The Oregon Land Agent’s Smear Campaign

Under the above heading appeared in this paper last week an extended account of the agricultural and other resources of the Sound. Mr. Little, an old boarder of this county, submitted a letter from an interested party in Lynn, Massachusetts, asking about the feasibility of homesteading in Washington. A Mrs. Mudgett reported that an Oregon land agent was actively dissuading potential settlers from coming to Washington Territory. The agent claimed Washington had 'land storms' and trees from nine to twenty-five feet in diameter so thick that a deer could not walk between them. He alleged that Seattle's streets were forty feet deep in sawdust, that the territory was nothing but lumbermen and tramps, and that it was a 'bog.' The paper refutes these claims, noting that the climate is mild, winters are wet with little snow, and that summers are a luxury. Such reckless statements, while deceptive, show the necessity of furnishing accurate information to the East to ensure capital and migration continues to flow into our territory.