grasses. Port Orford was at one time a busy manufacturing place of lumber, but the most convenient forests being exhausted, the business went to those localities so numerous along the coast, where the great trees stand thick by the water's edge, and the town declined. The principal stream is Rogue River. Mowing through Jackson and Josephine counties before entering Curry, through which it runs generally in a narrow cañon to the sea. Its mouth affords a good harbor at most seasons, and near it, along the beach, are valuable gold mines. Strata of gold-bearing sand are found, at times submerged by the waves and tide. The gold is with some difficulty separated from the sand, but it exists in such quantities, that were a proper system for collecting and saving it adopted, it would inaugurate one of the most extensive and profitable mining operations on the Pacific Coast. These auriferous sands extend, with slight intervals, from Coos to Humboldt Bay, containing from $1 to $2.50 of gold per ton, and the supply seems inexhaustible. In places much richer deposits are found. Gold bearing quartz veins, also ledges of copper ore, exist in the county, and there is no doubt but that they will develop into great value. Important fisheries, of cod and salmon, are along the coast and in the rivers emptying into the ocean, furnishing an exhaustless source of wealth. These fisheries have of late years developed a large and increasing business. The salmon enter the rivers in great numbers during the spring and summer, and their capture is carried on with vigor. At the mouth of Rogue River are several fisheries with canning and barreling establishments on the banks, and others at the mouth of the Chetcoe. In the season of 1874 some 3,500 barrels of salted salmon, and over 5,000 boxes of canned salmon were put up at the various establishments, valued at $60,000. Each box contains two dozen two pound cans, steamed and hermetically sealed for shipment to distant parts of the world. The population is light, and the county backward, but with greater population on the Pacific Coast, the abundant natural resources of Curry will attract its share, and wealth will prevail where poverty now complains.
Officers: Robert Moore, County Judge; J. L. Evans, Clerk. Recorder and Auditor; C. W. Fitch, District Attorney; Asa Carman, Sheriff and Tax Collector; Frank A. Stewart, Treasurer; A. R. Miller, Assessor; F. W. Colbrook, Surveyor; George Merriman, Superintendent Public Schools.

Pacific Coast Business Directory | Oregon Territory Index

Oregon Directory and Gazetteer

Source: Pacific Coast Business Directory for 1876-78, Compiled by Henry G. Langley, San Francisco, 1875.