Historical Multi's Ressurected #1-Pioneer of 1844 Multi-Cache

Multi's are some of the best form of caches out there.  Welcome to the Historical Multi's Ressurected Series #1. 

Back in the late 60's early 70's my old Boy Scout troop from Ockley Green School took on the community service project of maintaining this historical site. While looking up history on the site I found that the Portland Heritage Tree organization had listed the big Western Red Cedar right beside the gravesite as a Tree Of Merit on their Web site Trees Of Merit - it is a truely massive tree.

I don't know that much about the life and times of the Pioneer of 1844 other than the reason the site is where it is had to do with his marriage to Native American woman. He was buried outside of the Pioneer cemetery located near here. There is a large geographical feature in the peninsula named after him. If any cachers have other historical or interesting info about him, please post in the logs.


I found the rest of the graveyard! Since the construction on the new bridge was completed, I had to drive up the road aways to park and lo and behold, I parked right beside the old cemetery! It's all fenced in with a "No Trespassing" sign on the gate but you can see most of it. It's right at the entrance to the Abrams scrap metal yard. The coords at the gate are N45 36.813 W122 45.760 if anyone is interested in taking a look.


A = the number of letters in the pioneer's last name,
B = the sum of the month and the day on which the Pioneer died and
XX = the sum of the age of the pioneer when he died and the number of letters in his first name.

The latitude is N45 36.AAA

The longitude is W122 45.BXX.

The cache is located at one of the "entrances" to the Smith and Bybee Lakes Park just off Columbia Blvd. If you want to explore the drier parts of the park while your here, you'll need some sort of watercraft or be willing to take a dip in some nasty looking water. There are other entrances on the north side of the park that have wildlife viewing sites.

Received the following, very informative info from a cacher (Dulce-Joy) regarding the Pioneer's life and the gravesite:

"(The Pioneer) came to Oregon in the year of 1844, he was one of the earliest pioneer’s to settle in Oregon.

(The Pioneer) settled on 282 acre Donation Land Claim located on the North side of what was called St. Johns Village where the Columbia Slough flows into the Willamette river, and owned 200 more acres on East side of St. Johns and land up in Washington.

(The Pioneer) was a man of legend and myth, some say he made moonshine and would row his boat over to Fort Vancouver to sell it. I’m sure he had other means of income. In the years of 1852 and 1853 there was a Lieutenant that was stationed at Fort Vancouver at this time, it was Ulysses S. Grant our future President and he [and] (the Pioneer) were good friends. (I wonder why?)

(The Pioneer) was also friends to the Native Americans who lived along the river. Two Native Americans are said to be buried at the Ramsey Cemetery and 2 to 3 white settlers and some say that his brother John is also buried there, but there is no proof of his brother being buried there at this time. We may never know.....

At the time of (the Pioneer’s) death in 1895 he had already sold most of his land off, William Gatton had bought up some of his land. So when (the Pioneer) died he deeded some of the land back to make the Cemetery so (the Pioneer) would be buried on his land he once owned. The Gatton family is another story of a family that came from Iowa and settled in the area in 1852 and owned a very large some (sic) of acres in St. Johns Village.....

(The Pioneer) lived in the river down on the Slough in a houseboat. (did you know that a whale once came up the slough and cat fish weighed up to 20 lbs? that would have been a sight to see.) On with the story. It was a cold January night in 1895 and (the Pioneer) heated up his ol' wood stove, maybe a little too much, and caught his houseboat on fire and was killed in the fire. A sad ending to someone we really do not know all that much about, he never married, he did have family that lived in the area, and left quite a Will, leaving all his money to his nephews in the sums of $2,000 to $3,000 and the land up in Washington was given to his brother and money to the Sister’s of Charity of Providence, and to St. Vincent’s hospital in the sums of $2,000 or more to each, which was quite a bit in those days.

Notes:

The Cedar Tree that is by (the Pioneer's) grave site was planted when he died-it is 111 year old and still growing.

(The Pioneer) also had a herd of Dairy cattle & had hunters cabins, so rich people could go hunting & fishing.