After the experience in Baker City, Oregon, where, as already related, 800 children contributed, and at Boise, Idaho, to be related later, over a thousand laid down their offerings, I am convinced that this feature of the work is destined to give great results. It is not the financial aid I refer to, but the effect it has upon children's minds to set them to thinking of this subject of patriotic sentiment that will endure in after life. Each child in Baker City, or in Huntington, or Boise, or other places where these contributions have been made, feel they have a part ownership in the shaft they helped to pay for, and a tender care for it, that will grow stronger as the child grows older.
It was not a question at Vale, Oregon, as to whether they would erect a monument, but as to what kind, that is, what kind of stone. Local pride prevailed, and a shaft was erected out of local material, which was not so suitable as granite, but the spirit of the people was manifested. Exactly seventy children contributed to the fund for erecting this monument (which was placed on the court house grounds) and participated in the exercises of dedication on April 30.
[23] Jason Lee, the first missionary to the Oregon country with four assistants, camped here in September, 1834, at, as he supposed, the summit of the Blue Mountains, and ever after the little opening in the forests of the mountains has been known as Lee's encampment.
Erecting a monument in Vale, as related in the last chapter, finished the work in Oregon, as we soon crossed Snake River just below the mouth of Boise, and were landed on the historic spot of Old Fort Boise, established by the Hudson Bay Company in September, 1834. This fort was established for the purpose of preventing the success of the American venture at Fort Hall, a post established earlier in 1834 by Nathaniel J. Wyethe. Wyethe's venture proved disastrous, and the fort soon passed into his rival's hands, the Hudson Bay Company, thus for the time being securing undisputed British rule for the whole of that vast region later known as the Inland Empire, then, the Oregon Country.
Some relics of the old fort at Boise were secured, arrangements made for planting a double inscribed stone to mark the site of the fort and the Trail, and afterwards, through the liberality of the citizens of Boise City, a stone was ordered and doubtless before this put in place.