Oregon Territory

The country in just a two-year span had basically doubled in size.

There was the Mexican-American War, which brings in a huge territory combined with the recent addition of Texas and then to the north, the Oregon Territory.

And then just as the treaty is becoming legal, they learn that gold has been discovered in in California.

And so it creates this immediate, we want to get out there.

And he really didn't care about, like, anyone else or, like, even his own party so much as just, like, he had things that he wanted to accomplish when he went, went into office, and he accomplished all of them.

Like, with the Oregon Territory, with Texas, and then with California, he gets all of them.

And then he's like, "I'm out," and then dies.

Like, basically immediately after his term ends.

Yes, he was an aggressive American expansionist.

He wanted to fight for a, a border further north in the Oregon Territory boundary dispute.

During the Mexican War, he wanted the US to continue further south beyond the Rio Grande and claim more Mexican territory than it did, you know.

And like virtually all pro-slavery Southerners, and an awful lot of Northerners, he assumed that at some day Cuba would be part of the United States.

And as I got into this story, I began to realize that the gold rush was much more than that.

The discovery of gold in California happened just as the treaty with Mexico was being signed after the Mexican-American War, which basically doubled the size of the country, if you add on the new acquisition of Texas and the Oregon Territory, and then to discover that on the farthest reaches of this new territory, there is the potential for immense wealth.

This hit at a time when Americans were trying to figure out what their future was.

Half the states were were slave, the other half were free.

And they returned today in 1806 after crossing the Continental Divide, making it down the Columbia River to Oregon.

And the U.S. would claim the Oregon Territory on September 23rd, 1806.

1845, the first baseball team, the New York Knickerbockers, organizes and adopts a rule book known as the Knickerbocker Rules.

Okay, that makes sense to me.

Charity Lamb was well known for having killed her husband with an axe, supposedly because she was jealous of her own daughter.

It seems now that Charity was likely acting in self-defense against an abusive husband, but as the first woman convicted of murder in what was then the Oregon Territory, her notoriety outlived her.

Today James and Elizabeth Stevens, the two pioneers of Portland and founders of Lone Fir, greet visitors as they trek through the 30-acre burial ground that lies just across the river from downtown Portland.

Tourists and curious locals have described the gravestone of the Guardians of Lone Fir as unsettling, creepy, weird, spooky, but also awesome, incredible, amazing, sweet, romantic, and beautiful.

Any chance to shoot an Indian, they do.

There's now a provisional government in Oregon Territory, and they put pressure on the Cayuse leadership.

They want someone to pay for the Whitman's deaths.

Soon, five Cayuse men go to the officials to explain what happened.

And their death was a trigger for motivating the President of the United States and the Congress to turn the Oregon country into a legal part of the United States.

And it created a continental nation.

The Oregon Territory is kind of the last puzzle piece.

If you look at a map, this gives America control over the 48 contiguous states it retains today.

California would also rebel against Mexico in June and be incorporated into the United States later in July.

The boundary through the Oregon Territory, which had been open to both American and British interests since 1818, was settled at the 49th parallel between the Rocky Mountains to the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

The only exception was Vancouver Island, which remained entirely in British hands, though its southern tip dipped below the 49th parallel.

Texas officially entered the Union when Mexico finally relinquished its claim two years later around the same time gold was discovered in California.