PLSO The Oregon Surveor September/October 2021

25 Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon | www.plso.org by the government when it issued the patents, to the terms of the later federal surveys; so that many of the present-day trans- fers appear as regular subdivisions of regular federal sections and townships. But because of the irregular shape of the old claims, it is not possible to make an accurate description ex- cept by following the metes and bounds of the old claims; so the abstracts come by arm-load lots instead of in pocket-size packages. One would need a dray to haul all the papers nec- essary in some of these older claim subdivisions. The Land of Crooked Roads While the main roads have been laid but with more or less re- gard for the section lines where it is at all possible to follow them, and some later roads have been made on legal subdi- vision lines, the mileage of such is quite small. The first roads marked the route between far-apart settlements, and the land claims were later filed alongside these roads; so that the road line fairly marked the very first trails ever made in Oregon ter - ritory. That they are crooked and askew on the map is to be expected; one might indeed go the whole length of the val- ley, even on so great a road as the Pacific highway, and never touch a spot that corresponds with the easterner’s “section- line” ideal road. Some of the old highways have disappeared. SantiamCity, that was drowned out in the great flood of 1861, was on a road that served it at the ferry across the Santiam. Even the name “San- tiam City,” floated off with the road to it in the roaring flood; for they moved the idea to Jefferson, on higher ground not subject to inundation, and the old town and its road died the death. Waconda used to have a highway; looked like a com- ing metropolis. So, too, did Eola; but changes in and Bethany, near Silverton, once roads, or other causes that are not always clearly understandable, put themout of the running. Jason Lee started his first school down on the bottoms below the present Alexander LaFollette fruit farm, north of Salem; but the floods drove them to higher ground, and they came to Salem. x